Deadly Sounds, Deadly Places: Contemporary Aboriginal Music in Australia

This book was written with a number of aims. As a study of music created by contemporary Aboriginal musicians, it responds to a need in Australian cultural history to document an often neglected aspect of Australian music. Although some discussion of contemporary forms of music by Aboriginal performers appears in edited collections of work on either Aboriginal music or popular music in general (Pearce, 1979; Garofalo, 1992; Hayward, 1992; Breen, 1994; T Mitchell, 1996), currently there are only two texts specifically on this topic. At the time of the 1988 commemorations of white invasion of Australia, Breen edited a book on popular music by Aborigines (Breen, 1989). Just over a decade later, Walker (2000) released his biographical work on Aboriginal country musicians. Between these two publications, Neuenfeldt (1997) edited The Didjeridu: From Arnhem Land to Internet, dedicated to one instrument. These texts have been supplemented sporadically by publication in academic journals of research into various aspects of contemporary music by Aboriginal artists. Full-scale publication on this topic remains rare; an absence of comprehensive analysis of the sites and texts of contemporary Aboriginal music was an impetus for the production of this book.