Mutiny Music
A Sonic Passage Between Islands
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v16i1-2.25727Keywords:
jazz, Islands and Archipelagoes, Voice SamplingAbstract
Mutiny Music is a twelve-part jazz suite composed by Rick Robertson in 2006 and performed by his band Baecastuff, a Sydney-based contemporary jazz ensemble. The work retells the mythic story at the foundations of two Pacific island communities, Pitcairn and Norfolk. This article will locate Mutiny Music within the shared discourses of the island and the archipelago. The discussion will open a number of lines historical and conceptual inquiry into the narrative operation of the work and its use of various musical forms. Of particular concern is the use of speech sampling and how such a practice inscribes the complex spatiotemporality of the island and archipelago while mapping the relation between Pitcairn and Norfolk in sound.
References
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Gillis, John. 2004. Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Glissant, Edouard. 1997. The Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Haynes, Roslynn. 1998. Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Hayward, Philip, and Daniel Long. 2013. ‘Language, Music and Cultural Consolidation on Minami Daito’. Perfect Beat 14/1: 7–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v14i1.7
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Lomanno, Mark. 2013. ‘Emergence and the Insula Improvisa: St. Brendan’s Island and Afro/Canarian (Jazz) Fusion Music’. Shima: The International Journal of Research in Island Cultures 7/2: 92–108.
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Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2002. ‘Changing Names for a Changing Landscape: The Case of Norfolk Island’. English World-Wide 23/1: 59–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.23.1.04muh
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—2011. ‘Some Notes on the Ontology of Norf’k’. Language Sciences 33: 673–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2011.04.022
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Prieto, Eric. 2002. ‘Caves: Technology and the Total Artwork in Reich’s The Cave and Beckett’s Ghost Trio’. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 35/1: 197–214.
Wingfield, Paul. 1992. ‘Janacek’s Speech Melody Theory in Concept and Practice’. Cambridge Opera Journal 4/3: 281–301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0954586700003803
Amoamo, Maria. 2013. ‘(De)Constructing Place-Myth: Pitcairn Island and the “Bounty” Story’. Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment 15/1: 107–24.
Baecastuff. Online: http://www.mutinymusic.org (accessed 6 February 2012).
Baldacchino, Godfrey, ed. 2005. ‘Editorial: Islands—Objects of Representation’. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 87/4: 247–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2005.00196.x
Beng, Tan Sooi. 2002. ‘Negotiating Identities: Reconstructing the “Local” in Malaysia through “World Beat”’. Perfect Beat 5/4: 3–20.
Brathwaite, Edward Kamau. 1999. ConVERSations with Nathaniel Mackey. New York: We Press.
Buffett, Alice. 1999. Speak Norfolk Today. Nofolk Island: Himii Publishing Company.
Christiansen, Paul. 2004. ‘The Meaning of Speech Melody for Leos Janacek’. Journal of Musicological Research 23: 241–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411890490884454
Connell, John. 2003. ‘Island Dreaming: The Contemplation of Polynesian Paradise’. Journal of Historical Geography 29/4: 554–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhge.2002.0461
Connor, Steven. 2000. Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184331.001.0001
Deleuze, Gilles. 2002. Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953–1974, trans. Michael Taormina. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth. 2007. Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Dening, Greg. 1992. Mr. Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gillis, John. 2004. Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Glissant, Edouard. 1997. The Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Haynes, Roslynn. 1998. Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hayward, Philip. 2006. Bounty Chords: Music, Dance and Cultural Heritage on Norfolk and Pitcairn Islands. London: John Libbey Publishing.
Hayward, Philip, and Daniel Long. 2013. ‘Language, Music and Cultural Consolidation on Minami Daito’. Perfect Beat 14/1: 7–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v14i1.7
Johnson, Henry. 2008. ‘Localising Jersey through Song: Jèrriais, Heritage and Island Identity in a Festival Context’. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 2/1: 73–98.
—2010. ‘Brushing up on Mutineers: Music with Art at Fletcher’s Mutiny Cyclorama, Norfolk Island’. Music in Art 35/1-2: 119–32.
Kun, Josh. 2005. Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Lane, Cathy. 2011. ‘Listening for the Past: A Composer’s Ear-lead Approach to Exploring Island Culture Past and Present in the Outer Hebrides’. Shima: The International Journal of Research in Island Cultures 5/1: 114–27.
Lomanno, Mark. 2013. ‘Emergence and the Insula Improvisa: St. Brendan’s Island and Afro/Canarian (Jazz) Fusion Music’. Shima: The International Journal of Research in Island Cultures 7/2: 92–108.
McMahon, Elizabeth. 2005. ‘Encapsulated Space: The Paradise Prison of Australia’s Island Imaginary’. Southerly 65/1: 20–30.
—2010. ‘Australia, the Island Continent: How Contradictory Geography Shapes the National Imaginary’. Space and Culture 13/2: 178–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1206331209358224
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A Landes. New York: Routledge.
Mitchell, Tony. 2009. ‘Sonic Pyschogeography: A Poetics of Place in Popular Music in Aotearoa/New Zealand’. Perfect Beat 10/2: 145–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v10i2.145
Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2002. ‘Changing Names for a Changing Landscape: The Case of Norfolk Island’. English World-Wide 23/1: 59–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.23.1.04muh
—2007. ‘The Pitkern-Norf’k Language and Education’. English World-Wide 28/3: 215–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.28.3.02muh
—2011. ‘Some Notes on the Ontology of Norf’k’. Language Sciences 33: 673–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2011.04.022
Nils, Daniel, and Godfrey Baldacchino. 2011. ‘Introduction: On Island Futures’. In Island Futures: Conservation and Development across the Asia-Pacific Region, ed. Godfrey Baldacchino and Daniel Nils, 1–8. Toyko: Springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-53989-6_1
Prieto, Eric. 2002. ‘Caves: Technology and the Total Artwork in Reich’s The Cave and Beckett’s Ghost Trio’. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 35/1: 197–214.
Wingfield, Paul. 1992. ‘Janacek’s Speech Melody Theory in Concept and Practice’. Cambridge Opera Journal 4/3: 281–301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0954586700003803
Published
2015-12-17
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Cummins, J. (2015). Mutiny Music: A Sonic Passage Between Islands. Perfect Beat, 16(1-2), 9-28. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v16i1-2.25727
