Music in Australian Society
Participants: Gay Breyley, Joel Crotty, Kay Dreyfus, Aline Scott-Maxwell, Graeme Smith, Marcello Sorce Keller, John Whiteoak, Wang Zheng Ting
Music in Australian Society is a multi-faceted Research Group that intersects with the Jewish Music Research Group and with elements of the School’s Performance and Composition streams.
As the publication lists that follow show, there is a strong sub-group dedicated to the study of various aspects of popular music, representing the School in conferences and publications of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Australia New Zealand Branch and in internal collaborations with Monash staff from the Communications and Media Studies section in the School of English, and Communications and Performance Studies, Faculty of Arts.
Three scholars have established voices of commanding authority in this field: John Whiteoak and Aline Scott-Maxwell as contributing general editors of the monumental Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia (Strawberry Hills, Currency Press, 2003) and Graeme Smith as author of Singing Australia: A History of Folk and Country Music (Pluto Press, Melbourne, 2005). Monash-affiliated contributors to the above-mentioned Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia (2003) included Georgina Binns (Music Librarian), Joel Crotty, Kay Dreyfus, Bronia Kornhauser and Graeme Smith.
A larger colligation (also including the work of Gay Breyley, Kay Dreyfus, Marcelleo Sorce Keller and Wang Zheng Ting) is the study of the musical results of migration and multiculturalism in the Australian context. The editorial team of Dreyfus and Crotty produced a themed issue of the Victorian Historical Journal (Music, Migration and Multiculturalism, v.78, no.2), in November 2007, including articles by seven Monash authors.
Gay Breyley’s research includes the study of memory and mourning in Australia’s indigenous communities. Wang combines his research focus on the history of Chinese music-making in Australia with an international career as a master performer on the sheng [Chinese mouth organ] and composer.
Joel Crotty maintains an ongoing interest in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Australian ‘art’ music and its composers, facilitating performances and supervising higher degree research in this area. Crotty is also responsible for the annual Monash Australian Composers Series, now in its seventeenth year.
An ARC Linkage project with the Australian Youth Orchestra (2004-7) resulted in a volume of multi-authored essays, Growing Up Making Music: Youth Orchestras in Australia and the World, Margaret Kartomi and Kay Dreyfus eds (with David Pear), Australasian Music Research 9, University of Melbourne, Lyrebird Press, 2007.
Current Projects
Publications and Conference Papers, 2004-2008/9
Gay Breyley
Journal Articles and Conference Proceedings
‘Music as a model for postmodernist textual analysis’, New Formations 66, 2009 (Special Issue: ‘Music, Postmodernism and Cultural Theory’): 144-57.
‘“Sacred curses”: Persian-Australian rap narratives’, Life Writing (Routledge) 5.1 (2008): 29-46.
‘Diasporic transpositions: indigenous and Jewish performances of mourning in twentieth-century Australia’, Ethnomusicology Forum 16.1 (2007): 95-126. (This article also appears as a chapter in Tina K Ramnarine, ed, Musical Performance in the Diaspora (London and New York: Routledge, 2007): 95-126.
‘Unfolding Australia’s fan of memory: music in Ruby Langford Ginibi’s Don’t Take Your Love to Town’, Journal of Australian Studies 84 (2005): 11-22.
‘Reconstructing central Asian imaginaries: wedding music in Iranian migrant communities’ in Adrian Vickers and Margaret Hanlon, eds, Asia Reconstructed: Proceedings of the 16th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, 2006, Wollongong (Canberra: Asian Studies Association of Australia & Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University), 2006.
Conference Papers
‘Underground and offside: private parties in Tehran and in Melbourne’s Iranian migrant communities’, Asian Australian Identities Conference, Melbourne, 2007.
‘Sweetness and Light: wedding music in Iranian-Australian communities’, ISIS Conference, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, 2006.
‘Reconstructing central Asian imaginaries: wedding music in Iranian migrant communities’, Asia Reconstructed: ASAA Biennial Conference, University of Wollongong, 2006.
‘Seeking the Simorgh: Islam in Persian-Australian rap’, Plenary session on Islam, Popular Music and Globalisation, ICTM Conference, Sheffield, 2005.
‘Black transpositions: Memory and music in Ruby Langford Ginibi’s Don’t Take Your Love to Town’, The Body Politic Conference, University of Queensland, 2004.
