Plenary Lecture

The role of music festivals in creating community

Professor Michelle Duffy
The Australian Centre
School of Historical Studies
University of Melbourne,
Australia
E-mail: med@unimelb.edu.au

Abstract: Held in parks, city centres, heritage sites, town halls, local pubs, or along main thoroughfares and streets closed specially for the occasion, festivals are a significant part of a community’s annual calendar. The social and cultural values of festivals are recognised by UNESCO, which has identified these expressions of as part of humanity’s intangible heritage. Maintaining such cultural practices is encouraged because it may help protect threatened cultural or ethnic groups, or be a means to give voice to those who have been in some ways muted or silenced. Although increasingly they have become a popular tool for initiating economic renewal—this is notable in cultural tourism literature and research, and are tactics readily taken up in local government policies and organisational strategies—these events are about adding value to our everyday lives. Festivals encourage community participation, enhance local creativity and foster community well being.
One musician I interviewed in the course of my research pointed out that being part of a festival changes the nature of the place of our daily lives. This comment has always struck me, this connection between the festival and place, and in particular, the role of music in such a transformative relationship.
Music elicits emotions. The emotions experienced through music are done so precisely because they cannot be expressed by any other medium, and this is one of music’s strengths. The music performances of festivals can draw us in and arouse emotions in us that encourage opening up to others. We clap, sway, perhaps sing along, smile, talk, and get caught up in the moment. Or we may even feel quite alienated, rejecting the sorts of performances we come across, grimacing, covering our ears and hurrying past.
Drawing on festival case studies from Australia, this paper contributes to the literature on festivals and cultural tourism, through a focus on the possibilities offered by music as a medium for sociality, on music’s emotional effects as a means to explore how a community arises in the very acts of people engaging with the music of the festival. 


Brief Biography of the Speaker:

Michelle Duffy was educated at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (BAppSci) and the University of Melbourne (PhD, BA Honours, BMus Honours). She is a cultural geographer, with specific research interests in the ways non-representational processes such as performance, music, dance and sound can be used to articulate and understand notions of place, identity, belonging, community cohesion, alienation and social well-being. These interests have led to research exploring public space, events, emotion and affect, and performative aspects of identity formation.
Michelle is currently working on a number of funded projects that examine the role of the festival in urban, rural and remote communities. These projects seek to understand and define the processes of creating communal identity and social cohesion, with a particular focus on the ways music and sound are significant to the experience of the festival.
Michelle teaches Australian Studies subjects and co-ordinates a number of international programs, which reflect her research interests in various aspects of Australian studies including Australian Indigenous cultures and people, Australian performance practices, cultural diversity in contemporary Australia, rural and public culture, as well as broader issues in cultural geography.