Re-making Genres - Surfing and Silverchair.

Christina George, Queensland University of Technology

ca.george@qut.edu.au

Popular music has had a tumultuous history in Australia, often accused of not nurturing music as distinctly Australian, with audiences looking overseas for their musical guidance (Hutchinson 1992, Walker 1996, St John 1994). Using the rise and phenomenal local and international success of silverchair as a case study, this paper argues that Australian music in the 1990s and early 21^st century is a hybrid form and collection of sounds, representing the nation in its current social and political status. silverchair, the biggest Australian musical export since INXS, have been accused of it all. Their similarities to grunge US music band Nirvana, the look-alike lead singer in Daniel Johns and the three-piece outfit of guitars and drums are all the same. ‘‘Nirvana in pyjamas’’, call it what you like, this paper argues that silverchair are not as much of a ‘‘rip off’’ than is portrayed. silverchair is indeed a natural evolution of the hybrid in Australia. They manipulate the so-called imperialism of US culture and give it back to them the Australian way, thus developing a unique form of national and cultural identity. This form of ‘‘making over’’ US genres, rather than, simply taking over or covering them is cited by Craig McGregor when he instances surf music (Bell and Bell, 1993: 180). Through the concepts of antipodality and hybridity, this paper argues that Australian music can be interpreted as a constantly evolving space that exists to be used to produce defining features of a national and cultural identity. Rather than creating an ideological utopian society, the different spaces can be used to form a "heterotopia" that allow for the differences between past and present to exist simultaneously (Wark, 1997: 50).