This paper explores the notion of indigenous cultural identity in Australia and New Zealand by examining how indigenous culture is represented in popular music, specifically, through 'known' signifiers of indigenous culture. This paper argues that these signifiers are limited to specific instrumentation, musical characteristics such as rhythm and melody, and indigenous language. These findings are reached through an examination of the extant literature on indigenous popular music in Australia and New Zealand, and by applying the same methods these studies employ to a comparison of indigenous popular music from these countries. Music from the groups Yothu Yindi (from Australia), and Moana and the Moahunters (from New Zealand) is analysed, demonstrating how signifiers of indigenous culture are perceived to have roots in traditional culture. This paper concludes by presenting an Australasian framework through which signifiers of indigenous identity have been identified and discussed in academic literature, and argues that the limitations of semiotic analysis has restricted the exploration of popular music's capacity to express indigenous identity.
This article explores how indigenous socialities underpin the production of popular music in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) capital Port Moresby, which is a major centre for popular music production in Melanesia. The primary focus concerns home-based studios that were in operation between 2007 and 2011, which produced the distinctive PNG style of popular music known as lokal musik. Their operative structures reflect a Melanesian kinship-based socio-cultural framework-called the wantok system-that connects individuals through networks of obligation, exchange and reciprocity. These affiliations are conceptually grounded in the notion of ples, which is an indigenous concept pertaining to one's identity and 'place' of origin. This article outlines how ples underpins the production of lokal music at every stage. It also shows ples to be fundamental in the local categorisations of musical styles, which share characteristics with introduced electronically produced pop, but are interpreted through musical, lyrical and instrumental variants that pertain to specific places. These places are usually linguistically and culturally distinctive, and are almost always rural. From a theoretical standpoint, this paper considers popular music within an indigenous epistemological framework and seeks to provide a new production-focused perspective on the local cultural significance of popular music in PNG.
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