This detailed ethnographic study explores the intercultural crafting of contemporary forms of Aboriginal manhood in the world of country, rock and reggae music making in Central Australia. Focusing on four different musical contexts – an Aboriginal recording studio, remote Aboriginal settlements, small non-indigenous towns, and tours beyond the musicians’ homeland – the author challenges existing scholarly, political and popular understandings of Australian Aboriginal music, men, and related indigenous matters in terms of radical social, cultural and racial difference. Based on extensive anthropological field research among Aboriginal rock, country and reggae musicians in small towns and remote desert settlements in Central Australia, the book investigates how Aboriginal musicians experience and articulate various aspects of their male and indigenous sense of selves as they make music and engage with indigenous and non-indigenous people, practices, places, and sets of values.Making Aboriginal Men and Music is a highly original, intimate study which advances our understanding of contemporary indigenous and male identity formation within Aboriginal Australian society. Providing new analytical insights for scholars and students in fields such as social and cultural anthropology, cultural studies, popular music, and gender studies, this engaging text makes a significant contribution to the study of indigenous identity formation in remote Australia and beyond.

This volume showcases academic research into the rich diversity of music in Australia from colonial times to the present. Starting with an overview of developments during the past 50 years, the contributions discuss Western and non-western genres (opera, film, dance, choral, chamber); the history of music-making in particular cosmopolitan and regional centres (Canberra, Brisbane, the Hunter Valley, Alice Springs); old, new, and experimental compositions; and a variety of performers and ensembles active at particular points in time. In addition, cultural tropes and music as social practice are also explored, providing a rich tapestry of music and music-making in the country. The volume thus serves as a model for representing and approaching multicultural musical societies in an inclusive and comprehensive manner.

Some indigenous people, while remaining attached to their traditional homelands, leave them to make a new life for themselves in white towns and cities, thus constituting an “indigenous diaspora”. This innovative book is the first ethnographic account of one such indigenous diaspora, the Warlpiri, whose traditional hunter-gatherer life has been transformed through their dispossession and involvement with ranchers, missionaries, and successive government projects of recognition. By following several Warlpiri matriarchs into their new locations, far from their home settlements, this book explores how they sustained their independent lives, and examines their changing relationship with the traditional culture they represent.

This open access book examines the political structures and processes that frame and produce understandings of diversity in and through music education. Recent surges in nationalist, fundamentalist, protectionist and separatist tendencies highlight the imperative for music education to extend beyond nominal policy agendas or wholly celebratory diversity discourses. Bringing together high-level theorisation of the ways in which music education upholds or unsettles understandings of society and empirical analyses of the complex situations that arise when negotiating diversity in practice, the chapters in this volume explore the politics of inquiry in research; examine music teachers’ navigations of the shifting political landscapes of society and state; extend conceptualisations of diversity in music education beyond familiar boundaries; and critically consider the implications of diversity for music education leadership. Diversity is thus not approached as a label applied to certain individuals or musical repertoires, but as socially organized difference, produced and manifest in various ways as part of everyday relations and interactions. This compelling collection serves as an invitation to ongoing reflexive inquiry; to deliberate the politics of diversity in a fast-changing and pluralist world; and together work towards more informed and ethically sound understandings of how diversity in music education policy, practice, and research is framed and conditioned both locally and globally.

In this ethnography of Navajo (Diné) popular music culture, Kristina M. Jacobsen examines questions of Indigenous identity and performance by focusing on the surprising and vibrant Navajo country music scene. Through multiple first-person accounts, Jacobsen illuminates country music’s connections to the Indigenous politics of language and belonging, examining through the lens of music both the politics of difference and many internal distinctions Diné make among themselves and their fellow Navajo citizens. As the second largest tribe in the United States, the Navajo have often been portrayed as a singular and monolithic entity. Using her experience as a singer, lap steel player, and Navajo language learner, Jacobsen challenges this notion, showing the ways Navajos distinguish themselves from one another through musical taste, linguistic abilities, geographic location, physical appearance, degree of Navajo or Indian blood, and class affiliations. By linking cultural anthropology to ethnomusicology, linguistic anthropology, and critical Indigenous studies, Jacobsen shows how Navajo poetics and politics offer important insights into the politics of Indigeneity in Native North America, highlighting the complex ways that identities are negotiated in multiple, often contradictory, spheres.