Kay Dreyfus
Journals Guest and Co-Edited
(with Margaret Kartomi and David Pear), Growing Up Making Music: Youth Orchestras in Australia and the World, Australasian Music Research 9 (Parkville: Lyrebird Press, 2007).
(with Joel Crotty), Music, Migration and Multiculturalism, Victorian Historical Journal 78.2 (2007).
Past Resonance, Future Memory: Essays on Music and Language in Honour of Margaret Kartomi, Journal of Musicological Research 24.3-4 (2005).
Refereed Journal Articles
‘The Foreigner, the Musicians’ Union, and the State in 1920’s Australia: A Nexus of Conflict’, Music and Politics 3.1 (Winter 2009). http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/
‘The pursuit of excellence and social equity in AYO’ s Young Australian Concert Artists Program 1999-2007’, Australasian Music Research 9 (2007): 53-75.
Aline Scott-Maxwell
Book Chapters and Refereed articles
(with John Whiteoak) ‘Swing ’em to the fiddle: modern western square dancing and music in 1950s Australia’, in P. Hayward ed., Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music, vol. 2 (Gympie, AICM Press for the Australian Institute of Country Music 2004): 75-98.
‘Finding a space for pop in the music of multicultural Australia’, in D. Crowdy ed., Popular Music: Commemoration, Commodification and Communication: Proceedings of the 2004 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, held in conjunction with the Symposium of the International Musicological Society: 11-16 July, 2004 (Sydney: International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Australia New Zealand Branch, 2005): 41-53.
‘Melbourne’s Banda Bellini: localisation of a transplanted Italian tradition’, Victorian Historical Journal 78.2 (2007): 251-71.
‘Otherness and ordinariness, blackness and whiteness: making sense of Kamahl’, in I. Collinson and M. Evans eds., Sounds and Selves: Selected Proceedings from the 2005 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, Wellington (Sydney: International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Australia New Zealand Branch and Perfect Beat Publications, 2007): 31-40.
‘Localising global sounds: world music and multicultural influences in Australia’, in Shane Homan and Tony Mitchell eds., Sounds of Then, Sounds of Now: Popular Music in Australia (Hobart: Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies, 2008): 73-92.
‘Making music to feel at home: the Indonesian student music scene in Melbourne’, in D. Bendrups ed., Music on the Edge: Selected Papers from the 2007 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, Dunedin (Dunedin: IASPM Australia/New Zealand, 2008): 149-54.
‘Royal songs and royal singing: music in the Norodom Sihanouk Archival Collection’, Fontes Artis Musicae 55.1 (Jan-March 2008): 180-190.
‘Seeking the popular in Melbourne’s Banda Bellini’, in I. Collinson, ed., Whose Popular Music? Industry, Performers, Fans: Selected Sydney (Sydney: International Association for the Study of Popular Music Australia New Zealand Branch and Perfect Beat Publications, 2008): 34-44.
Conference Papers
‘The perils and possibilities of border crossing: Sawung Jabo’s transition from Indonesian rock star to Australian multicultural artist’, Sonics-Synergies Conference (incorporating the International Association for the Study of Popular Music National Conference), University of South Australia, July 2003; Asian Performing Arts Symposium, University of New England, October 2003; National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, Wellington, New Zealand, November-December 2003; Biannual Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Canberra Convention Centre, June 2004.
‘Finding a space for pop in the music of multicultural Australia’, Symposium of the International Musicological Society, Monash University, July 2004.
‘Scholarship, politics and libraries in the construction of knowledge about the Malay world: the example of Monash University’ s Southeast Asian Collections’, Colloquium on Libraries and the Construction of Knowledge about the Malay World, Institut Alam dan Tamadun Melayu, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, August 2004.
‘Imaging the west from the east: the Sisco Kid, an Indonesian-Australian cowboy and his music’, The 3rd Australian Country Music Conference, Institute of Country Music, Gympie, Queensland, August 2004.
‘Kamahl: otherness and ordinariness within the mainstream’, National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, September 2005.
‘Local cooperative programs: the example of Asian libraries in Melbourne’, 13th Conference of the Council of Asian Libraries (CONSAL), Manila, Philippines, March 2006.
