New Zealand and Australian musicology conferences have always accepted a wide variety of papers, most of them ‘free’ papers in an area of choice. But a conference theme collects together an area of interest and provides a conference with a distinctive way of looking at the music field in conference papers, key-note addresses and concerts. The 2003 conference will continue to welcome papers with a wide variety of perspectives, as well as suggesting the following theme:

  Music & Locality: towards a local discourse in music

The theme of locality and place is often a shadowy aspect of musical studies, but whether we look at the singing of medieval monasteries or the playing of a modern symphony orchestra there is always an element of locality; Maori reggae, Italian singers in Australia, Polynesian voyagers’ musics, Choral and Chamber music societies, Brass and Pipe bands, Country and Western, Jazz and popular musics in Australia and New Zealand are all local manifestations of global phenomena. How do we understand the process by which they settle into their local community, the subtle musical mutations which occur, and the realignments of social relationships which give them a renewed significance? In some musical forms the transformations are complete; the music becomes an indigenous form. But in others the combination of global and local characteristics remain - ‘glocal’[1]  Indigenous musics and glocal musics, create the musical places in which we live. In Martin Stokes’s term, we are able to observe ‘The Musical Construction of Place’[2]. To these we must add the distinctive sounds of nature, and the whole acoustic ecology of place, which provides both setting and inspiration for local music.

The challenge of local studies in music is to understand the local mix, to detect the subtle changes in performance practice and the interpretations and significance set upon music by society, to chart the histories of local forms, and to respond to our society’s own connection to music. When we work in musicology in our local town or country we must respond to the connections that make music distinctive. This is the challenge of locality & place: that we should detect the ways in which all musics become embedded in society, the way they are modified, transformed, adopted, and given new local signification - and that we should create a local discourse about music which values this process.

It is envisaged that this theme may develop in several musical fields:

·         Indigenous issues

·         Nature/Landscape/Acoustic Ecology

·         Art Music original locality/dissemination/reception histories

·        Jazz history and development 

·        Music and Migration, Popular Music, Music in Education, Dance and Music studies

Performances and keynote speakers will support these themes in a number of the areas.