Lines of drift: festival participation and performing a sense of place

Abstract

It's funny how the difference in each nation organised a different rhythm almost. The beat, the beat is different, it's much faster here than in the States. Mainly in bush music it's like that, if you call it bush music. You know this, this lagerphone? Well this lagerphone beat is usually much faster than you would hear in America, that's the way we felt it when we first arrived. Now it's fine, it fits, you know! But for some reason, it didn't quite [fit], it was just a bit too fast for what I was used to from the States. (Glasco 1998)

Frederique Glasco, a participant at the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival held in Mt Isa, Queensland, talks here about the unsettled experience she had upon hearing what she described as an ‘Australian rhythm’: it felt different, it was too fast, it did not ‘fit’ to her own sense of rhythm. Yet, her initial perception changed after living for a time in Australia and this new rhythmic pulse did feel appropriate to her in her new surroundings. Two questions arise from this: first, how does a musical coding of space help create a sense of place? Second, how does engagement with this aural symbol create an identity through connections to place? In this paper I am interested in examining this relationship between music and place by focusing on participation in the community music festival, specifically participation in the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival, which was held in northern Queensland.