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The effect of globalisation on Australian Church music has been as dire as its effect on that Aussie icon, Vegemite. Although many talented Australian composers continue to produce uniquely Australian Church music in many genres, Australian Church music governing bodies and clergy are paying minimal or no attention to local Australian Church music. In Australia, Church music licensing is dominated by globalised corporations who promote non-Australian Church music over the work of local Australian and Aboriginal composers. Australian Church music selection committees overwhelmingly favour non-Australian music over Australian Church music. Some Australian parish music programs use exclusively non-Australian music repertoires and genres. Public infusions of forward-looking, hopeful, uniquely Australian musical expressions of Christian faith are increasingly rare, ephemeral, and excluded from music examination lists.
For insight into why this has happened, read Jeffrey Tucker’s 2002 article about a multinational corporate Church music publisher whose policies and business ethics are not in tune with Christian beliefs, principles or practice (see link below)
The globalisation of Church music is also discussed in depth by a shocked Richard Barrett on the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (Orthodox Christian) blog –
Comments on: "Globalisation in Australian Church Music" (4)
keep it up-don’t be intimidated into silence…
Hi Fuel for Faith, thanks for the encouragement, still blogging, still singing.
I listen to quite a bit of new secular music, but when it comes to worship I much prefer the sacred music I was raised with. Many of the old hymns such are unbeatable. And I can understand you working to keep the music of your own nation alive. I wish a lot of other people felt the same way.
Thanks for your comment, I too value, love and appreciate the “old hymns” and a huge range of diverse Christian music, I am a professionally trained Church Cantor, chorister and composer with many years in church music ministry. Including indigenous church music in church repertoires increases the church’s reach and witness, and it is very much alive in many regions of the world.