The music of politics and protest

“Everything surprises me about my research. Every time I dive into a new archive or pick up a set of newspapers, talk to a person who I’ve just met, I’m constantly being surprised."

So says Dr Nick Tochka, Senior Lecturer in Music and Head of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne.

Dr Tochka researches popular, traditional and art musics in Europe and the Americas, with a particular emphasis on the politics of music-making since 1945.

“In terms of how a political economic system like communism in Albania or the Soviet Union shaped music making, I look at the institutions and the kinds of political and economic logics that organise the activities of the musicians,” says Dr Tochka.

Currently working on a book manuscript titled “Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America,” Dr Tochka is looking at how post-war politics influenced the reception and practice of rock genres in the US between the 1950s and 1980s.

“There is an idea that music and especially certain kinds of popular music, might function as a form of self-expression or they might function as a form of therapy...in a way that we connect with on records or on MP3s or however we listen to that music.

“One of the roots of this idea comes from the 1960s folk music movement where a guy or a girl with an acoustic guitar are singing into a microphone, that kind of unmediated presence, a live, first-take connection with an audience.”

Episode recorded: January 28, 2021.

Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.

Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.

Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.

Banner: Getty Images.