Professor Jon Stratton returns to Opinion@Curtin University Library podcasts, this time discussing Australian popular music and multiculturalism. Listen to the podcast or read the transcript and add YOUR opinion to the blog!

Opinion@Curtin University Library is a forum for discussion and comment for students, staff and the wider community. The Library encourages everyone to make a comment and read what others say (librarians will add some interesting links for you too).
Scroll to the bottom to add YOUR comment.

TRANSCRIPT

Australian Popular Music and Multiculturalism

In 1980 Joe Dolce released "Shaddap You Face". It went triple platinum and remains the most successful song in Australian music history. Dolce is an American of Italian background who had arrived in Australia a couple of years earlier. Multiculturalism was introduced as policy by Gough Whitlam's government during the early 1970s. Malcolm Fraser's coalition government put in place many of the key elements that supported the policy, including the establishment of SBS television, in the later 1970s.

The idea of multiculturalism was to move away from the previous policy of the assimilation of migrants into the pre-existing British-based culture and to give recognition to the cultures of the new, at that time mostly central and southern European migrants. After the Second World War large numbers of migrants were encouraged to come to Australia from Poland, Italy and Greece, as well as other countries considered to have white populations such as Lebanon. While multiculturalism was considered to give acknowledgement to the minority cultures of Australian migrants it has often been criticised for valuing those cultures for costume, custom and cuisine, that is for their traditions rather than for the deeper cultural values that are considered so important in Australia's core, British-based culture.

Within this structure, the music of migrants is considered to be a characteristic of their customs and something that can be enjoyed by the majority of the population but not something that should be incorporated into the general culture. What does this mean? Well, it means that "we", the majority of Australians, like to go to ethnic shows and festivals and listen to ethnic music but we don't think of that music as part of the mainstream of Australian popular music.

Which brings us back to "Shaddup You Face". For the first time, and the last, a song which acknowledged Australia's Italian community made it into the mainstream of Australia's popular music. If you think about it, Australian popular music of the last thirty years has, like the music before it, been dominated by British and American artists. Australia has a population that now comes from around two hundred different countries but our popular music does not reflect this. Australian popular music remains stuck in the era of assimilation. To be successful Australian artists subscribe to musical forms that would make people think that we have only a British-originated population. Artists that come from non-British, that is, to use the Australian term, ethnic, backgrounds hardly ever introduce the music of those backgrounds into their work. It is sometimes said that you can hear a Greek influence in the surf sound of the Atlantics who had two members with Greek backgrounds. The Atlantics were popular around 1963, before the time of the Beatles and the other beat bands—and, of course, before multiculturalism.

Since the introduction of multiculturalism its core/periphery structure works against such a blending. Thus, while artists like Kylie Minogue and Cold Chisel, and more recently Powderfinger, get into the charts with music that derives from English pop and American rock, groups that play music from, let's say, Italian, Greek or Indian backgrounds are described as making ethnic music—good only for entertainment in Italian restaurants or providing memories for Greek-Australian senior citizens, or playing at a traditional Indian wedding. At best, this music gets described as "World Music". At worst it remains a quaint reminder of a world that these so-called ethnic migrants, and their descendents, have left behind.

Where are the attempts to synthesise these cultures that now help to make up Australia's cultural mix with the dominant musical culture? As I have said, multiculturalism militates against such syntheses. A recognition of this, and a small step towards integrating another culture, can be found in the Perth group, the Tigers' track "Smells Like Greek Spirit" of their Space Coyote CD released in 1999. The force behind the Tigers is Chris Cobilis who has a Greek background.

So, if mainstream Australian popular music remains exclusionary and ethnic music gets categorised as World Music, what does that leave? Well, for example, let's look briefly at Susheela Raman. Raman was born in Britain to South Indian parents who then migrated to Australia. When Raman grew up she started singing round Sydney in a funk band. However, what she really wanted to do was find ways of synthesising Indian musics with the Anglo-American popular music tradition. To be accepted doing this she found that she had to move back to England where she released Salt Rain in 2001. In that year Salt Rain was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize along with albums by Basement Jaxx, Radiohead and PJ Harvey. It's very hard to imagine something similar happening in Australia. Here, Raman’s music is relegated to that status I have already discussed of World Music.