An Anthology of Australian Albums offers an overview of Australian popular music through the lens of significant, yet sometimes overlooked, Australian albums. Chapters explore the unique qualities of each album within a broader history of Australian popular music. Artists covered range from the older and non-mainstream yet influential, such as the Missing Links, Wendy Saddington and the Coloured Balls, to those who have achieved very recent success (Courtney Barnett, Dami Im and Flume) and whose work contributes to international pop music (Sia), to the more exploratory or experimental (Curse ov Dialect and A.B. Original). Collectively the albums and artists covered contribute to a view of Australian popular music through the non-canonical, emphasizing albums by women, non-white artists and Indigenous artists, and expanding the focus to include genres outside of rock including hip hop, black metal and country.

Community Music in Oceania: Many Voices, One Horizon makes a distinctive contribution to the field of community music through the experiences of its editors and contributors in music education, ethnomusicology, music therapy, and music performance. Covering a wide range of perspectives from Australia, Timor-Leste, New Zealand, Japan, Fiji, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Korea, the essays raise common themes in terms of the pedagogies and practices used, pointing collectively toward one horizon of approach. Yet, contrasts emerge in the specifics of how community musicians fit within the musical ecosystems of their cultural contexts. Book chapters discuss the maintenance and recontextualization of music traditions, the lingering impact of colonization, the growing demands for professionalization of community music, the implications of government policies, tensions between various ethnic groups within countries, and the role of institutions such as universities across the region. One of the aims of this volume is to produce an intricate and illuminating picture that highlights the diversity of practices, pedagogies, and research currently shaping community music in the Asia Pacific.

Made in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of twentieth-century popular music of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. The volume consists of chapters by leading scholars of Australian and Aotearoan/New Zealand music, and covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Each chapter provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance to Australian or Aotearoan/New Zealand popular music. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in these countries, followed by chapters that are organized into thematic sections: Place-Making and Music-Making; Rethinking the Musical Event; Musical Transformations: Decline and Renewal; and Global Sounds, Local Identity.

This book demonstrates the processes of intercultural musical collaboration and how these processes contribute to facilitating positive relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia. Each of the chapters in this edited collection examines specific examples in diverse contexts, and reflects on key issues that underpin musical exchanges, including the benefits and challenges of intercultural music making. The collection demonstrates how these musical collaborations allow Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to work together, to learn from each other, and to improve and strengthen their relationships. The metaphor of the “third space” of intercultural music making is interwoven in different ways throughout this volume. While focusing on Indigenous Australian/non-Indigenous intercultural musical collaboration, the book will be of interest globally as a resource for scholars and postgraduate students exploring intercultural musical communication in countries with histories of colonisation, such as New Zealand and Canada.

The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages is a wide-ranging reference work that explores the more than 550 traditional and new Indigenous languages of Australia. Australian languages have long played an important role in diachronic and synchronic linguistics and are a vital testing ground for linguistic theory. Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive and accessible guide to the their vast linguistic diversity. This volume fills that gap, bringing together leading scholars and junior researchers to provide an up-to-date guide to all aspects of the languages of Australia. The chapters in the book explore typology, documentation, and classification; linguistic structures from phonology to pragmatics and discourse; sociolinguistics and language variation; and language in the community. The final part offers grammatical sketches of a selection of languages, sub-groups, and families. At a time when the number of living Australian languages is significantly reduced even compared to twenty year ago, this volume establishes priorities for future linguistic research and contributes to the language expansion and revitalization efforts that are underway.