BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
When Kiri Zakinthinos was a student at the University of New South Wales, it wasn’t the Western classical music she was most drawn to. While it dominated her study curriculum back in the ’90s, Kiri also dedicated time to the stream of Ethnomusicology — and she discovered an abundance of music that was “just as important, relevant, and valuable” as Western classical.
It’s this passion for creative diversity that has underpinned much of her career in the time since, and is undoubtedly responsible for the founding of SOUNDLANDS — her new concert series in which she celebrates multiculturalism through art music in the suburb of Bankstown.
Kiri holds qualifications in music, creative and cultural industries, and arts management. In 2011, she founded Arts Diaspora, which wrapped up in 2015 after its great success in the Sydney Opera House. (You’ll get to read more about Kiri’s experience below.)
Three years later, she received a Career Development Grant and launched Cultural Omnivore to continue her mission “driven by the desire for a more inclusive and democratic cultural landscape”. Now, she works through this initiative on SOUNDLANDS — and she tells us all about it.
Kiri, congratulations on your project SOUNDLANDS. How’d you come to get this series off the ground?
SOUNDLANDS as an idea – that is, a series highlighting art music being made in Australia today that sits outside of the Western classical mainstream – had been floating around in my mind for a very long time.
I’d produced an earlier version of SOUNDLANDS through a small non-profit arts organisation I founded in 2011 called Arts Diaspora. In 2013, I brought together musicians from different cultural backgrounds that had a shared musical language – that of the Eastern modal system that is common across the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East regions.
The musicians were first-generation Australians from Arabic, Persian, Greek, Turkish and Kurdish backgrounds – all professional accomplished musicians in their original homelands. The concert was called Crossings: Songs from the East [presented as a sold-out concert in the Sydney Opera House Utzon Room].
How did Bankstown come into the picture?
In mid-2018, I happened to participate in a Cultural Plan workshop held by Canterbury Bankstown Council at Bankstown Arts Centre alongside other local artists and arts workers.
Shortly after this, Vandana Ram, director of Bankstown Arts Centre, approached me and we began discussing the idea of a music series at Bankstown that spoke to the diversity of the region and that was accessible to local audiences.
After a bunch of meetings and a couple of laborious grant applications, we were successful in securing funding through the Australia Council for the Arts and began the work on the ground of planning and producing the series together.
Is this choice of location also informed by your childhood in West and South-West Sydney?
Very much so! My primary school years were spent in the Canterbury-Bankstown area, and high school years in the Fairfield and Liverpool areas. The whole South-West Sydney region very much feels like home to me. I currently live 20 minutes away from Bankstown Arts Centre and often attend events there — whether they be showings of theatre work in development, the famous Bankstown Poetry Slam (the biggest and best slam in the country), visual arts exhibitions, or other cultural events.
Bankstown is perhaps the most culturally diverse suburb in Sydney, and the work of the Arts Centre very much reflects the diversity of the broader community. So, Bankstown was a natural fit for the SOUNDLANDS series.
I love the idea of art music in the suburbs – arguably a place art music does not ordinarily thrive with attention. What is it about the setting and culture of Australia’s suburbs that inspired you to shake things up with this form of music making?
This is an interesting question. We think and perhaps assume that art music doesn’t necessarily occur or thrive in the suburbs, but my experience has been that it very much does!
About half of the musicians featured in this SOUNDLANDS series, across all four concerts, are based in Western Sydney. They are professional, highly regarded working musicians within their cultural communities — often performing at community functions and touring with visiting international musicians from their respective musical traditions. [Visit the website to learn about each of the upcoming musicians in SOUNDLANDS.]
So, it’s not that art music doesn’t exist in the suburbs — but rather that the art music that does exist sits outside of the Western, European-centric art music that dominates our stages and mainstream cultural spaces.
Perhaps it also comes down to one’s understanding or definition of ‘art music’. The music that all four ensembles featured in SOUNDLANDS perform fits within my definition of art music: their repertoire consists of original, contemporary, scored music and/or features improvisatory forms heavily. It’s not pop. It’s informed broadly by either jazz or classical genres, but it is either completely or in part informed by non-Western music traditions.
Is that still art music? In my book, it is.
Are residents of Bankstown your intended audience? How can they learn about cultural diversity through the music you’re presenting — no matter what culture your concertgoers?
The intended audience for SOUNDLANDS is broad. I think the series will appeal to open-minded art music fans from greater Sydney, and to the cultural communities, friends and networks of the featured artists, as well as to Bankstown locals that appreciate great music and want to see more of it locally.
We don’t have any didactic aims with SOUNDLANDS. The focus isn’t on cultural exchange or knowledge exchange — if that happens, it’s a great by-product. The series is simply about presenting great music that already exists in the suburbs, but positioning it more centrally within the broader mainstream arts landscape.
The idea of a project founded on diversity seems to be well in-line with your ethos as an industry practitioner. You’ve studied and worked in music and cultural industries. How’d you come to fall upon this path – one encompassing art as well as a deeper social awareness?
My own experience of being a first-generation Australian growing up navigating two cultures and wrestling with feelings of unbelonging to both cultures at different times has of course been the drive behind the work I do as an independent producer and arts writer. That’s where my desire for a fairer and more inclusive cultural landscape, and one that reflects the plurality of our lived experiences, comes from on a deeper level. But, there have also been some seminal moments that either placed me more firmly on this path or propelled me forward. One of these was as a young undergraduate studying a Bachelor of Music at the University of New South Wales in the mid ‘90s.
The course content back then was almost completely Western classical music focused, apart from the Music Technology and Ethnomusicology subjects, which were my favourites because that’s where I felt most comfortable.
It was definitely in [my Ethnomusicology lecturer] Dr John Napier’s classes that non-Western music was first centred and elevated to the same position as Western classical music, in my mind. And that experience legitimised the music of my own culture and upbringing. I began to see Greek music (both folk and art music forms) not in opposition to or lesser than the Western classical music I was studying, but as equal to it and just as important, relevant, and valuable a tradition.
What’s your ultimate goal with SOUNDLANDS?
I’d love to see SOUNDLANDS run annually at Bankstown Arts Centre, though of course funding is always a challenge. Costs aren’t covered by ticket sales alone and, as a producer, paying artists professional rates that reflect their skills, experience, and talent is of the utmost importance.
More generally though, SOUNDLANDS is about broadening perceptions of what art music is. The series aims to highlight art music forms that are very much a part of our contemporary Australian story, but which are sometimes overlooked in our mainstream cultural spaces.
See the full SOUNDLANDS program on the Bankstown Arts Centre website. The four-concert series kicks off in August and continues until November.
Arts Diaspora/Crossings images supplied, credit George Stavropoulos.
