'…that keen interest we have for the strange and the rare…'

The Radio Broadcasts of Adelaide Composer Hooper Brewster-Jones (1930–1933)

Authors

  • Kate Bowan The Australian National University

Keywords:

Hooper Brewster-Jones, Adelaide, broadcasting, exoticism

Abstract

The surviving transcripts of Adelaide composer Hooper Brewster-Jones’s
lecture broadcasts given in the early 1930s on Adelaide’s recently
established ABC radio station 5CL reveal a cosmopolitan Australian
composer eager to engage with other cultures. His cosmopolitanism is
very much a rooted even provincial one, clearly embedded in his
particular historical and cultural context. Nonetheless, the story of
Brewster-Jones’s broadcasts helps to destabilise and complicate the
picture of early twentieth-century Australian musical history. His
encounters with musics modern, ancient and exotic add a missing page
to Australian broadcasting history and challenge the received
orthodoxy of Australian music from this period as a pale imitation of
English pastoralism.

Author Biography

Kate Bowan , The Australian National University

Kate Bowan completed her PhD on early twentieth-century Australian music in 2008 at the Research School of Humanities, ANU where she is now an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow.

Downloads

Published

2022-01-02

How to Cite

Bowan , K. (2022). ’…that keen interest we have for the strange and the rare…’: The Radio Broadcasts of Adelaide Composer Hooper Brewster-Jones (1930–1933). Journal of Music Research Online, 1. Retrieved from https://www2.jmro.org.au/index.php/main/article/view/6

Issue

Section

Articles