ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the representation of Australian Aboriginal culture in the musical underscore of two feature films of the mid-1930s. The premise of the chapter derives from Mark Slobin’s notion of musical underscore as ethnographic text, “act(ing) like an ethnomusicologist” to reveal contemporary understandings of culture. The scores of the two films discussed are contextualised in comparison with other sources likely to have had an influence on the creative decisions made in the two films.
