Music in Culture, Music as Culture, Music Interculturally: Reflections on the Development and Challenges of Ethnomusicological Research in Australia

Abstract

This article provides an account of the response to the modern postcolonial prerogative in intercultural music research from a particular perspective and field: that of a non-Indigenous Australian ethnomusicologist (the author) who conducts research on Indigenous Australian musical traditions with Indigenous cultural performers and stakeholders. The article outlines histories and legacies of ethnomusicological research in Australia centred on its grapplings with the role of musical analysis in the task of understanding music in and as culture. It then provides an account of a new postcolonial discourse of interculturalism in the study of music as culture as it manifests in applied ethnomusicologies that are centred on recording and repatriation. The aim of this is to trace a path from consideration of challenges of the study of music as culture in ethnomusicology, towards a transdisciplinary postcolonial discourse that is applicable to all research concerned with music and contemporary human societies.