Interview with Peter Dunbar-Hall
Meredith Connie

This article was published in Articulation Volume 1, no.2: November 1998, and is the second of Meredith Connie's series on "Active Figures in Music Research in Sydney".

Other 'Active Figures': Tony Mitchell from Vol. 1 no. 1: July 1998

Fighting off the construction noise that plagues the central Sydney area, I interviewed Peter Dunbar-Hall over a strong cup of coffee at approximately 8.30am (rather early for me).

Peter Dunbar-Hall has published, and continues to research, in a variety of areas in music. As Chair of Music Education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, one of his primary concerns is, of course, music education. Other concerns include popular music, Aboriginal music, obscure Italian composers, and his most recent project, commercial Australian radio in the 1940s. His work crosses the disciplines of music education, musicology and ethnomusicology, as well as collaborative efforts with academics from related fields, such as cultural geography, and any combination of the above.

Right from the start of his publishing career, which began about fifteen years ago as an adjunct to being a high school teacher, Dunbar-Hall pushed issues that he thought were of vital importance. In the various textbooks published for teaching popular music in schools, he and his colleagues 'always made sure there was a gender balance' (as role models are very important), a good portion of Australian artists, 'and we always made sure we had indigenous things, and we always made sure we had really different things.' They tried to integrate their concerns right across the field, in a non- tokenistic fashion. It made the books unusual at the time. 'Now, of course, you expect that ... [The textbooks] were written at a particular time to answer particular problems at a particular time. Now people need different textbooks because there are different expectations and different ways of doing things.' Dunbar-Hall emphasises the need for variety and consistently new approaches in research and resource materials.

He introduced a popular music elective in the music education course upon his arrival at the Conservatorium. He describes it as focusing on ways of using creativity to teach, and describes its instigation as 'a real fight.' 'When I tried to introduce it as one of the music education courses I was told it wasn't important and students didn't want to do that kind of thing. It's interesting, because it was an elective and all the students wanted to do it, so it seemed pretty logical [to run it].'

Dunbar-Hall gleefully describes himself as a leftie 'left over from the sixties,' and readily admits that he pushes agendas. Out of the varied topics he researches, although they are all important, he considers his work on Aboriginal music as the most important. 'The Aboriginal thing is very important, but that's a political thing, that's not only a musical thing on my part.' He elaborated, saying 'I think it's because Australia ought to know more about Aborigines and I think academics have a role to support that. When I was writing my PhD these people gave me a lot of information, a lot of help, and now it's my job to use my position as an academic with access to publication to get that out to the public that wouldn't normally see it. And that's why I also do a lot of work that isn't refereed, that [goes into] journals and 'magaziny'-type stuff, or radio-type programmes or TV work, because that means the general public will get access to it.'

There is a danger, according to Dunbar-Hall, of forgetting the purpose of research, and one of the main culprits is that publishing has taken on an enormous importance. 'I think there's a real problem at the moment in Australia with the politicisation of research as an economic commodity in the world of academia.' He explained that 'everybody does research and everybody gets published, but you have to tick the boxes for the federal government so that your institution gets funding. It's easy to lose sight of why you do the research. I try to do research because I think it's important for the area of music, whether it's music education or musicology or ethnomusicology. This centralised checking-up of people ... it's a very strange way to run a country, I think.'

There is one way to counteract this rather serious turn of events, though: 'I'm always intrigued about attitudes to research everybody holds it up as the great be-all and end-all of academic life, and yes, it's very important, but everybody seems to forget that it's also meant to be fun.'