Last week, I was able to attend the 46th Musicological Society of Australia (MSA) conference in Adelaide. This is one of Australia’s two largest music conferences, the other being the Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). This is, then, the place to be to see what current topics are being researched in Australian music studies.

What is musicology?

So the first thing to note is that Australia is quite different to the rest of the world in how we define musicology. In America, for example, they have a society for musicology, a society for ethnomusicology, and a society for music theory. Under this model, musicology is mainly historical research (music in historical context etc.), ethnomusicology is the study of music within culture (broadly defined), and music theory is the analysis of music. No doubt these broad definitions will upset someone, but on the broad scale that is definitely how I would characterise them.

In Australia, on the other hand, we lump all of these disciplines into musicology, and then we add creative practice (e.g. the use of performance or composition as a research method) and some other goodies for good measure. This has always been a touchy subject, because some people are hardcore musicologists, although more and more in the Australian context I see the society ‘opening up’ to consider broader sub-disciplines.

If anyone should know that, I should. After all, I gave a talk on cooking as a music research method. I was not expecting it to be well-received, but I was pleasantly surprised with the support it got from most people who attended my talk. In fact, I expected far more negativity than I got! This demonstrates how open-minded most of the people there were.

What are music researchers curious about?

Obviously, there is far too much at this conference to cover in one blog post. Personally, I was really happy to see more creative practice talks than last year, as this is one of my main research areas (I am in an intersection between creative practice and ethnomusicology). I think a problem with conferences is that they are necessarily a bit “behind the ball” in terms of current trends, as people are sharing research which has been conducted over many years. For example, there weren’t many AI talks this year – but I can definitely see that becoming a major focal point of research (in many disciplines) in the coming years.

AI did feature briefly in one of the keynotes by Linda Barwick. It was not a major point, but it was an example of how AI is used, who creates the models, and what this may mean for music research. Of course, I also think there is a consideration that AI is currently being hyped-up as the next big money-maker, so there should be lots of research funding available for that topic in coming years. As artists and humans, Barwick argued it is up to us to help develop the ethics of AI, encouraging us to work with the people who develop these systems.

Another key theme, also explored in the keynotes, was on race, music, and ethics. Sadly, I missed the first keynote due to an ordeal of cancelled flights trying to get to Adelaide, but apparently Gavin Lee discussed the importance of doing things such as presenting and translating in languages other than English. This really struck a chord with me, as I research Indonesian music and have been learning the language in-depth this year, and it is really hard to translate some concepts without using the original word. It is great to see this practice being encouraged. In recent years, all musicology disciplines have been grappling with issues like these, and some progress is being made in improving resources and courses to improve and de-centre them from the older perspectives.

What’s next for my research?

I presented on a side-project this year, and next year I hope to have something a bit more solid to present at the conference from my main PhD project. That’s not to say I’ve given up on cooking – not at all! I received lots of feedback and things to think about with that project, and I am very keen to revisit it.

The conference really demonstrated the importance of widely reading. In America, PhD students do two years of coursework on all sorts of topics which are unrelated to their core question, which aims to help them find serendipitous moments of linking one topic with another. We do that to some extent at ANU, but the great thing about conferences is that you almost get this little dose of widely reading by just seeing what other people are presenting and thinking about connections to your own research.

I don’t expect to get much done for the rest of the year, I have a few trips planned and the Christmas period will be busy. I have a draft journal article I’d like to finish by the end of the year, and otherwise I will keep up my reading for the PhD literature review.

What topics above resonated with you? And what conference trends have you seen in recent years? Let me know in the comments below.