ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an historical perspective on the context from which the Austral shift emerged. In the context of investigating the characteristics of Australian jazz, Roger Dean explains that a ‘“national” jazz characteristic would be one unique to a country, and which projects a national identity. It can be understood from Paul Grabowsky’s reflections that he was grappling with issues surrounding Australian cultural identity at a time when Australia was experiencing a shift towards becoming more multi-ethnic. The concept of Austral jazz breaks with existing explorations of Australian jazz that see ‘the consequences of distance’, the ‘tyranny of distance’, or the ‘filter of distance’ as the key ‘shaping forces in musical creativity’. Self-fashioning of the already local progresses beyond the idea of the ‘pluralization by localization’ narrative to reflect the numerous diverse influences Austral jazz musicians were increasingly drawing upon. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
