AUSTRALIAN MUSIC VAULT TURNS 5!

Like an opening riff of a great Australian classic, the Australian Music Vault burst onto the scene in 2017 with a promise to shine a curatorial light on the people, places and unique sounds that define Australian contemporary music dating back to the 1950s. To celebrate its 5th birthday, broadcaster and journalist Tracee Hutchison looks back on the Vault’s many highlights which have delivered on that promise – in spades.

It’s Chrissy Amphlett’s iconic school uniform that always draws me back. Proudly and defiantly on permanent display – along with her signature illuminated mic-stand – it’s the tunic that changed the course of Australian music and cemented its wearer as one of the fiercest and most formidable performing artists in Australian music history. You can almost hear it howl.

The Australian Music Vault, now five years old and thriving, incorporates a free exhibition in the grand foyer of Arts Centre Melbourne alongside an active creative learning program, and a dynamic website with a growing library of music stories and video interviews. Many of the items on display are drawn from Arts Centre Melbourne’s extensive Australian Performing Arts Collection and artists and managements have come to the party with iconic costumes and instruments to round out the story.

Created in partnership with the Australian music industry and the Victorian Government, the Vault was created to provide a physical home to the spiritual, cultural and emotional place that music occupies in our lives, hearts and minds. Like a magnificent musical magpie, the Vault is a mighty rock and rolling genuflect to the people who keep Australia’s musical wheels in motion – the artists, songwriters, producers, artwork designers, sound engineers, promoters, roadies – and the fan!

It’s where you’ll find Chrissy, along with Kylie and Judith and Olivia and Jimmy and Angus and Archie and Nick. The artists whom we’ve come to know and love like family, on first-name basis. Some still with us, some who’ve sailed on, but all of them part of the glorious – and sometimes inglorious – tapestry of Australian music history that plays on through generations. Wandering through the space is like a literal musical trip through time, singing up our stories and reflecting the temper of our times as only music can, with changes in curatorial mood that move like a middle eight progression to a crescendo chorus and a familiar reprise.

From Angus Young’s school blazer to Helen Reddy’s 1973 Grammy Award for ‘I Am Woman’, Judith Durham’s handmade frock and Dami Im’s glittering Eurovision gown, to David McComb’s handwritten, soul-bearing lyrics of ‘Wide Open Road’ and Nick Cave’s personal etchings, to the powerful digital captures of social change anthems of First Nations artists like No Fixed Address, Warumpi Band, Kev Carmody, Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, Gurrumul and Briggs, to protest concerts like the anti-nuke Stop The Drop at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and placards from the Save Live Music SLAM Rally, to the more hedonistic – and legendary – Sunbury festivals of the 1970s that put a muddy paddock north of Melbourne on the global music map.

When the Vault was launched back in 2017, a swag of Melbourne’s musical glitterati gathered in The Pavilion at Arts Centre Melbourne to watch it breathe into life, an entity seemingly willed into existence by the force of nature that was Michael Gudinski, the late and much-missed founder of the Mushroom Records empire. The Vault’s five founding Patrons were all on hand to speak to the occasion – Gudinski, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, Kylie Minogue, Tina Arena, and the late Uncle Archie Roach, who performed at the media launch declaring: “It’s a great day, an exciting time, there’s nothing better than Australian music.”

It is hard to imagine any single song in Australian music history having the impact other than Uncle Archie’s autobiographic ‘Took the Children Away’, a song that not only sang-up his own story of being taken from his family as a child but changed the national conversation on the true and shameful history of the Stolen Generations and the trauma that continues.

That inaugural curation was a bold declaration of intent, with content linked by theme not chronology or genre as a guiding methodology. An exploration of the Australian sound in The Real Thing, Two Way Traffic that put the spotlight on performers who helped put Australian music on the world stage, Agents of Change evolving collection that continues to showcase the role of music as a social change agent, and The Wild Ones who have improvised and innovated to propel the industry in new directions. It has also forged contemporary collaborations and cultural explorations of Australian hip-hop, punk, and electronica.

Over the years, the Vault has showcased the enduring and enriching physical, sonic and digital footprint music creates and celebrates its legacies; a veritable kaleidoscope of objects, sounds, genres and experiences. From the careful placement of precious possessions and rock-posters that take us to exact moments in musical time, to the Long Play interview series with artists as diverse and pioneering as Midnight Oil’s Peter Garret and Rob Hirst, Russell Morris, Glen Wheatley and Ross Wilson, to feminist trailblazers Margret RoadKnight and Jeannie Lewis, to Judith Durham, Vika & Linda and Courtney Barnett, and First Nations flagbearers Archie Roach, Emma Donovan and Dr Lou Bennett – all of them mighty in their influence and creative contribution.

The Vault’s dedication to sharing these stories is celebrated through their growing library of online Music Stories as well as their creative learning programs which provide opportunities for schools, teachers, young creatives and the general public to learn about and contribute to Australian music culture.

But it is perhaps the role of music during the global pandemic of 2020-2021 – and the way the music community responded – that is the most compelling of narratives the Vault has leant so warmly into. With those dark days of lockdown weighing heavily, especially in Melbourne, they created two projects: Banding Together, a video series that captured, in real time, the impact that the pandemic had on the music community, and Vault Sessions, a series of livestreamed concerts filmed on a closed set in Hamer Hall. These responsive concerts which proved to be a boon for artists and audiences alike at a time when live music was a standstill. It was a masterstroke of compassion and creativity, in one.

Senior Curator of the Australian Music Vault Carolyn Laffan described Vault Sessions at the time: “In contrast to the more informal live streams that had been popping up we wanted to give artists a chance to do a full production. A full-set live concert in an empty Hamer Hall for audiences to enjoy from the comfort of their own homes.”

It was a genius, empathetic move. On multiple fronts. And sang right from the songbook of the original concept for the Australian Music Vault, outlined at inception by then Victorian Creative Industries Minister, Martin Foley, who declared the Vault would be “more than just an exhibition space, it’s the beating heart of Australian contemporary music.”

Indeed, if we needed a reminder of the power of music to lift our hearts and lighten our spirits – and ensuring our artists are acknowledged and paid for their work – nothing beats a global pandemic. Along with the curatorial vision to ensure we see and hear ourselves, in the darkness and in the light.

RMIT’s contemporary music academic, Dr Catherine Strong, wrote of the Vault’s inception that “popular music has undeniably helped shape how we think about ourselves as a nation, and how we represent ourselves to the world.”

And it’s there every time I walk into that space and say hi to friends who will never get old and fill up my heart with the songlines that continue.

Happy 5th birthday Australian Music Vault. May the next five years continue to remind us to support the Australian music in all its forms as it continues to entertain, inspire and shape our culture.

Tracee Hutchison is a career broadcaster, journalist and TV producer. She is also Chair of Green Music Australia, the peak body working to support the music industry on sustainability and leadership in greening the Australian music scene.