‘Popularity and tradition in a diasporic Italian community: Melbourne’s Banda Bellini’, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Australia-New Zealand Branch Conference, JMC Academy, Sydney, July 2006; also presented at the National Conference, Musicological Society of Australia, University of Armidale, September 2006.
‘Music in the Norodom Sihanouk Archival Collection, Monash University Library’, International Association of Music Libraries Biannual Conference, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, July 2007.
‘Making music to feel at home: the Indonesian student music scene in Melbourne’, Indonesian Council Open Conference, Monash University, September 2007; also presented at International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Australia-New Zealand Branch Conference, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand, December 2007.
‘Making a home away from home: the Indonesian student music scene in Melbourne’, Music, Culture and Society Conference, Monash University, March 2008.
‘Expressing community and translocalism through Pop: the Indonesian student music and popular culture scene in Australia’, Jurnal Antropologi Conference, Banjarmasin, Indonesia, August 2008.
‘From San Remo to the Antipodes: singing, song-writing and the Italian Song Festival tradition in Australia’, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Australia-New Zealand Branch Conference, Griffith University, Brisbane, Nov. 2008; also presented at Musicological Society of Australia National Conference, University of Melbourne, December 2008.
Graeme Smith
Book
Singing Australia: A History of Folk and Country Music (Pluto Press, Melbourne, 2005).
Book chapters and Refereed Articles
‘Yodelling and vocal breaks in country music’, in Philip Hayward and Geoff Walden eds., Roots and Crossovers: Australian Country Music 2 (Gympie: AICM Press, 2004): 1-12.
‘Ted Egan: Bringing it Home’, in Mark Evans and Geoff Walden eds., Market and Margins: Australian Country Music 3 (Gympie: AICM Press, 2005): 180-202.
‘My Love is in America: Migration and Irish Music’, Re-published in Simon Frith ed., Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies (London, Routledge, 2004).
‘Community and nation in folk, country and multicultural music in Australia’, in Ian Collinson and Mark Evans eds., Sounds and Selves: Papers from the IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, Wellington (Sydney: IASPM, Australia New Zealand Branch and Perfect Beat Publications, 2007): 25-30.
‘Playing with policy: music, multiculturalism and the Boite’, in Kay Dreyfus and Joel Crotty eds., Music, Migration and Multiculturalism. Victorian Historical Journal, 78.2 (Nov 2007): 152-69.
‘Folk music: movements, scenes and styles’, in Shane Homan and Tony Mitchell eds., Sounds of Then, Sounds of Now: Popular Music in Australia (Hobart: ACYS Publishing, 2008) 151-66.
Conference Papers
‘Ted Egan: Bringing it Home’, AICM Conference, AICM Conference Gympie, 28-29 August 2004.
‘Australian country music finds its voice’, at Making Music, Making Meaning 13th biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Rome, 25-30 July 2005.
‘Singing Australian: a new history of Australian folk music’, 6th National Folk Alliance Convention, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2-4 September 2005.
‘Community and nation in folk, country and multicultural music In Australia’, IASPM Australia/New Zealand conference December 2005.
‘From the bush to the world: national narratives in the Australian Folk Movement’, Australian Historical Association 2006 Biennial Conference at the Australian National University, 3-7 July 2005.
‘Cosmopolitan Celts: didjeridus, Irish music and celticity’, at the conference ‘Us and Them: perceptions, depictions and descriptions of Celts’ Department of History, University of Melbourne, 24-26 August 2006.
‘The voice of the land in Australian country music’, Society for Ethnomusicology Conference, Honolulu, November 2006.
‘Dialect, covert prestige and gender in Australian country music’, Linguistics of Song Workshop, La Trobe University, 25 September 2006.
‘From ethnics to cosmopolitans in Australian world music’, Music Society and Culture Conference, Monash University, 6-8 March 2008.
‘Multicultural music and cultural mainstream: making the difference’, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Australia-New Zealand Branch Annual Conference, Griffith University, Brisbane, 28-30 November 2008.
Marcello Sorce Keller
An adjunct associate of the School, Sorce Keller studies the music and migration experience of Mediterranean communities.
