Lilburn Lecture 2015

For this year’s Lilburn Lecture – marking the 100th anniversary of Lilburn’s birth – music historian Chris Bourke discusses the place of local popular music in New Zealand. He notes that when Lilburn was born, the local music scene was more inclusive. How did the split between “high art” and “low art” occur? Has the neglect of New Zealand popular music been rectified? What is the most useful way to study local popular music? Is it still necessary to look for a New Zealand sound? Bourke considers the ideas discussed by Lilburn in his celebrated talks A Search for Tradition and A Search for a Language: are they still relevant, and can they be answered by popular music?

Chris Bourke is the 2015 Lilburn Research Fellow at the Alexander Turnbull Library, where he is currently writing a book about New Zealand music during the First World War. His book Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music, 1918-1964 won the Book of the Year prize at the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards.

The annual Lilburn Lectures are a collaboration between the Lilburn Trust and the National Library of New Zealand. This year’s Lilburn Lecture will be the third in this series of open public talks. Refreshments will be served following the Lecture.