The majority of artists who come from ethnic backgrounds in Australia tend to play in Alternative Rock bands. Perhaps this is because they are more accepted there in a country which remains racist and where the divide between Anglo-Celtic Australians and ethnics is marked by the vernacular terms skips and wogs. Nevertheless, the well-springs of Alternative Rock were American groups like the Stooges and the MC5 and it is hard to hear anything of other traditions in, for example, the prominent indie group Regurgitator in which the part-Vietnamese Quan Yeomans is singer and guitarist. Alternative Rock, then, remains predominantly assimilationist.

If you want to find where the wogs are in Australian popular music the best place to look is Australian hip hop. Back in 2000 Mass MC, who has an Italian background, released a track called "BBQ Song" which attacks the insularity of mainstream Australian culture. However, Australian hip hop is full of young people from a large variety of backgrounds who see this African-American-originated musical form as speaking to their own exclusion from Australia’s mainstream culture and, with it, Australia’s mainstream popular music. A good example to close with is Perth’s own Downsyde which includes members from Indigenous, South American, Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds as well as Anglo-Celtic and whose samples reflect this diversity.

Playlist

1. Joe Dolce "Shaddap You Face" taken from Various Artists The Fable Years



2. The Atlantics "Turista" taken from The Atlantics Complete CBS Recordings vol 1



3. Powderfinger "(Baby I’ve Got You) On My Mind" taken from Powderfinger Vulture Street



4. The Tigers "Smells Like Greek Spirit" taken from The Tigers Space Coyote



5. Susheela Raman "Ganapati" taken from Susheela Raman Salt Rain



6. Regurgitator "Everyday Formula" taken from Regurgitator Unit



7. Mass MC "BBQ Song" taken from Mass MC Mastermind Alliance



8. Downsyde "El Questro" taken from Downsyde Land of the Giants

Readings
Mitchell, Tony (1996). Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop, and Rap in Europe and Oceania. London ; New York : Leicester University Press.
Stratton, Jon. (1998). Race Daze: Australia in Identity Crisis. Sydney : Pluto Press.

Posted by Jody Atkinson

What can Australia do to address global warming concerns while making the most of our energy supplies? Here's Associate Professor Alan Fenna's opinion - listen to the podcast or read the transcript and add YOUR opinion to the blog!

Opinion@Curtin University Library is a forum for discussion and comment for students, staff and the wider community. The Library encourages everyone to make a comment and read what others say (librarians will add some interesting links for you too).

Scroll to the bottom to add YOUR comment.

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TRANSCRIPT

Australia's energy puzzle

What do global warming, ships lined up outside the port of Newcastle, high petrol prices and nuclear energy have in common? The answer is that they are some of the main pieces in Australia's energy puzzle.

Inanimate energy supplies are the basis of our technological-industrial civilization; we are utterly dependent upon them for standard of living. This presents two problems. First of all, these are typically finite or non-renewable resources. Secondly, they are energy sources that also typically produce undesirable by-products – carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

One solution to both these problems might be conservation: reduce our dependence and use. Appealing as this might sound, because of the dynamics of the price mechanism, it is unlikely to be an effective strategy. A reduction in demand causes priced to fall, which makes energy cheaper, which in turn stimulates demand. To date, energy use has risen in tandem with economic growth; this is likely to continue. The solution lies elsewhere.

In general terms, Australia does not have an energy problem: overall, supplies are abundant. The situation is not so good when we look a little closer, though. First, is a scarcity problem: Australia is poor in one of the most important forms of energy: transportation fuel, notably petroleum. Secondly, Australia has what might be termed an abundance problem: too much of one of the least acceptable energy sources, coal.

Petroleum oil has special qualities that make it a premium energy source. Most importantly, it is the only energy source that comes in liquid form. The last one hundred years have been the century of the internal combustion motor and fundamental to that has been petroleum fuel. The motors, trucks, trains and aeroplanes and the internal combustion engine are still going strong. Forty percent of the energy consumed in Australia is for transportation purposes.

As far as Australia is concerned, this reality presents problems. First of all, petroleum is one natural resource that Australia has never had much of. It was only with the discovery of Bass Strait oil in the mid 1960s that Australia developed its own supply. Bass Strait production peaked in the mid 1980s, at which point it was producing about enough to cover total national consumption. Production has declined since then to about 70 percent of needs and will decline further quite rapidly. Secondly, the world does not have enormous supplies of oil. Consumption has exceeded discovery for some years now; possibly world oil supply has ‘peaked’. Thirdly, what oil reserves the world has are concentrated in particular regions, particularly in the Middle East – which holds an extraordinary 60 percent of total world oil reserves. Given that the Middle East currently supplies only 30 percent of world consumption, dependence on that part of the world will do nothing but increase. Australia is not well placed.

Australia’s other energy problem is one of abundance: the country has far too much coal – at current rates of consumption, 300 years of high quality black coal and perhaps 3,000 years of lower quality brown coal. We rely on coal to generate 80 percent of our electricity. In addition it is Australia’s number one export and we are the number one exporter of coal in the world. The problem with this is that coal is environmental enemy number one. Its dirtiness is compounded by the way it is used – the now ancient technology of the external combustion engine: a big fire to boil water that drives turbines. The result is gross inefficiency, with only 30 percent of the coal’s energy actually converted into electricity.

Nuclear energy is an obvious solution. We may have a lot of coal, be we have even more uranium. Our massive coal reserves equal about 8 percent of the world’s total. We have something like 40 percent of the world’s uranium. Not only is it abundant, but it pollutes far less. And to top that off, the world not only has thousands of years of reactor experience and Australia is in the position to exploit technological developments that have now brought us to the cheaper and even safer third and fourth generation reactor designs.

Australians, though, are reluctant to embrace nuclear power. It may be the obvious solution but it might not be the best solution. Not only is the nuclear waste problem an as-yet unresolved one, but with current technologies nuclear power will only address electricity generation needs and do little to address Australia’s transportation fuel needs.

Proponents of the nuclear option acknowledge that one significant obstacle to nuclear power is the mundane one that it cannot compete on price with coal-fired plants. They argue, however, that once coal power is required to pay some sort of carbon tax to compensate for the free dumping of its gaseous waste on the environment, then nuclear would be price competitive. This is quite correct, and coal should be taxed on its pollution. However, once that happens, nuclear is not the only energy source that becomes more competitive.

Australia’s most abundant energy source is also its cleanest: solar power. One major mark against the nuclear option has to be the fatal effect it would have on large-scale development of alternative energy technologies and industries. As far as stationary energy usage is concerned, Australia’s under-commitment to solar power can only be described as scandalous.

Until hydrogen power takes over as a transport fuel, though, even the greatest advantages in electricity generation will only solve half of Australia’s energy problem. In the short term we need to address the petroleum issue. Perhaps the first step in that direction would be acknowledge that far from suffering under the burden of high petrol prices, Australia suffers from petrol prices that are irrationally low.

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FURTHER READING

Fuel cells, hydrogen and energy supply in Australia Dicks, A.L. (ARC Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, Queensland Univ., Brisbane, Qld., Australia); da Costa, J.C.D.; Simpson, A.; McLellan, B. Source: Journal of Power Sources, v 131, n 1-2, 14 May 2004, p 1-12
Full text available from ScienceDirect database.

Department of Industry, Tourism & Resources. Australian Government. Energy.

Big win for status quo
Anon Source: Electrical World, June, 2004, p 3

Contributed by Gaby Haddow.

Posted by Ieva Bergman

Have you listened to Jon Stratton's podcast on Perth Music on Opinion@Curtin University Library? This podcast has been downloaded over 130 times in a few weeks - so if you are interested in the rock music scene in Perth don't miss this informative talk.

Opinion@Curtin University Library is a forum for discussion and comment for students, staff and the wider community. Go to the podcast page to download the podcast now - and subscribe to all the Library podcasts as well.

Exciting things happen@the Library!

Posted by Sue Grey-Smith

Do you know why rock music from Perth is different to music from other Australian cities? Here's Professor Jon Stratton's opinion - listen to the podcast or read the transcript and add YOUR opinion to the blog!

Opinion@Curtin University Library is a forum for discussion and comment for students, staff and the wider community. The Library encourages everyone to make a comment and read what others say (librarians will add some interesting links for you too).

Scroll to the bottom for the Playlist and to add YOUR comment.

TRANSCRIPT

Perth Music

Can we say that there has been anything specific about the Perth music scene? Anything that marks it off as different from the scenes in the other major capital cities—Sydney or Melbourne. Well, yes. The time frame I’m thinking of here is the mid-1970s onwards. This is the era when Australian rock music came into its own. It’s the time when Oz Rock develops, band like the Angels and Cold Chisel, and it’s the time when, in each of the major cities, there develops, locally and quite independently, a form of music that has many common features and that came to be called Alternative Rock—here we can think of Radio Birdman in Sydney, Nick Cave’s early bands like the Boys Next Door and the Birthday Party in Melbourne, the Saints in Brisbane, and the Moodists in Adelaide/Melbourne.

But, what was going on in Perth? The most important mid-1970s artist in Perth was Dave Warner and, although his first album, Mug’s Game, was released in 1978, Warner had been playing around Perth for years before that. If you look at the standard histories of Australian rock music you’ll find little or no mention of Warner. Why is this? Well, it’s because his music doesn’t fit the pattern of punk and post-punk music that was happening in the other major cities. The best place to start listening to Warner’s music is a live collection from around 1977 released on CD as Suburbs in the ‘70s.

Perth had two characteristics in the 1970s that no other Australian city had. First, it had no inner city. Unlike other Australian cities, Perth’s population expanded slowly until the 1920s so there was never built here those nineteenth-century terraces and homely pubs that typify other inner cities. In Perth, the area that most closely resembled that kind of inner city area was what was then known as ‘north of the line’. This area, which got renamed as Northbridge in 1981, was where the brothels were, where there were illegal gaming clubs, ethnic restaurants, and where many of the non-English-speaking migrants first settled when they got to Perth. It is also where one of the most important venues for the Perth music scene was—The Governor Broome. ‘North of the line’ was a colourful place but, in the 1970s, it underwent massive urban renewal to become the restaurant and recreation suburb.

Warner’s musical concerns reflect this lack of an inner city. The full name of his band was Dave Warner’s From The Suburbs and Warner’s lyrics reflect a preoccupation with, and ambivalence towards, the suburbs that is not present in the music of the inner city Alternative Rock bands in the other cities. As early as 1974 Warner had written both ‘Campus Days’ and ‘Suburban Boy.’ These songs, like ‘Mug’s Game’, acknowledge the ordinariness of suburban life as compared to the possible excitements, and sophistication, of inner city life. The recognition of the importance of suburbia in the Perth musical experience runs through later groups, including, for example, the Triffids, and can be found most obviously in the work of Kevin Mitchell, the lead singer and composer behind Jebediah—especially in his other musical persona as Bob Evans. In 2003, for example, Evans released the album Suburban Kid.

The other major influence on Perth’s music scene has been the influx of mostly English migrants through the 1960s because of the resources boom during that decade. This meant that, whereas in the other cities the primary influences on the bands of the inner cities were American proto-punk groups like the Velvet Underground, the MC5, Iggy and the Stooges and the New York Dolls, in Perth, English music, most importantly the Troggs and then the power-pop of punk era groups like the Buzzcocks and the Clash, modified the kind of music that the early punk groups produced. On Suburbs in the ‘70s Warner’s band covers both a Troggs track and a Velvet Underground track. It is this Troggs/power-pop influence that you can hear in the first incarnation of Kim Salmon’s group the Scientists—whose name, it is said, came about as an ironic revision of the Troggs (short for ‘troglodytes’) name. And here we should name-check that great Perth drummer who played with the Scientists and then the Hoodoo Gurus, James Baker, who is known for his love of the Troggs’ music. The most well-known Scientists track from this period is ‘Frantic Romantic,’ the Pink Album, which included it, was released in 1981. Another important Perth band from this time was the Manikins who, at one time, included Dave Faulkner who went on to be a founding member of the Hoodoo Gurus, who also show an English power-pop influence .

In Perth the importance of power-pop runs through the next twenty years, it shows up, for example, in the work of the Stems, the Chevelles and, again, in the music of Jebediah. Indeed, Jebediah pay homage to the Troggs on ‘Invaders’ on the group’s first album Slightly Odway, released in 1997 .

So, yes, Perth rock music has a tradition that makes it quite distinct from the music of the other Australian cities and this can be found in the importance of suburbia and in the influence of English power-pop.

