There’s a wider story yet to be written about this year’s shortlist.
The AMP purports to represent the best in Australian music and yet, in a year when Australian hip-hop and hardcore were generally agreed to be particularly strong, there isn’t a SINGLE representation from either genre on the shortlist.
It raises a few, very fundamental, questions. Is the Australian music industry – ‘alternative’ or not – racist at its heart? Or is the absence of pretty much anything that isn’t male white indie more a reflection of poor selection criteria applied when it came to choosing the judges… i.e. it literally was a case of drinking in the right Melbourne and Sydney pubs. Folk have pointed out that only a handful of hip-hop acts applied to be considered for the AMP. Well of course only a handful did. They knew they weren’t going to win. (Let’s not even start getting into the whole thorny issue of having an award that is supposed to represent the best Australian music and yet automatically excludes anyone who hasn’t applied.)
Listen up. I haven’t featured that much music made by non-white females in my Song Of The Day blog here on Collapse Board – although you might be surprised at how many there are. No, really. There are quite a few. (Etc etc) The crucial difference is that I’ve never claimed that my Song Of The Day blog is anything more than a reflection of my own tastes. The AMP claims to represent an entire country, and not just an entire country but the ‘best’ that country has to offer. Even though it clearly is merely a reflection of the fact the vast majority of its panel of judges prefer to listen to white male indie music.
Either way, as Justin stated in the comments on my previous post about this subject, the smart money is on a hip-hop act to win in 2012. Can’t be seen to be racist now, can we chaps? It’s bound to be the ‘wrong’ act, incidentally – as always happens when a panel of self-proclaimed industry ‘experts’ sit in judgement on music they don’t feel a fundamental connection with. Same way Lisa Mitchell was wrongly given the award in 2010.
In many countries, this would be considered to be little short of a national disgrace.
