Antipodean Riffs; Essays on Australasian Jazz; Bruce Johnson

Edited by

Bruce Johnson [+–]

University of Turku, Finland and Macquarie University

Bruce Johnson holds honorary Professorships at the University of New South Wales, University of Technology Sydney, the University of Glasgow, and the University of Turku, where he co-founded the International Institute for Popular Culture. His publications include Dark Side of the Tune: Music and Violence (with Martin Cloonan) and They Do Things Differently There: Essays on Cultural History (ed. with Harri Kiiskinen).

Antipodean Riffs is a collection of essays on Australasian jazz and jazz in Australasia. Chronologically they range from what could be called the ‘prehistory’ of the music – the tradition of US-sourced African-American music that predated the arrival of music billed as ‘jazz’ – to the present. Thematically they include studies of framing infrastructural mechanisms including the media. The volume also incorporates case studies of particular musicians or groups that reflect distinctive aspects of the Australian jazz tradition.

Preliminaries

Acknowledgements [+–] vii

Bruce Johnson FREE

University of Turku, Finland and Macquarie University

Antipodean Riffs is a collection of essays on Australian jazz and jazz in Australia. Chronologically they range from what could be called the ‘prehistory’ of the music – the tradition of US-sourced African-American music that predated the arrival of music billed as ‘jazz’ – to the present. Thematically they include studies of framing infrastructural mechanisms including the media. The volume also incorporates case studies of particular musicians or groups that reflect distinctive aspects of the Australian jazz tradition.

Introduction [+–] 1-16

Bruce Johnson FREE

University of Turku, Finland and Macquarie University

Introduction to the volume.

Cultural Contexts

1. Demons of Discord Down Under: ‘Jump Jim Crow’ and ‘Australia’s First Jazz Band’ [+–] 19-46

John Whiteoak £17.50

Monash University

The 1918-19 vaudeville act called ‘Australia’s First Jazz Band’ is the most appropriate metaphor for the commencement of an ‘Australian jazz’ tradition where this tradition is considered from the present-day perspective of a self-aware, long established Australian jazz movement. Yet improvisatory African-American-inflected antecedents of jazz can be traced back at least to the first colonial Australian performance of the blackface minstrel song and dance act Jump Jim Crow in 1838 and though black-face and, later, African-American minstrel show music and dance and two decades of ragtime music and dance before ‘Australia’s First Jazz Band’. Taking its cue from Bruce Johnson’s statement that early ‘jazz’ in Australia was an example of an ‘oppositional subculture’ that led back to our foundation criminality and ‘took over the spirit of convict and treason songs’(Johnson, 2004: 9), the article seeks to show that a continuum of African-American-inflected popular entertainment and its performance practices from Jump Jim Crow to Australia’s First Jazz Band functioned as the ‘medium’ for an oppositional ‘spirit’ that combined globalized oppositional values with others that are, arguably, traceable to colonial ‘ foundation criminality’.

2. Early Jazz in Australia as Oriental Exotica [+–] 47-64

Aline Scott-Maxwell £17.50

Sir Zelman Cowen School, Monash University

Aline Scott-Maxwell is an ethnomusicologist and popular music studies scholar with teaching and research specialisations in Asian and Australian musical cultures. Her current research focuses on Australian musical engagement with Asia and the music of Australian migration, especially popular music of the Indonesian, Italian and Jewish communities. She has published extensively in these areas. She is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music at Monash University.

Australian jazz historians sometimes note how the earliest so-called ‘jazz’ music to reach Australia via the popular stage was largely perceived as ‘novelty noise’ due to the use of new ‘jazz’ percussion effects and other novelty sounds in intriguingly unfamiliar combinations. Notably, Chinese percussion instruments were important ‘novelty noise’ components of early jazz. Yet, by the onset of the Jazz Age, Australians already had a long familiarity with ‘oriental’ sounds both through musical representations of the ‘Orient’ in popular stage and other entertainments and also direct exposure to Chinese music performances, ranging from ‘noisy’ Chinese opera performances on the mid-nineteenth century goldfields to local and visiting Chinese vaudeville acts in the early twentieth century. The association between oriental exotica and early jazz was such that the ‘strange’, exotic, ‘noisy’ sounds of Chinese music came sometimes to be understood as ‘jazz’. This association was successfully exploited by Chinese jazz acts such as Sun Moon Lee and his ‘14 Oriental Stars with the Chinese Jazz Band’ during their six-month long Australian tour in 1927, when they were described as both ‘the real thing in jazz’ and ‘the real thing in Chinese’ (Brisbane Courier 3 May 1927). Tin Pan Alley-style songs with ‘oriental’ themes became a further important intersection between early jazz and oriental exotica in Australia as a significant sub-genre of Jazz-Age dance band or so-called jazz orchestra repertoire. The article examines various connections and convergences between oriental exotica and early ‘jazz’ of the 1920s within the Australian context and argues that diverse notions of jazz as exotica contributed to how ‘jazz’ was presented and perceived in Australia.

