Gavin Carfoot

Acoustic, Electric and Virtual Noise: The Cultural Identity of the Guitar

ABSTRACT Guitar technology underwent significant changes in the 20th century in the move from acoustic to electric instruments. In the first part of the 21st century, the guitar continues to develop through its interaction with digital technologies. Such changes in guitar technology are usually grounded in what we might call the cultural identity of the instrument: that is, the various ways that the guitar is used to enact, influence and challenge sociocultural and musical discourses. Often, these different uses of the guitar can be seen to reflect a conflict between the changing concepts of noise and musical sound.

Exploring University-Community Partnerships in Arts-Based Service Learning with Australian First Peoples and Arts Organizations

In this chapter we focus on the importance of partnerships in arts-based service learning with Australian First Peoples and community arts organizations. Drawing on six years of our own partnership and a wide body of literature, this chapter aims to act as a trigger for further reflection on ways to engage in meaningful partnerships with First Peoples and arts organizations. In particular, the continuum between transactional and transformational types of relationships provides a useful means for understanding our work and for positioning the various benefits and challenges associated with university-community partnerships more broadly.

Enhancing intercultural engagement through service learning and music making with Indigenous communities in Australia

This article explores the potential for music making activities such as jamming, song writing, and performance to act as a medium for intercultural connection and relationship building during service learning programs with Indigenous communities in Australia. To set the context, the paper begins with an overview of current international perspectives on service learning and then moves towards a theoretical and practical discussion of how these processes, politics, and learning outcomes arise when intercultural engagement is used in service learning programs. The paper then extends this discussion to consider the ways in which shared music making can bring a sense of intercultural “proximity” that has the potential to evoke deep learning experiences for all involved in the service learning activity. These learning experiences arise from three different “facings” in the process of making music together: facing others together; facing each other; facing ourselves. In order to flesh out how these theoretical ideas work in practice, the article draws on insights and data from Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University’s award winning Winanjjikari Service Learning Program, which has been running in partnership with Barkly Regional Arts and Winanjjikari Music Centre in Tennant Creek since 2009. This program involves annual service learning trips where university music students travel to Central Australia to work alongside Aboriginal and non-Indigenous musicians and artists on a range of community-led projects. By looking at the ways in which shared music making brings participants in this program “face to face”, we explore how this proximity leads to powerful learning experiences that foster mutual appreciation, relationship building, and intercultural reconciliation.

‘Enough is Enough’: songs and messages about alcohol in remote Central Australia

This article examines some of the ways in which Australia’s First Peoples have responded to serious community health concerns about alcohol through the medium of popular music. The writing, performing and recording of popular songs about alcohol provide an important example of community-led responses to health issues, and the effectiveness of music in communicating stories and messages about alcohol has been recognised through various government-funded recording projects. This article describes some of these issues in remote Australian Aboriginal communities, exploring a number of complexities that arise through arts-based ‘instrumentalist’ approaches to social and health issues. It draws on the author’s own experience and collaborative work with Aboriginal musicians in Tennant Creek, a remote town in Australia’s Northern Territory.