Shane Homan

Urban redevelopment, live music and public space - cultural performance and the re-making of Marrickville.

This article examines the use and promotion of popular music in inner‐city spaces in Sydney. Inner Sydney is currently undergoing rapid gentrification. Residential developers have played upon the reputation of key suburbs as sites of creativity, lifestyle and “alternative subcultures” focused around main street consumption spaces. Yet, resultant property market rises have threatened the ability of artists, musicians and others employed in the cultural industries to secure affordable housing and spaces for performance. At the same time, Sydney has experienced a decline in live music venues, in part fueled by competing revenue streams for publicans (such as slot machines, trivia nights and karaoke), but also exacerbated by the imposition of more restrictive licensing and regulatory laws. These trends have been the subject of much public debate. In the eyes of many within the “creative” industries, newer gentrifiers have merely exacerbated this trend through excessive noise complaints and changing consumer preferences that have resulted in a slump in demand for live amplified music. One policy mechanism intended to arrest the decline of live venues is discussed in this article. Marrickville City Council, in Sydney’s inner‐west, has recently funded a series of free live music concerts in the open spaces it manages in response to a Live Music Task Force established to examine musical performance opportunities in the area. The concerts are deliberately intended as a response to criticisms over the lack of live spaces, but are also part of a wider commitment to celebrate and promote cultural vitality and diversity within the municipality. These policy moves are discussed in this article with regard to the politics of regulating live music spaces, and the role of local government in mediating the cultural impacts of gentrification and urban redevelopment.

Rap, recidivism and the creative self: A popular music programme for young offenders in detention

Popular music is increasingly being viewed by local, state and national governments as a useful form of creative activity for at-risk youth both within and outside young offender institutions. This paper examines a music programme operating for a group of predominantly black youth within one North American detention centre, and considers the range of benefits observed in fostering individual creativity, self-esteem and social communication. Popular music programmes—in this case, rapping and basic music sequencing and composition—offer a highly practical and direct means of allowing youth offenders to express a particular form of creativity in connection with their existing music and cultural interests. This paper considers the relative success of one programme and the implications for drawing upon hip-hop music, with its themes of deviance and resistance, as a creative vehicle within a broader environment of ‘offender to citizen’ discourses for the youth involved.

“I Tote and I Vote”: Australian live music and cultural policy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine recent government policies that have had direct and indirect effects upon Australian live music venues.Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a review of relevant government policies relating to live music and a case study approach examining live musics role in concepts of the “creative city”.Findings – Policy affecting venues remains tied to wider governmental notions of risk management. The rise of evidence‐based research about venue activity is one effective means of negating instinctive policies that regard live music activity as simply problematic to night‐time economies.Originality/value – The paper reveals the current debates and practical obstacles facing live music venues. Its Australian case studies are relevant to similar global debates in the live music industries, and how live music is marketed as part of “creative city” and “cultural city” campaigns.

Cultural Precincts, Creative Spaces Giving the Local a Musical Spin

This article examines the role of three community-based music projects—in Newcastle (Australia), Thanet (United Kingdom), and the City of Playford (Australia)—in engendering notions of regionalism, locality, and identity. Through their involvement in these projects, young people are placed at the intersection of music program management, city mythologies, and national policy. Each of the three projects examined attempts to facilitate urban regeneration through supplying their target community with what one regional arts development officer has coined a “musical spin.” However, within wider cultural frameworks, youths lived experience is often at odds with grander ideals of community arts space. Thus, although the discourses of “creative” urban regeneration articulated by the facilitators of community-based music projects may appear credible at the level of cultural policy, their practical implementation is problematized by competing local narratives that are grounded in established local knowledges and often highly resistant to intervention by outside sources.

From Coombs to Crean: popular music and cultural policy in Australia

The many bodies administering Australian arts activity were incorporated within the Australia Council, established in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor Government to oversee Commonwealth arts policy under the direction of H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs. This article takes the establishment of the Australia Council as a starting point in tracing changing attitudes towards the practices and funding of popular music in Australia and accompanying policy discourses. This includes consideration of how funding models reinforce understandings of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, the ‘cultural’/‘creative’ industries debates, and their effects upon local popular music policy. This article discusses the history of local music content debates as a central instrument of popular music policy and examines the implications for cultural nationalism in light of a recent series of media and cultural reports into industries and funding bodies. In documenting a broad shift from cultural to industrial policy narratives, the article examines a central question: What does the ‘national’ now mean in contemporary music and the rapid evolution of digital media technologies?

