Music, place and public space: street music in Rundle Mall, South Australia

Abstract

This study investigates the development of street music in Rundle Mall, Adelaide, South Australia. ‘Part 1: The past’ draws on archival material and literature to provide historical context and background for the current street music scene in the mall. ‘Part 2: The present’ documents fieldwork undertaken in Rundle Mall in February 2016. The aim of the study is to provide an overview of how street music came to be in Rundle Mall and to provide a description and discussion of how the street music community functions in the mall in 2016. It also aims to better understand how street musicians use public space, how they relate to place and how the built environment affects street music. The research identifies that street music in Adelaide has occurred in three phases, the first from settlement in 1836 and peaking around 1900, the second dating from the beginning of the twentieth century until around the early 1950s and the third phase from 1978 and continuing at the time of the fieldwork in 2016. The study concludes that the street music community has in the past been, and is still, affected by changes to the public space, legislation, the state of the economy, technological advances and public opinion. While there are existing studies on street performance, there are few which specifically address street music performance and of these, the majority address a specific aspect of street music rather than giving a history or broader contemporary overview of a street music community. No musicological studies were found to have been conducted in the field in Rundle Mall. This current study contributes overdue research on street music in Adelaide, and street music generally, by providing both a short history of street music in the city and a description of the street music community’s ‘living history’ in 2016. The included digital video examples of street music performance in the mall contribute an archival resource. The submission comprises a 40,000 word text-based submission and enclosed USB media.