Spirituality, music, and wellbeing : sharing insights from an Australian setting

The relationship between spirituality, music, health, and wellbeing is gaining much theoretical and research attention globally. These related concepts are complex and involve many facets and challenges. This paper explores the relationship between music and spirituality as a way to communicate actively with God, which interconnects with wellbeing and quality of life. The focus of this paper discusses one case study from my wider research project “Spirituality and Wellbeing: Music in the Community” that started in 2013, in Melbourne (Australia). Having gained ethical clearance, case study methodology (interviews, documents, and observation) was employed. For this paper, I only offer a discussion of semi-structured interviews with volunteer participants from an Anglican Church in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne (Australia). Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), I analyzed and codified the interview data to explore the lived experience of the participant’s perception and how they make sense of it. As IPA is phenomenological, it takes into the account my own ideas through a process of interpretation when analyzing the phenomena under study. The interview data are reported under two overarching themes: music and spirituality and music and wellbeing. The data provides insights into the various ways music contributes to participants’ spiritual journey and growth. I argue that music is a powerful vehicle that connects people with God and others as it fosters an enhanced sense of spiritual growth and self-wellbeing.

Preservice music students explore African music in an Australian tertiary context

Insight into local structure and molecular dynamics in organic solid-state ionic conductors

Elucidating the rate and geometry of molecular dynamics is particularly important for unravelling ion-conduction mechanisms in electrochemical materials. The local molecular motions in the plastic crystal 1-ethyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium tetrafluoroborate ([C2 mpyr][BF4 ]) are studied by a combination of quantum chemical calculations and advanced solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. For the first time, a restricted puckering motion with a small fluctuation angle of 25° in the pyrrolidinium ring has been observed, even in the low-temperature phase (-45 °C). This local molecular motion is deemed to be particularly important for the material to maintain its plasticity, and hence, its ion mobility at low temperatures.

Turning Gigabytes into Gigs: “Songification” and Live Music Data

Complex data is challenging to understand when it is represented as written communication even when it is structured in a table. How- ever, choosing to represent data in creative ways can aid our under- standing of complex ideas and patterns. In this regard, the creative industries have a great deal to offer data-intensive scholarly disci- plines. Music, for example, is not often used to interpret data, yet the rhythmic nature of music lends itself to the representation and anal- ysis of temporal data.Taking the music industry as a case study, this paper explores how data about historical live music gigs can be analysed, extend- ed and re-presented to create new insights. Using a unique process called ‘songification’ we demonstrate how enhanced auditory data design can provide a medium for aural intuition. The case study also illustrates the benefits of an expanded and inclusive view of research; in which computation and communication, method and media, in combination enable us to explore the larger question of how we can employ technologies to produce, represent, analyse, deliver and exchange knowledge.

The maintenance of Central Thai cultural identity through hybrid music genres

Thailand has experienced rapid industrialisation, modernisation and cultural changesince the mid-nineteenth century. Many Western cultural forms have been adopted intoThai life, including Western popular music. An external view of these processes andtheir results might suggest that Thailand has become quite ‘Western’. However, closeranalysis reveals that elements of foreign cultures have long been adopted and adaptedinto Thai culture, and used as social capital to build an image of modernity andcosmopolitan sophistication.One of the adaptations made has been the fusion of Western genres with Thaiones, to form new hybrid styles of music. One hybrid genre that has developed largelyover the past half century is Dontri Thai Prayuk (‘modernised Thai music’), whichfuses aspects of Western pop with elements of Central Thai classical music. As thispaper demonstrates, clear patterns emerge in the way Thai musicians have maintainedmarkers of Thai identity and fused them with Western elements that signifymodernisation.Motivations behind this deliberate fusion of Thai and Western elements areexplained by the theories of ‘musical accommodation’ and ‘acts of identity’ – thatmusicians will converge with or diverge from other music-cultures in order to gainapproval or assert a separate identity, in ways that deliberately change the underlyingrules of the source musics to form a new identity. Analysis of Dontri Thai Prayukfusion music shows that it has changed the underlying rules of Thai classical andWestern popular music to display a music-cultural identity that is Thai, yet modern.

Community music-making in regional Australia: creating, improvising and performing at a festival

Community arts in Australia, as in many other countries, continue to permeate society, illuminating the past and shaping the future. This article situates itself as an aspect of community music through creative music-making within a larger research project that started at Deakin University (DU) (Melbourne, Australia) in 2011 called ‘Flows and Catchments’. Through the lens of creative arts and music-making, I argue that community partnerships between local communities and tertiary institutions are a fertile ground to celebrate arts practice where the cultural and artistic life of the community is promoted, fostering respect and understanding between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. In 2012, I presented a music workshop at the 8th Annual Lake Bolac Eel Festival (LBEF) in Western Victoria. Using the African term Masakhane, which means ‘let us build together’, I provide a snapshot of my experience through journaling and anecdotal feedback as I reflect in and on the teaching and learning episode of the volcanic composition. The community partnership between DU (academics in an urban space) and the LBEF (local community in a regional place) provided an opportunity for people of all ages to engage, explore and experience music-making collectively in a social context. As a tertiary music educator, I propose more pathways being established with regional communities in order to deepen the knowledge and understanding of them; schools, communities, artists, academics and tertiary students can form cultural synergies in place-based settings like those of festivals.