Music, Culture and Society: Graeme Smith
7 March 2008
From Ethnics to Cosmopolitans: Multicultural and World Music in Australia
Graeme Smith
From the late 1970s, Australian government cultural policies of multiculturalism provided the initial framework whereby musical diversity was placed within national discourses. In the 1980s, these policies encouraged the development of a group of musical styles associated with immigrant communities and the idea of multicultural Australia. However, in the following decade, shifts in policy away of social and cultural equity, linked to broader shifts in global cultural flows of music, lead to the emergence of cosmopolitan discourses as the source of claims to musical authority and social value of these musical forms.
Graeme Smith is Lecturer in Musicology and Convenor of Ethnomusicology, School of Music-Conservatorium, Monash University. Much of his recent research has been directed to the recent book Si_nging Australian: A History of Folk and Country Music _published by Pluto Press in July 2005. In this book he traces the history of these musical scenes showing how they have entered into the many-sided debates on community, nation and identity which have dominated public discourse over the last thirty years.