From the City to the Bush: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Australia’s Urban and Rural Music Scenes

Abstract

This chapter seeks to provide insights into the similarities and differences between Australian urban and rural music scenes. Drawing on autoethnography as a research method, the author, a music practitioner-researcher, reflects on 20 years of personal involvement in music scenes in regional New South Wales after participating for an equivalent period in, and then relocating from, the Sydney music scene. Through a process of self-reflection, and professional interaction with and observation of similarly relocated colleagues, the author identifies three questions that underpin the study and its significance to the urban/rural juxtaposition: What is it to be a gigging musician based in a non-metropolitan city or town? How does one’s self-perception of validity morph or develop after moving scenes? What are the career and status implications of the shift: is it opting out of the (major city) scene, transferring, or in fact extending, to another? In addressing these three questions, the chapter explores and discusses emergent themes of resources, definitions of and between professional and amateur musicians, the performer/educator nexus, community ownership and valuing of music and musicians, musician-performer attitudes to local scenes, meaning-making of ex-major city relocation, connectedness and contextual relevance to the broader music community, and sense of place in a smaller musical ecology. From an invested personal viewpoint as a regionally based performer, presenter and collaborator, the author suggests a way forward for further study of the phenomenon of practising professional musicians relocating from the city to the bush.