Through ethnographic research with African-born musicians across Australia, this project examines musical performance as a resource for negotiating ideas about cultural identity, race, and belonging in Australia. One of the fastest growing minority groups in Australia today, people of African descent face high levels of racial discrimination. Furthermore, African cultural difference is frequently represented in scholarly and media accounts as a problem that prevents individuals of African descent from integrating into Australian society. While research has drawn attention to the negative effects of racial discrimination for African Australian communities, cultural strategies for addressing bigotry have not been sufficiently examined. The music of African-born women and men represents an important context for challenging dominant representations of Africans in Australia. In musical performance contexts, African cultural difference is explicitly celebrated as a resource that enables African Australian communities to maintain connections with their home countries while also forging positive futures in Australia. This research foregrounds the way African-born musicians are actively engaged in self-representation and intercultural communication, challenging one dimensional representations of their communities and culture.

This research has received funding from the Freilich Foundation and the ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences.

View Bonnie McConnell's Researcher page.

McConnell, B. 2019. “Afropolitan Projects: Music and the Politics of Belonging in Australia.” Popular Music and Society, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 131-149. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03007766.2017.1413618

McConnell, B. 2022. “The Personal and the Political: African Popular Music and Diasporic Heritage in Australia', in Catherine Hoad, Geo Stahl, Oli Wilson (ed.), Mixing Pop and Politics - Political Dimensions of Popular Music in the 21st Century, New York: Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429284526-4/african-popular-music-race-diasporic-heritage-australia-bonnie-mcconnell