3. Got a Little Rhythm?: The Australian Influence on Swing in New Zealand during the 1930s and 1940s [+–] 65-83

Aleisha Ward £17.50

The performance of swing music in New Zealand was strongly influenced by Australian bands, in particular Theo Walters Personality Band, and Tut Coltman’s Swingstars. These bands held residencies at prestigious cabarets, toured around New Zealand and made regular relay and in-studio broadcasts. These activities served to familiarize New Zealanders with their styles of swing, and both bandleaders hired New Zealand musicians and arrangers thereby influencing the style and performance of swing among New Zealand bands. This essay examines the activities of Tut Coltman and Theo Walters in both Australia and New Zealand during the 1930s and 1940s. I investigate the mobility of musicians and musical ideas between the two countries, how these connections were vital to the development of a localized (Australasian) swing style, and how these Australian bands helped to shape the New Zealand swing scene. The mobility of musicians between the two countries was an important factor in the development of the scenes and music industries in both countries. Additionally I examine how the New Zealand tours had a lasting effect on Coltman and Walters’ Australian careers.

4. The Reception of Jazz in Adelaide and Melbourne and the Creation of an Australian Sound in the Angry Penguins Decade [+–] 84-102

Bruce Axel Clunies Ross £17.50

retired. former prof of English, University of Copenhagen

A re-examination of some of the arguments in ‘An Australian Sound’ (1979) suggesting that jazz in Melbourne and Adelaide in the 1940s was developing distinctive local attributes, before it was swamped by the international revival of traditional jazz. A major influence was the spread of jazz through 78r.p.m. records, which detached jazz from its sources, tended to fix its styles and inspired the early attempts to define it. The recorded jazz available to the musicians who formed the nucleus of the Bell band, when they began to play together, was a selection of the sides cut in the 1920s which have become classics. The Bells did not copy this style, but, according to Graeme Bell ‘we used it as our model from which to express our own music’. Dave Dallwitz, in Adelaide, took a similar approach, which came to fruition in his work with the second Southern Jazz Group. Jazz was developing in Adelaide and Melbourne simultaneously with modernism in literature and the visual arts, and was associated with the formation of the Contemporary Art Society in both cities. The poet Max Harris took an interest in jazz and was perhaps responsible for the introductions leading to the first Australian jazz convention. He added jazz sections in the magazine Angry Penguins and its off-shoot, which formed the programme of the first convention. Local jazz experts, including William H. Miller, Dave Dallwitz, Tom Pickering and the Bell brothers, debated Australian developments in the pages of these magazines, in the context of contributions from New York and London by Inez Cavanaugh and Charles Fox. Australian sounds in jazz culminated in the forty-five original tunes (by various hands) recorded for the A.B.C. by Dave Dallwitz with the second Southern Jazz Group in 1951, and then they faded, until Dallwitz re-emerged as a jazz musician in the 1970s and recorded a lot of original music, including the Ern Malley Suite, which brought him international recognition in Down Beat and confirmed the distinctive qualities of Australian jazz in what is now identified as the ‘traditional’ mode.

5. Cuba Street Parade: Identity, Authenticity and Self-Expression in Contemporary Australasian Jazz Scenes [+–] 103-116

Nick Tipping £17.50

New Zealand School of Music

Nick Tipping is a PhD student, lecturer and bass player in Wellington, New Zealand. His dissertation focuses on the Wellington jazz scene, and issues of identity, both within the community and in relation to global jazz. Nick was Programme Leader for Jazz at the New Zealand School of Music from 2007-2011, and has lectured in jazz studies and performance at the NZSM and the University of Auckland. He is an active professional bass player on the Wellington scene, and has toured New Zealand and Australia with musicians and ensembles including Mike Stern, Kurt Elling, Joey DeFrancesco, Rodger Fox, Nathan Haines, the NZ Symphony Orchestra, and his own octet The Jac. Nick is a regular contributor to Radio New Zealand, as a critic and commentator on jazz.

While jazz has developed into a global artform, its history (and much of its present) remain bound to activity in the US. Jazz musicians in Australia and New Zealand must negotiate the tension between normative expression via an adopted artform, and expression of their own identities as contemporary New Zealanders and Australians, through the discarding of convention in order to achieve greater integrity of expression. Through interviews with musicians from the (multiple) scenes in Melbourne and Wellington, various perspectives are considered. The influence of jazz education, and the notion of national style are also discussed.

