Music City Melbourne
How did Melbourne earn its place as one of the world’s ‘music cities’? Beginning with the arrival of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s, this book explores the development of different sectors of Melbourne’s popular music ecosystem in parallel with broader population, urban planning and media industry changes in the city.
The authors draw on interviews with Melbourne musicians, venue owners and policy-makers, documenting their ambitions and experiences across different periods, with accompanying spotlights on the gendered, multicultural and indigenous contexts of playing and recording in Melbourne. Focusing on pop and rock, this is the first book to provide an extensive historical lens of popular music within an urban cultural economy that in turn investigates the contemporary nature and challenges of urban music activities and policy.
Shane Homan is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Monash University, Australia. He is the editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy (2022).
Seamus O’Hanlon is Associate Professor of History at Monash University, Australia. He has published five books, including City Life: The New Urban Australia (2018).
Catherine Strong is Associate Professor in the Music Industry program at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. Among her publications are Towards Gender Equality in the Music Industry: Education, Practice and Strategies for Change (co-editor, Bloomsbury 2019) and Death and the Rock Star (co-editor, 2015).
John Tebbutt is Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia.