Music and World-Building in the Colonial City

Rezensionen / Stimmen

In this meticulously researched local study Helen English demonstrates the critically important role that popular music played in determining a sense of community and identity amongst working class immigrants in Victorian Australia. This is an exemplary case study of the complicated processes of cultural transmission in shaping a colonial Australian mentalite.

Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse FAHA FASSA
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry,
University of Sydney, NSW Australia

Helen English presents a ground-breaking study of the musical activities of migrant miners in nineteenth-century Australia, showing how vitally important music was to the making of new communities, their social values and colonial identity. In this absorbing, historically informed and persuasively theorized study of Newcastle and outlying townships, the author constantly surprises the reader with examples of how people were able to recreate musical practices from Eisteddfodau and brass band concerts to blackface minstrel shows, despite their lack of infrastructure and resources.

Derek B. Scott
Professor of Critical Musicology
University of Leeds In this meticulously researched local study Helen English demonstrates the critically important role that popular music played in determining a sense of community and identity amongst working class immigrants in Victorian Australia. This is an exemplary case study of the complicated processes of cultural transmission in shaping a colonial Australian mentalite.

Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse FAHA FASSA
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry,
University of Sydney, NSW Australia

Helen English presents a ground-breaking study of the musical activities of migrant miners in nineteenth-century Australia, showing how vitally important music was to the making of new communities, their social values and colonial identity. In this absorbing, historically informed and persuasively theorized study of Newcastle and outlying townships, the author constantly surprises the reader with examples of how people were able to recreate musical practices from Eisteddfodau and brass band concerts to blackface minstrel shows, despite their lack of infrastructure and resources.

Derek B. Scott
Professor of Critical Musicology
University of Leeds