An ‘Orwellian vision’: Oz Rock scenes and regulation

The present paper examines the emergence of a form of Australian rock and roll known as ‘Oz Rock’ from the mid-1970s. Heavily influenced by overseas rock performers, the term described a group of (mostly male) performers and bands regarded as identifiably ‘Australian’ in their performance attitudes and techniques. Beyond its use as a national marker within international rock practices, the present paper analyses the role of the local rock pub and club, in particular the Sydney rock music venue, as the basis for a series of city-based Oz Rock scenes that provided a remarkably stable community of performers and fans. The paper explains the consequences for the 1970s and 1980s local music venue as they were increasingly incorporated within wider state government regulation of night-time practices and scenes.

Historical Records, National Constructions: The Contemporary Popular Music Archive

This article examines the contemporary role of archives in relation to the curation and preservation of popular music artifacts, drawing upon interviews with a range of archival institutions and popular music curators in several countries. It explores the current technological, financial, and aesthetic challenges facing curators and archivists in the era of digital abundance. Previous strategies of “collecting everything” are being revised, with more recent strategies of selective narratives of particular national significance. This in turn presents further challenges for institutions that wish to adopt more playful and innovative uses of their material, particularly as pressures mount from the state to increase user/visitor numbers. The article also explores how “the national” is configured in these forms and presentations of popular music and cultural memory, and where archives are situated between the music industries, the state, and popular music fan communities.

Introduction: popular music and policy

This special issue derives from the conference Policy Notes: Popular Music, Industry and the State hosted by the issue editors in Melbourne, 18–20 June 2012. The conference marked the completion of a three-year Australian Research Council project, Policy Notes: Local Popular Music in Global Creative Economies that examined popular music policy in Scotland, New Zealand and Australia. The issue offers several case studies examining how local music-making has become part of creative industries practices and policies, and the challenges faced by the music industries and governments in the funding, regulation and management of popular music.

‘Lockout’ laws or ‘rock out’ laws? Governing Sydney’s night-time economy and implications for the ‘music city’

Abstract ‘Lockout laws’ are not new in Australia – variants exist and have been trialled or continue to operate in Newcastle (since 2008), Melbourne (abandoned in 2008), and Adelaide (since 2013) and Darwin (since 2007). In February 2014, the New South Wales O’Farrell Coalition government introduced 1.30 am lockout and 3 am last drink laws for the Sydney CBD (Central Business District), among a series of other measures. The subsequent controversies about the ‘lockout laws’ in Sydney have provoked a curious and vivid set of debates encompassing crime, medical, moral, social, libertarian, cultural and industrial discourses. In this paper I wish to assess the new regulatory landscape within historical and contemporary perspectives of nightlife economies increasingly privileging cultural and entertainment city uses. Beyond unpacking the ‘lockout’ debate in terms of ‘liveability’ and ‘cultural city’ meanings as practised by Australian cities, this article will focus on the implications for Sydney’s ability to maintain its national and global status as a music city.

A contemporary cultural policy for contemporary music

Creative Nation confirmed the shift by federal governments to viewing popular music as part of the Australian cultural economy, where the ‘contemporary music’ industries were expected to contribute to economic growth as much as providing a set of creative practices for musicians and audiences. In the 19 years between Creative Nation and Creative Australia, much has changed. This article examines relationships between the music industries, governments and audiences in three areas. First, it charts the funding of popular music within the broader cultural sector to illuminate the competing discourses and demands of the popular and classical music sectors in federal budgets. Second, it traces configurations of popular music and national identity as part of national policy. Third, the article explores how both national policy documents position Australian popular music amid global technological and regulatory shifts. As instruments of cultural nationalism, Creative Nation and Creative Australia are useful texts in assessing the opportunities and limits of nations in asserting coherent national strategies.