The Politics of Dancing: When Rock ‘n’ Roll Came to Australia

Abstract

Because rhythm has direct access to the unconscious, because it can hypnotize us, enter our bodies and make us move, it is power. And power is political.That is why rhythm is always revolutionary ground. It is always the place where the organic rises to abolish the mechanical and where energy announces the abolition of tradition. New rhythms are new perceptions.'

Culture and Customs

“…Bands like AC/DC, and Cold Chisel served their apprenticeships on Sydney pub stages before finding fame and fortune internationally. 43 The importation of the Sydney version of the Californian surfing subculture in the early 1960s was another development in the creation of a separate youth culture. From Maroubra to Palm Beach, its adherents were distinguished by their blonde bleached hair, their stove-pipe pants, the 'woodies' they drove, and their abandonment of the work ethic in favour of hedonism, for their coastal safaris were undertaken in search of the perfect wave.…”

Commercial gender: Fracturing masculinity in the case of OzRock

“…Spurred on by the massively successful commercial release of the film Rock Around the Clock in Australia, and the subsequent successful tours of early acts such as Bill Haley and his Comets in early 1957, local bands imitative of US styles soon developed. Notable acts included Johnny O'Keefe and the Dee Jays, Col Joye and the Joy Boys, and Alan Dale and the Houserockers who from 1957 were attracting huge crowds in Australia -a condition in part made possible by commercial opportunities in the form of the extension of pub licensing hours from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. in 1954 (Homan 2000(Homan , 2008Sturma 1992). But even from this early stage gendered contradictions were present in Australian rock and roll.…”

“…But even from this early stage gendered contradictions were present in Australian rock and roll. As Sturma (1992) reports, in socially uniform and sexually conservative 1950s Australia, a key part of the attraction (and the perceived threat) of this new music was that it rebelliously 'appealed to the body and emotions' (125) -indeed, it was appealing because it allowed the expression of that which was not allowed by the stoic expectations of the Australian male stereotype of the time. Hence, from its very beginning the music's direct relation to embodied affect and emotionality was present -especially in terms of its opposition to the dominant cultural logic that the free expression of emotions was a threat to rationally organized male-dominated society, and therefore an expression to be repressed.…”

“…The dominant culture thought it much better for such things to remain hidden in a male rational world (Sturma 1992) so as to avoid the potential that this music might actually afford women the experience of an 'initial recovery of their bodies and their desires' (Johnson 1992, 130). For masculinity to be defended, its feminine other needed to remain pure, rather than set free from the rational and controlled space allowed to it within masculine culture.…”

‘Mum Likes Bandstand Too’: Creating the Teenage Audience on Australian Television

“…She writes: 'Taking teen culture into every home to be watched by all age groups, television helped reconcile adults to rock'n'roll but also changed it, mixing it with a heady dose of conservative American domestic values. ' (1997: 222) Michael Sturma (1992) and Lawrence Zion (1988a) both state that, while television broadened the rock audience and softened parental opposition through exposing adults to rock'n'roll, it also played an active role in sanitising the music (Sturma 1992: 135;Zion 1988a: 294). Yet Australian rock'n'roll developed in close collaboration with the production of rock'n'roll programs on television, making a simple division between rock'n'roll and its television counterpart difficult.…”