Wang Zheng Ting
Book Chapters and Journal Articles
‘Gangzhou Yueju Quyishe zai Melbourne, Australia (1961-2001)’ [The Gangzhou Society Cantonese Society Group in Melbourne, Australia 1961-2001]. In Yueju Guoji Yantaohui Lunwenji [Cantonese Opera International Symposium Proceedings] (Hong Kong: Cantonese Opera Research Programme, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008): 295-303.
‘Cross cultural experiment’, in Ros Bandt, Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon eds., Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007): 375-81.
‘Zhongguo Yinyuejia zai Aodaliya: Xinzhao Xinde Wenhua Tezheng’ [Australian Chinese Music Ensemble in Australia: Looking for New Culture Identity], Yinyue Tansuo [Explorations in Music] 97 (China: Sichuan Conservatory of Music, 2007): 81-4.
‘Chinese Music on the Victorian Goldfields in the Nineteenth Century’, Victorian Historical Journal (Migration issue), 78.2 (2007): 170-86.
(Tim Humphrey, Wang Zheng-Ting and Madeleine Flynn), ‘Chinese community choirs in Melbourne, Australia: the intangible heritage of cultural migration in a western society’, The 11th International Conference of the Asia-Pacific Society for Ethnomusicology 2006: 385-8.
‘Lun Shengde Yinweipailie Guifanhua Wenti’ [Discussion Notes on the Organization of the Chinese Mouth Organ], in Zhongguo Shengyishu [Artistic Form of the Chinese Mouth Organ] (China: Wenhua Yishu Chubanshe, 2006): 409-13.
‘How to Improve the Sheng as a Concert Instrument’, Chime 16-17 (2005): 57-71.
Conference Papers
‘Cultural bridges between China and Australia: the role of music’, Cross Cultural Regimes of the Senses Symposium: Performing Arts and the Academy, University of Technology Sydney, Australia, 2008.
‘Gangzhou Yueju Quyishe [The Gangzhou Chinese Opera Association] in Melbourne, Australia, 1961 to 2001’, International Conference on Cantonese Opera: Two Centuries of Historical Development, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007.
‘The Oriental Orchestra and Chinn Family’, ICTM conference, 2007.
‘Cross-cultural elements in the Fantasie for erhu (Chinese Fiddle) and Spectra for sheng (Chinese Mouth Organ)’, Society for Ethnomusicology Conference, Hawaii, USA, 2006.
(With Tim Humphrey, and Madeleine Flynn) ‘Chinese community choirs in Melbourne, Australia: the intangible heritage of cultural migration in a western society’, The 11th International Conference of the Asia-Pacific Society for Ethnomusicology, China, 2006.
‘Chinese musicians in the western diaspora: the creation of a new cultural identity’, Chime International Conference, Holland; The 10th International Conference of the Asia-Pacific Society for Ethnomusicology APSE, 2005.
‘Interpretation of the Sheng’s Traditional Harmony’, ICTM Conference, 2004.
Compositions
The Chinese Migration Route (Sheng solo) 2007.
The Future Forest (computer and Sheng) 2005.
Overseas Performances & Lectures
Interview and performance on Shanghai Oriental Radio Station, Shanghai, China, 2008.
Performance at International Youth Music Festival in Chengduo, China (with Kew High School Chinese Music Ensemble), 2007.
Performance and Lecture at Musikwissenschaftliches Institut der Universitat Basel, Switzerland, 2006.
Performance and Lecture at Schweizerische Musikforschende Gesellschaft, Ortsgruppe, Zurich, Switzerland, 2006.
Performance and Lecture at Universitat Mozarteum Salzburg, Innsbruck, Austria, 2006.
Performance and Lecture at Universitat Wien, Vienna, Austria, 2006.
Performance at China Festival in Amsterdam, Holland, 2005.
Lecture at Xiamen University, China, 2005.
Lecture at Hong Kong Chinese University, Hong Kong, 2005.
Performed with Zydeco Jump and Women in Docs at the Shanghai International Spring Festival, China, 2004.
John Whiteoak
Book Chapters and Refereed Articles
‘Family, friendship and a magic carpet: the music of Franco Cambareri’, in Italian Historical Society Journal 16 (2008): 25-24. http://www.coasit.com.au/IHS/index.html
‘Improvisation in popular music (historical overview and case study: The Necks)’, Tony Mitchell and Shane Homan eds, Sound of Then, Sounds of Now: Popular Music in Australia (Hobart: ACYS Publishing 2008): 37-60.
