ISLANDS CONFERENCE
WHERE: Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, South Bank
WHEN: 22-25 Nov 2007
Presented by the Musicological Society of Australia and the New Zealand Musicological Society in collaboration with Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University
Much music research in the Asia-Pacific region focuses on actual islands from ethnomusicological studies of localised cultures in literal danger of being submerged in a rising ocean, to studies of developments in composition in the European-based art music of major land areas such as Australia and New Zealand. But Islands can also be interpreted in a more metaphorical way. For instance, musical subcultures can be viewed as solitary islands, or as points of connection with their surrounding cultural landscapes or seascapes. The individual research traditions and musicians that inhabit and investigate these metaphorical islands also travel between states of isolation and population in their musical voyages. In the spirit of John Donne’s reverberant phrase “no man is an island,” the theme also invites reflection on connections and disconnections from time to time, culture to culture, island to island, person to person, and between musicians and audiences.
Key-note speakers at Islands included Nicholas Cook (Royal Holloway, University of London), Deborah Wong (University of California Riverside), and Andy Bennett (Griffith University).