Why Make Music

No guest this week as Tim takes a chance to reflect on his recent conversations with Elijah, Dr Anita Collins & Maggie Tra.

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Maggie Tra is an Australian-born DJ and producer with Vietnamese and Cambodian heritage. She has lived all around the world including London, Brussels and Hanoi, and is currently based again on Eora land in Sydney.

Her music is kinetic, generous, and playful - just like she is - and in both her productions and her DJ sets she continually embraces not just her own heritage, but also the culture of whatever land she’s in, doing so with wholeness and conviction.

Driven by a desire to help local Vietnamese artists, Maggie launched Hà Nội Community Radio in 2021. I wanted to ask Maggie Tra about some of the differences she’s noticed between how music works in Vietnam as opposed to Australia, about what she’s learned as someone who has spent a lot of time trying to build community in music, and simply, why does she make music in the first place?

This conversation was recorded on Wurundjeri land in April 2024. 

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QlTUTh3AoY

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Dr Anita Collins is an award-winning educator, researcher and author, widely recognised for her work in brain development and music education. She is a tireless advocate working in our schools, in our boardrooms and in government consultation, to champion music at a fundamentally human level.

We talked about how music helped her process learning difficulties early in life, but that as a young adult, her experience of tertiary education led her to put her instrument down and pivot to teaching and research. We discuss the "industrial model" of education, and why music should be approached differently in schools. We also talk about new research on how groups can achieve "team flow state", advice on how best to go about pursuing music advocacy, and why some myths persist about who gets to call themselves a musician and who doesn't. 

This conversation was recorded in April 2024.

Dr Anita Collins: https://www.anitacollinsmusic.com.au/

Follow Tim Shiel: https://www.instagram.com/timshiel/

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZcu0bzibjU

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Elijah is an artist, DJ & all-round creative force based in London. With a deep-rooted connection to grime & electronic music, in recent years Elijah has become known to many for his “Yellow Squares” project on social media, where he shares insights into the nature of creative work in the digital age.

Ahead of his first ever speaking tour of Australia, we talked about how his experiences growing up listening to pirate radio and documenting the birth of the grime scene were formative in his understanding of how music works, and why its important to challenge the conventional narratives of the music industry. We also discussed why now, despite going viral on social media, he is much more interested in the real world.

Elijah: https://www.instagram.com/eli1ah

Elijah's 2024 Australian tour: https://www.moshtix.com.au/v2/event/here-for-good-talks-with-elijah/168409

Tim Shiel: https://www.instagram.com/timshiel/

Watch this interview on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZcu0bzibjU

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But really, why?

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