Lullaby Land

Abstract

Lullaby Land is a research project that is grounded in story-telling and music-making by and with migrant musicians from various parts of the world currently living in Australia. Literature in the fields of applied ethnomusicology and culture studies evidences that a combination of song, story, and self-supported sensorial expressions of culture contributes to the social and artistic identities of the participants. Drawing on this established premise, Lullaby Land demonstrates the creative development, curation, and performative delivery of an intercultural repertoire of stories and musics that stem from sentiments of land, displacement, collaboration, and belonging. It answers to the research question: "How can a sentiment of togetherness in a foreign land be conveyed through stories and music?" and "How can the identities of migrant musicians be constructed and strengthened through culturally responsive performance?" The project's innovation lies in its approach that grows from lived experiences of culture into the realm of musicking, rendering the music and sentiment contextualised and authentic. The confluence of musics from diverse artists in Brisbane was conceptualised and staged at the Mosaic Festival (Multicultural Australia) and demonstrated an epistemic bias towards cultural knowledges of those communities that lie at the margins of our society. The knowledge produced in-situ through performance and prior, as original compositions, was realised through a unique combination of native languages, melodic structures, and instruments. The project and performance both received an excellent level of audience response and the artistic director, Dr Mani and the team were interviewed by ABC on how music contributes to the wellbeing of migrant diasporas and their quest for belonging in their new home in Australia. The Mosaic Festival is one of the largest multicultural festivals in Queensland. This edition of Lullaby Land was a special commission by the Festival.