Making music: discourses of cultural negotiation in New Zealand

Abstract

This study investigates a number of controversies in New Zealand musical life. These controversies span a period of ninety-two years, from 1908 to 2000. The utterances produced during the course of these controversies have been analysed using some recent approaches to discourse current in ethnomusicology and other branches of the humanities and social sciences. The debates have been analysed in their discursive and historical contexts with the purpose of gaining insights into the meanings of these controversies for their participants. It is argued that controversies over musical issues play a key role in creating musical culture. Through analysis of the discourse of the controversies, a picture emerges of processes of cultural negotiation whereby participants create, articulate, and defend the meanings of their musical worlds. The controversies reveal both changes in the patterns of musical culture in New Zealand, and a constant process of negotiation helping bring about those changes. While the occurrence of disputes over music-making indicates that, for contributors to debates, there are problems in their musical worlds that must be addressed, it is evidence too of the importance they attach to those musical worlds.