Be careful what you wish for – how the indirect impacts of culture came to overshadow its inherent value

Recent turmoil at the Australian National University has raised a serious issue about the way we view and discuss creativity and culture. For many decades there were profound attempts to explain how arts, culture and creativity in general had immensely broad impacts across society, including in the economy – attempts that I was part of. That was, and remains, extremely important, but, partly as a result of these attempts, the inherent long-term impacts of arts, culture and creativity have increasingly been ignored and only the broader flow on impacts, often the more immediately practical ones, have been emphasised. In a neo-liberal universe that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, understanding and managing this complex balance is crucial.

Even though I am a long-running Adjunct with the University of Canberra and over the course of my career have worked closely with a number of universities, I don’t in any way claim to be deeply knowledgeable about higher education – I just recognise its value. For me arts, culture and creativity are my focus and higher education and arts training only figure in relation to this.

‘It was apparent that for too long there had been a narrow emphasis on ‘art’ at the expense of ‘culture’ and on ‘excellence’, as counterposed against participation and involvement. The whole community arts and community cultural development movement, from which I sprang, was predicated on breaking down this artificial dichotomy.’

These issues are rearing their head in the national capital at the only national university in Australia, but they resonate everywhere, as culture and education, learning, research and innovation become battlegrounds in a world that, in the words of Oscar Wilde, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

During my working life, as I moved through involvement in different parts of the cultural sector, it was apparent that for too long there had been a narrow emphasis on ‘art’ at the expense of ‘culture’ and on ‘excellence’, as counterposed against participation and involvement. The whole community arts and community cultural development movement, from which I sprang, was predicated on breaking down this artificial dichotomy.

On the one hand conservatives loved the elitism of art, on the other hand, as part of the culture wars, they used accusations of ‘elitism’ to beat the ‘elites’ – not their elites, the real elites which rule the world, but those they identified as bringing progressive politics to the fore.

Music for modern times – the past reminds us of the future

Times are grim. People around the world are losing their life savings, innocent Americans are being deported to concentrations camps in Latin America, neo-liberals are on the rampage, like out of control crime gangs or brown-shirted goons. Luckily there is always creativity and culture, art and community action.

As always art, creativity and culture, not to mention community offer some relief and ways to understand and help finding solutions to madness. The past is always with us and has a lot to say. It’s time to briefly lift up our heads from this craziness and listen to some music.

Postmodern Jukebox
Earlier this year I went to see Postmodern Jukebox play at Llewellyn Hall on a rainy night in Canberra. It was refreshing to see the good side of America still singing, even while the Trump bully boys were dismantling democracy – albeit a flawed version that makes you appreciative of your own somewhat less flawed version.

‘You hear the phrase “the audience went wild” – well, when the audience go wild at a Postmodern Jukebox show, they really go wild.’

I had been introduced to the phenomenon of Postmodern Jukebox on an excursion to visit my brother in Gippsland in Victoria. He of course knows of all things musical. Until the concert I had seen them only on YouTube.

 

Music makes everything better.

Alive and kicking – childrens songs in first languages take culture into future

For many years I managed the Australian Government cultural program that supported the maintenance and revival of Indigenous languages – the languages unique to Australia. The community languages over-achievers I met in those years demonstrated that there has always been an inextricable connection between language and music and song. In the case of the many hundreds of community languages spoken in Australia before European settlement, this has always been true. There is a long history of music and song in First Nations cultures and communities and increasingly contemporary musicians have been performing and recording songs in First Nations languages. When music and song featuring First Nations languages is specifically by and for children, we start to see the face of the future. This is not a story only of relevance to First Nations communities. Why it is important to everyone is that it shows how focused community activity can be a major force for good and can underpin a broader, richer Australian culture.

Recording songs in First Nations languages has been an established practice for some time now. Who can forget hearing the words in one of the Yolngu languages in the ground-breaking song ‘Treaty for the first time? Whole albums by the great Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu were almost completely in language – Yolngu languages such as Gaalpu, Gumatj or Djambarrpuynu, a dialect related to Gumatj – with only a sprinkling of English.
 

Young Yolngu musicians practicing at Garma Festival, East Arnhem Land, 2008

 

Taken off
In recent years, though, it has really taken off, with many performers, such as Shellie Morris and the Borroloola Songwomen (featuring the Yanuwa, Garrawa, Mara and Guanji languages of the Borroloola region) releasing albums in their community language, part of a wider international trend. As a Sydney Morning Herald article points out other musicians to record songs in language include ARIA-nominated singer and songwriter Gumbaynggirr woman Emma Donovan, Emily Wurramara, Baker Boy, Budjerah, DRMNGNOW, Christine Anu and King Stingray, to name just a few. This has built on a long tradition of singing and music featuring First Nations languages.