‘Making Gemütlichkeit: Bavarian-style music and dance in German-speaking community and commercial popular entertainment’, in Dan Bendrups ed., Music on the Edge: Proceedings from the 2007 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, University of Otago, (Otago: University of Otago/IASPM, 2008): 181-8.
‘Play to Me Gypsy: Australian imaginings of gypsies in popular music and dance before muliticulturalism and world music’, in Ian Collison and Mark Evans eds., Selected Proceedings from the 2006 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, JMC Academy, Sydney, (Sydney: Perfect Beat Publications/IASPM, 2008).
‘Australian music: music of place or music of a people’ (feature article), Review: Centre for Studies in Australian Music 21 (2007) 1-5. http://www.music.unimelb.edu.au/research/CSAM/review22.pdf
‘Mambo Italiano: Ugo Ceresoli and his Orchestra Mokambo’, in Italian Historical Society Journal 15 (2007): 58-72. http://www.coasit.com.au/IHS/index.html
‘Italo-Hispanic popular music in Melbourne before multiculturalism’, in Kay Dreyfus and Joel Crotty eds, Victorian Historical Journal 78.2 (2007): 228-50.
‘Latin music in Australia before multiculturalism’, Ian Collinson and Mark Evans (eds.) Sound and Selves: Selected Proceedings from the 2005 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, Victoria University of Wellington (Perfect Beat Publications/IASPM, 2007): 7-17.
‘Hillbilly, Cowboy and Western music as urban popular entertainment’, Australian Country Music 3 (Gympie, Australian Institute of Country Music Press, 2005): 161-87.
with Aline Scott-Maxwell), ‘Swing ’em to the fiddle: modern Western square dancing and music in 1950s Australia’, in Philip Hayward and Geoff Walden eds, Roots and Crossovers: Australian Country Music 2 (Gympie, Australian Institute of Country Music Press, 2004): 75-98.
‘Pity the bandless towns’, Australia’s Band World (February 2004): 9-12, (March 2004): 9-13.
(with Margaret Kartomi and Kay Dreyfus) ‘Berlin to Bondi: The Flight of the Weintraub Syncopators’, Heat 8 New Series (2004): 14-33.
Conference Papers
‘Our jazz-making tools and how we chose to use them’, (Keynote Response to Bruce Johnson’s Keynote Address: ‘Tools Not of Our Making: Shaping Australian Jazz History’) in The History and Future of Jazz in the Asia Pacific Region: Refereed Proceeding of the Inaugural Asia-Pacific Jazz Conference (12-14 September 2003), (McKay, Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, 2004).
‘Continental music as an early “multicultural influence” on Australian popular music’, SIMS2004 International Musicological Society Conference (Combined with IASPM Australia/New Zealand), Victorian College of the Arts, 11-16 July 2004.
‘Hillbilly, Cowboy and Western music as urban popular entertainment’, Australian Institute of Country Music Conference, Gympie, August 2004.
‘The Italian touch: ‘Latin’ music in Australia before Multiculturalism’, IASPM Australia /New Zealand Conference, Victoria University, Wellington, 3-6 December 2005.
‘The Tango touch: Australian imaginings of “Gypsies” in popular music and dance before multiculturalism and “world music”’, IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, JMC Academy, Sydney, 23-25 June 2006; Musicological Society of Australia National Conference, University of New England, Armidale 27 September-1 October 2006.
‘Making Gemütlichkeit: Bavarian-style music and dance in German-speaking community and commercial popular entertainment’, IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, University of Otago, 30 November-3 December 2007.
‘“The Tango Touch”: Exoticised and Italianised Hispanic Music in Australia: 1932-1972, Symposium: Exoticism, Identity and Constructions of Hispanic Music Hosted by the Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne, Thursday 19 October, 2007.
‘Kookaburra Samba: mainstream and non-mainstream interpretations of Hispanic music and dance in pre-multicultural Australia’, IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, Queenland Conservatorium, Griffith University, 28-30 November, 2008.
‘Kookaburra Samba: mainstream and non-mainstream interpretations of Hispanic music and dance in pre-multicultural Australia’, Musicological Society of Australia National Conference, University of Melbourne, December 2008.