Indigenising Australian music: authenticity and representation in touring 1950s art songs

Abstract

Aboriginal-influenced compositions have been central to Australian art music practice since the 1960s, and key to conceptions of an Australian style. While in other creative arts practices (for example, dance and visual arts) appropriative practices have largely become unacceptable, or at least highly contested, compositions influenced by Aboriginal music have retained a central role in art music composition. In this article, I trace this practice back to touring post-war performances of the ‘Aboriginal songs’ of Alfred and Mirrie Hill, Arthur S. Loam and Victor Carell from Carell and Beth Dean’s ‘Dance and Song around the World’ shows in the early 1950s. I suggest that the performance of these songs familiarised audiences with a notional ‘Aboriginal’ sonority that has continued to influence composers and their audiences. Dean and Carell’s claim to authoritative representations of Aboriginal music and dance has had ongoing reverberations throughout Australian performance history, disconnecting Indigeneity from individual Aboriginal people (historical and living) and their traditions. Although ultimately these representations have failed to replace the performance of culture by Aboriginal people, reductive portrayals of Aboriginal musical characteristics remain persuasive.