Conference Agenda

In this paper, I argue that the appropriation and misrepresentation of Aboriginal peoples, both musically and dramatically, was a defining feature in attempts to create explicitly Australian-themed musico-dramatic works from the 1930s onwards. This appropriation was partly intended to separate Australian music from pervasive British pastoralism, paralleling a broader shift away from British dependence, particularly from 1945 onwards. Despite significant changes in political discourse, from assimilation to increased recognition from the 1960s, the musical representation of Aboriginal peoples remains largely unchanged, revealing a continued cultural colonization. The resultant musical stereotype is typified by drones, pounding non-isochronous rhythms and modality. Drawing on settler-colonial theory, particularly the work of Patrick Wolfe and Nicholas Thomas, I examine how these representations persist across changing ideological contexts.

Jindyworobakism, an artistic movement that sought to create a distinctive national style in the 1930s, was the first to incorporate significant Aboriginal influences. This included Clive Douglas’s “reconstruct[ed]… Aboriginal melodies” in his operatic “bush legend,” Kaditcha (1938) (Wood 1979). David Symons has shown that this movement had an underlying assimilationism, mirroring government policy. A closely related work is John Antill’s influential ballet Corroboree (1946). Rachel Campbell (2022) analyzes the ballet through what she terms “settler primitivism,” emphasizing perceived “primitivist” tropes from the settler’s perspective, and drawing a connection with Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913).

Margaret Sutherland’s chamber opera The Young Kabbarli (1964) provides a revealing case study within this historiography. While the work can be read as progressive in some respects, it nevertheless employs a similar idiom to Corroboree in its representation of Aboriginal peoples. Musical pastoralism is reserved for the Irish Protestant protagonist, alongside a liturgical idiom for the antagonistic Catholic missionaries, creating three distinct soundworlds and an overall musical eclecticism. This configuration reflects Sutherland’s genuine, albeit paternalistic, concern for the mistreatment of Aboriginal peoples (Graham 2023), and parallels the gradual shift toward Aboriginal recognition and multiculturalism by the 1970s in Australian society. Despite the changing political intentions, these works contain a remarkably stable musical depiction of Aboriginal peoples, revealing the extent to which settler-colonial frameworks continued to shape and even define twentieth-century Australian opera.