The Brisbane Declaration: a blueprint for the musical world
The vulnerability of local music traditions in an increasingly globalised world is a major challenge for 21st century musicians.
13 Aug 2014
Catherine Grant
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Performing Arts
Are Psy and artists like him the future of music?
Earlier this year the number of views of South Korean mega-star Psy’s Gangnam Style YouTube video exceeded two billion. That’s more than a quarter of the people on the planet who have watched the video. It also adds up to a collective 16,000 years spent watching (assuming everyone sat out the four-and-a-bit minutes, which is a big assumption).
Catherine Grant is author of Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help, published by Oxford University Press in June 2014. The book investigates ways to help communities keep their music strong in the face of pressures from the changing global and local environment, by examining precedent from language maintenance.
Currently the Joy Ingall Postdoctoral Researcher in Music at University of Newcastle, Catherine has engaged in various ways with communities whose cultural expressions are under threat: the Indigenous Miriwoong people of the remote Australian East Kimberley, teachers and masters of traditional Khmer music in Cambodia, and the urban ca trù community of Hanoi, Vietnam, among others.