Playlist

1 Dave Warner's From the Suburbs 'Suburban Boy' from Suburbs in the '70s

2 Bob Evans 'Ode To My Car from Suburban Kid

3 The Troggs 'I Can't Control Myself' from Hit Single Anthology

4 Buzzcocks 'Orgasm Addict' from Singles Going Steady

5 The Scientists 'Frantic Romantic' from Pissed on Another Planet

6 The Manikins 'Love at Second Sight' from The Manikins

7 The Chevelles 'Every Moment' from Girl God

8 Jebediah 'Invaders' from Slightly Odway

Professor Jon Stratton is from the Department of Communication and Cultural Studies at Curtin University of Technology.

Posted by Sue Grey-Smith

Would a tax on fast food help Australia's obesity problem? Here's Professor Gavin Mooney's opinion - listen to the podcast or read the transcript and add YOUR opinion to the blog!

Opinion@Curtin University Library is a forum for discussion and comment for students, staff and the wider community. The Library encourages everyone to make a comment and read what others say (librarians will add some interesting links for you too).

Scroll to the bottom to add YOUR comment.

Gavin Mooney is Professor of Health Economics at Curtin University of Technology.

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TRANSCRIPT

Obesity: taxing the fat profits of the junk food companies

It has been suggested that there be a tax on junk food. The idea is that this would help to deter people from consuming this obesity-inducing stuff.

I am less than enamoured of this proposal.

As a health economist I accept that obesity is a real public health danger. But I worry about the simplistic thinking involved in this ill thought out idea of raising the price of junk food by taxing it more heavily than healthy food.

In considering any public health policy, where to start, I believe, is to ask: whose behaviour do we want to change? Or more bluntly: who are the real villains here?

Those who argue for taxing the consumers of junk food are indulging in victim blaming. Taxing the consumers is making the victims pay.

That to me is unethical and bad policy. The victims by and large are poor people. Now, from the public health literature on the so called ‘social determinants of health’ what we do know is that the biggest by far, single determinant of ill health is poverty. In fact probably anything up to 80% of the adverse impact on health of the social determinants of ill-health can be laid at the door of poverty. Being powerless or if you like lacking autonomy - which often goes hand in hand with poverty - is also important. People who have control over their own lives are likely to be healthier.

So this idea of taxing junk food to get the poor to eat less-of- it, sounds to me very much like a middle class solution to a largely working class problem. It is elitist. It is also quite possible that it might do more harm than good to the public’s health.

If people who are already poor were to continue to eat higher taxed, more expensive junk food – as some no doubt would - this might drive them into yet greater poverty, with potentially major adverse effects on their health.

This sort of knee jerk public health policy of ‘let’s get the working class to adopt the nice healthy life style of the middle class’ and the patronising and paternalistic ‘let’s tell the poor what is good for them’ – and note this ‘good’ is defined not by poor people but by the ‘do gooding’ middle class – this is a real turn off for poor people. It shows a lack of understanding and respect for the issues that poor families face – and indeed for their values and in turn their intelligence.

Most poor people know that junk food is bad for their health. So instead of academics pontificating from their ivory towers on what is good for the poor, we need to give poor people good information on what options are available which might be tried to wean them off junk food.

One of the options that I think might be presented to the consumers of junk food is that of taxing the advertising budgets – the marketing budgets - of junk food companies - by perhaps as much as 100%!

OK this would have some impact on the price to consumers but the key difference is that this tax is aimed at the perpetrators of the obesity epidemic – the companies who make obese profits off selling junk food. These are the real villains.

Taxing the advertising budgets of junk food companies will lead to a reduction in the marketing of these killer products. It will help to persuade these companies to produce more healthy products.

But I am not saying this is the answer. I do not want to repeat the mistake made by the academics I criticised earlier, of telling people what to do.

What I propose is that we ask the people – ordinary people – the community - what they think the best answer is to the obesity epidemic. This can be done for example with Citizens’ Juries. These consist of a random selection of the public – and the idea that they are randomly selected is crucial. We do not want self-selected middle class ‘usual suspects’ who might volunteer to be involved or who might respond to an ad in the local paper. We do not want self selected or self-styled ‘experts’. These randomly selected citizens would be brought together, and given good information – this is critical - about obesity and its ill health effects. They would be presented by experts with various options to tackle obesity. They would then be asked to judge what they as informed citizens, as representatives of the community, think the best option is.

This avoids the academic elitism present in so much of public health policy. Getting the sufferers to judge what they think is best is likely to lead to more effective public policy. It would also help to empower ordinary people and as indicated previously we know that being empowered is good for our health!

Posted by Sue Grey-Smith