First Nations performers have also taken and transformed songs originally written in English. Mitch Tambo’s performance of the much-loved unofficial national anthem ‘You’re the Voice’ in Gamilaraay at the Fire Fight Australia concert – alongside its original singer, Johnny Farnham, and Olivia Newton-John and Brian May of Queen no less – is a recent high profile example.

Dear Treasurer – our arts are central to everyday life, why doesn’t funding reflect it?

In response to steadily diminishing support for arts and culture by government, it's crucial to recognise that Australia's arts are central to everyday life and should be firmly on the main national agenda. Apart from their value in maintaining a thriving Australian culture, the range of social and economic benefits they deliver and their role in telling Australia's story to ourselves and the world make them an essential service.

Like it or not, we’re all part of a double disillusion election, and an early one as well – as if we need any more of them, given some of the disastrous outcomes of past ones. Somewhere in the noise and dust, Australia’s arts and culture future could well be lost.

Tobacco drying sheds, North East Victoria: The creative industries are too important to become just another industry overtaken by history.

Venue lock down – a blunt instrument for a dire problem

The diminishing stock of city venues for live music performances under the onslaught of pokies and increasing concentrations of inner-city apartment dwellers has been a serious issue for contemporary music for decades. The legislation tightening controls on venues in response to alcohol-related violence is only the latest obstacle the music sector has to address.

City venues are crucial for a healthy live music scene and there have been concerted campaigns over many years to remove regulatory barriers and keep live music venues alive. Over the last 12 months the issue of venue lock down to deal with alcohol-fuelled assaults has become a major debate and it is overlapping with the live music issue.

Venue lockdown in Sydney city is a response to a dire problem using a very blunt instrument.

Sculthorpe - music of big matters

Peter Sculthorpe, who died recently , aged 85, was a genuine great Australian talent (and a Tasmanian), prepared to tackle the big matters of Australia’s history in all its complexity, its darkness and light.

A small recollection related to his work stands out. I remember being in Northern Tasmania in 2003, about to start on the Bay of Fires walk. The drive to start the walk was due to depart from Quamby House near Launceston.

Bay of Fires shoreline - the Bay of Fires walk leaves from Qamby Estate, inland from Launceston in Northern Tasmania.

 Because it’s such an unusual name it stuck in my mind and on the day before in a bookstore in Launceston I found a recording of his piece entitled ‘Quamby’. It was originally Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No. 14, with a version for chamber orchestra created in 2000. He noted about the piece, “When I was young, my father told me a story about Quamby Bluff, a rather forbidding mountainous outcrop in the highlands of northern Tasmania.

The hidden universe of Australia’s own languages

I’ve travelled around much of Australia, by foot, by plane, by train and by bus, but mostly by car. As I travelled across all those kilometres and many decades, I never realised that, without ever knowing, I would be silently crossing from one country into another, while underneath the surface of the landscape flashing past, languages were changing like the colour and shape of the grasses or the trees. The parallel universe of Indigenous languages is unfortunately an unexpected world little-known to most Australians.

For almost seven years I worked with hundreds of Indigenous community language activists, some professionally trained in languages, most not, who were working day and night to bring their languages back into everyday use. If they stumbled across a single missing word – in some library archive or vanished book ­ – the excitement was palpable.

'If the language activists taught me one thing it was that underneath the surface language was everywhere and in everything'

It was like finding a long-lost relative. Words for sister, brother, mother, father, long thought lost, suddenly leapt out at them. Ironically, often it was the missionaries, most interested in streaming a message about their religion from English who codified and recorded the local languages and, as a result, laid an unwitting basis for this later work.

Big Talk One Fire Festival, Cairns 2013 - 'there were 250 languages in Queensland alone'

The process these languages activists are trying to reverse – the decrease in the use of the Australia’s own languages over many generations – did not happen spontaneously. As Australia was progressively settled it was common practice to discourage or actively suppress people’s use of their ancestral languages.

If the language activists taught me one thing it was that underneath the surface language was everywhere and in everything.

Greatest hits

It’s been said if you remember the 60s then you weren’t there. If you were unfortunate enough to be there, why should you have to relive it?

I never again want to be told I am hearing the greatest hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s, or the 70s, 80s and 90s, or any other long gone time.

It has been said that if you remember the 60s then you weren’t there. I think that if you were unfortunate enough to be there the first time, why should you have to go through it again?

Fender stratocaster takes time out