ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the broader histories of Australian music export initiatives that reveal a gradual recognition of its potential, and since the 1980s, have also aligned with senses of cultural identity. It looks at how Sounds Australia operates in the same ways or differently from its overseas counterparts, and how Australia’s music export programme became embroiled in wider cultural funding battles and debates in Australian politics. As a national project, Sounds Australia is arguably hampered in not exercising its expertise through a nationally recognised export body incorporating all stakeholders, aggravated by the nation’s tripartite system of governance and funding. The immigration policies of Australia after the Second World War have provided diverse mixtures of sounds and micro-scenes that have drawn upon city populations of mainly southern European migrants. Conversely, the relative lack of scenes for other genres was provided as one of the reasons for less visibility, and by extension, international success.
