Untangling The Web #3: Famous Australians

And just how racist is musical notation?

Christmas Sale: Paid yearly subscriptions are at their lowest possible price until Twelfth Night (6 January 2024.) If you want to support my writing, taking out a paid subscription is the best way to do so.

I was glad that my article on Patrick White found the right audience, though much of the discussion around it was focused on how and why various Aussies become popular rather than on White’s work itself. Australia’s best writers are almost all unread by the broader public. I’m not quite sure why. The relationship between Australian artists and their audiences is an interesting one to explore, but I’ll do so here only with some trepidation: dozens of Australian cultural commentators have spent their careers gazing at their own navels and not even found an interesting piece of lint.

Australia doesn’t lack a cultural life. Far from it: grants are awarded, prizes given, exhibitions opened – as Sir Les Patterson would say, we’ve got the arts coming out of our arseholes.

Yet, it remains unclear whether we’ve become more appreciative of local talent. Ideally, the internet would highlight gifted people wherever they are, so that if the next Joan Sutherland were growing up in Alice Springs, the world would find out about her. The opposite seems to have happened: the huge tech companies and major distributors have strengthened their hold, and Australians remain deferential to the tastes of the Americans and English. According to Spotify Wrapped data, last year in Australia the musicians, albums, podcasts, and audiobooks with the most streams were almost all from the US or the UK. There’s the feeling that nothing good happens here, that Australia is the Tasmania of the world.