6. The Lost History of Jazz on early Australian Popular Music Television [+–] 117-134

Liz Giuffre £17.50

University of Technology, Sydney

Dr Liz Giuffre is a Senior Lecturer in Communication at the University of Technology
Sydney. She also regularly works in the national independent arts press as a journalist and
commentator, including work as the regular contributing editor for Metro magazine, a regular contributor to Critical Studies in Television, and columnist for The Conversation.

This article seeks to develop existing cultural histories of genre and broadcasting in Australia. I argue that jazz was present on early music television but its history as such has been lost, and by extension, the genre’s contribution to broader popular music legacies in Australia has been overlooked. The article draws on original production documents for the pioneering local public service broadcaster program, Six O’Clock Rock, a programme from the late 1950s and early 1960s that featured an equal mix of jazz and pop/rock during its debut season. This mix was later replaced with a more homogeneous rock and pop schedule; however the question of why jazz was replaced has yet to be addressed.

7. Shotgun Weddings and Bohemian Dreams: Jazz, Family Values and Storytelling in Australian Film [+–] 135-152

Christopher Coady £17.50

Recent research on jazz presence in Australian film has demonstrated how the genre was once used to enhance narratives about both the threats and the perceived benefits of impending modernisation during the 1920s and 1930s. This article charts out the way in which the musical trope of the bluesy solo horn – established in American and Australian film noir productions of the 1970s and 1980s – was used in contrast to conjure a sense of nostalgia in Australian films produced during the early 1990s. Despite pivoting a period of 60 years, analysis undertaken in this article of Gillian Armstrong’s The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992) and Paul Harmon’s Shotgun Wedding (1993) reveals the continued deployment of jazz sounds to rhetorical ends within Australian films bent on exploring competing societal visions. In turn, its identification of a shift from the sound of jazz in general as a marker of the modern to the sound of the bluesy solo horn as a nostalgic trope reinforces the need to read the semiotics of jazz presence in Australian film against particular historical frames.

Infrastructures

8. Perspectives on the Melbourne International Women’s Jazz Festival [+–] 155-172

Marjorie Louise Denson £17.50

Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University

Senior Lecturer Jazz Studies

This paper examines the significance of the Melbourne Women’s International Jazz Festival as a long-established annual event highlighting the contributions of women jazz musicians to Australian music culture. Nine women were interviewed about their experiences with MWIJF as performers, composers and/or organizers, as were the founder of the festival and current CEO. The importance of the festival to the participating artists’ creative and career development and its role in supporting emerging women artists are revealed through their comments. The festival is contextualized with reference to the historical experiences of women jazz musicians both in Australia and internationally.

9. ‘A Tale of Five Festivals’ Exploring the Cultural Intermediary Function of Australian Jazz Festivals [+–] 173-191

Brent Keogh £17.50

University of Technology Sydney

This paper considers the cultural intermediary function of Australian jazz festivals. It presents a detailed analysis of programming patterns across five Australian Jazz music festivals – namely, the Manly Jazz Festival, Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues, Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Brisbane International Jazz Festival, and Bellingen Jazz Festival – in the ten year period, 2004-2014. Using this data, this paper draws attention to the ‘search and select’ function of cultural intermediaries speaking to the broader significance of festivals as sites of popular music study. This paper considers a number of programming trends, including a comparison between local and international musicians; the frequency with which musicians performed at each festival and across festivals; issues of gender in programming; and identify musicians who could be placed into a number of genre categories, with a particular focus on those musicians who identify in some way with the category of World Music. This study presents an insight into current trends in jazz scenes in Australia and the roles that festivals play as cultural intermediaries in contributing to this aspect of Australian cultural life.

10. ‘I Wouldn’t Change Skins with Anybody’: Dulcie Pitt/Georgia Lee, a Pioneering Indigenous Australian Jazz, Blues and Community Singer [+–] 192-211

Karl William Neuenfeldt £17.50

Queensland Conservatory of Music, Griffith University

Adjunct Associate Professor

This article explores the career and music of Indigenous Australian singer and musician Dulcie Pitt, also known as Georgia Lee, and how music, race and gender intersected in her career. She had a distinguished career as an internationally recognized jazz, blues and folk singer and versatile entertainer from the 1940s to the 1970s. She performed extensively in Australia and Britain at cabarets, dances, concerts, nightclubs and theatres, as well as participating in numerous radio and television broadcasts, and sound recordings. Although there are currently other Indigenous jazz and blues artists in Australia, Dulcie Pitt/Georgia Lee is unique because she was a pioneer at a time when Indigenous peoples in general were the objects of widespread, legislated race-based discrimination. She rose above them through hard work and talent to set an example for other Indigenous performers to follow.

Musicians

11. Examining the Legend and Music of Australian Saxophonist, Frank Smith [+–] 215-228

Ralph Whiteoak £17.50

Sir Zelman Cohen School of Music-Conservatorium, Monash University

PhD candidate Sir Zelman Cohen School of Music-Conservatorium, Monash University
MD Royal Australian Air Force Big Band

The reputation of Frank Smith as one of the most talented, influential and original-sounding musicians of his time has been legendary in Australian jazz circles.This chapter briefly sketches out Smith’s career before critiquing certain stories and claims about his life, career, talent and contribution to jazz in Australia in an attempt to clarify uncertainties that have so far shrouded his past. Three primary questions are addressed in this process: why did Smith gain a reputation for originality in an era in which sounding like white or black American modern jazz legends was the benchmark of success? What was it about his approach to music (in particular his engagement with Hindemith’s theories) and saxophone playing that created so much peer respect and ‘legend’ status and what was the special nature of the influence he is said to have exerted over many talented musical colleagues of his era?

12. Lydia in Oz: The Reception of George Russell in 1960s Australia [+–] 229-247

Pierre-Emmanuel Seguin £17.50

With the recent publication of studies about Miles Davis’s recordings such as Kind of Blue (Williams, 2012) and of his quintet featuring Wayne Shorter (Waters 2011), George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization (2001[1953]) has been re-instated as a core influence in the evolution of jazz in the 1960s and particularly on the use of modes as a basis for improvisation and composition. Unfortunately, Russell’s achievements are narrowed by the prism of the celebrity of Kind of Blue (1959) to a systematisation of the relationship between chords and scales. By shifting our attention away from this narrow consideration of modal jazz and towards what is probably the earliest example of music influenced by Russell’s Lydian Concept outside of the USA, that of Australian pianist Bryce Rohde, I propose a different reading of Russell’s influence, which is less concerned with modes than with providing a coherent field for the blooming of a chromatic approach to improvisation and composition. This paper begins with an overview (based on journal/magazine sources) of the reception of Russell’s musical and theoretical work in 1960s Australia. Rohde’s acknowledgement of Russell’s influence brought the LCCOTO to the attention of fellow Australian musicians. The overview is followed by a musical analysis of key works by Bryce Rohde, which shows the variety of approaches, the structural complexity and chromaticism allowed by the LCCOTO. In a final part we will see that Rohde’s band members (contemporary and historic interviews) continued to pursue Russell’s Concept: one explored foreign scales and Eastern influences while another developed further approaches to structures and harmony. Studying Australian jazz in the 1960s has provided evidence of the extensive influence of Russell, affords a re-evaluation of usual conceptions of the evolution of jazz harmony. This paper also opens up general lines of enquiry as to how exactly Russell’s ideas fit into the broader history of jazz innovation.

13. Expressive Identity in the Voices of Three Australian Saxophonists: McGann, Sanders and Gorman [+–] 248-266

Sandy Janette Evans £17.50

Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Sydney University
and
University of New South Wales

Bernie McGann, Kim Sanders and Tony Gorman1 are three Australian saxophonists with distinctive sounds. I will analyse and discuss a composition and improvisation from a seminal recording by each saxophonist: McGann’s ‘Playground’, Sanders’s ‘Gnome Chomsky’s Deep Focus Boogie-Woogie’ and Gorman’s ‘Spice Island’, supported by material from interviews with the saxophonists where available. My objective is not to compare the relative merits of each saxophonist, but to identify some of the key factors in the conception, development and realization of their expressive identity.

14. Sex and the Sonic Smorgasbord The Necks—Extending the ‘Jazz’ Piano Trio Format [+–] 267-284

Jane Galbraith £17.50

The Necks—Chris Abrahams (piano) Lloyd Swanton (bass) and Tony Buck (drums)—are one of Australia’s leading trios of improvised music. This publication explores how the international achievements of The Necks over a 25-year-plus career have established them as one of the most important and distinctive Australian jazz groups.

End Matter

Index [+–] 285-296

Bruce Johnson FREE

University of Turku, Finland and Macquarie University

Reviews

I have enjoyed reviewing this book. It offers a diverse range of essays about Australasian jazz, from early influences long ago to the present, and presented by several different commentators, all of whom are clearly expert in their chosen topics. The level of scholarship is uniformly impressive; which perhaps is not so surprising because virtually all authors are or have been engaged in tertiary educational programs. Surely, there is something here that anyone interested in jazz of any kind in Australasia will find informative.
Professor Ted Nettelbeck, Eric Myers Jazz

.

Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Antipodean Riffs

Essays on Australasian Jazz

Bruce Johnson [+–]

University of Turku, Finland and Macquarie University

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