Italy in Australia's musical landscape

Edited by Linda Barwick and Marcello Sorce Keller, this collection of essays celebrates the past and future of Italy's long presence in Australia's musical landscape.

One in twenty Australians has ancestral connections to Italy, connections that continue to be activated today through music as well as through language, food and sociality. This volume brings together a collection of essays tracing the diverse origins of the musical practices brought by Australia’s Italians and the subsequent influences of commercial music, government policies, and ongoing transnational relationships with family and paesani (those from the same town or village). Responses by scholars from Italy and elsewhere in the Anglophone diaspora provide additional perspective on the significance of these phenomena.

CONTENTS

PART ONE: ITALIAN-AUSTRALIAN MUSIC

One     Transnational Perspectives on Italy in Australia’s Musical Landscape

Linda Barwick and Marcello Sorce Keller          

Two   A Passionate Paradox: Public Reception in 1920s Australia of Visiting Italian Opera Companies and Musicians

Kay Dreyfus and Kerry Murphy

Three   Re-presenting Italy in Australia through Theatre and Music, 1972–2007

Antonio Comin with Linda Barwick

Four   Italian Traditional Music in Adelaide in the 1970s and 1980s

Linda Barwick

Five   Neapolitan Songs for All! Musings around a Fieldwork Experience

Marcello Sorce Keller

Six   Professional Italian-Australian Accordionists and the “Golden Age” of the Piano-Accordion in Australia

John Whiteoak

Seven   New Voices, New Songs, New Stars: Italian Song Festivals and Contesting in Australia

Aline Scott-Maxwell

Eight   Italian Immigrant Harpists from Viggiano in the Early Twentieth Century: Re-Discovering a Little-Known Aspect of the Musical History of Melbourne

Frances Thiele

Nine   “Oltre l’Australia, c’è la luna”: Maggio garfagnino and the Emigrant Experience 

            Linda Barwick

PART TWO: RESPONSES

Ten   Parallel Universe

Luisa Del Giudice

Eleven   “Italians are Not Racists, Others Are”: A Very Short History of Immigration in Italy’s Musical Landscape

Franco Fabbri

Twelve   Italy in Australia’s Musical Landscape: A View from Italy

Paolo Prato

Thirteen   Thoughts on Music and Migration

Marcello Sorce Keller and Linda Barwick

Selected Bibliography 

Index

Published: December 2012

Paperback: ix, 254 p.

ISBN 9780734037756

Australasian Music Research 12

ISSN 1325 5266