Bruce Johnson
Honorary Docent
Email: firstname.lastname@utu.fi
I was formerly Professor, School of English, University of New South Wales (UNSW), during which I also held numerous visiting lectureships and professorships including at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Edinburgh’s Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Liverpool’s Institute for Popular Music, and the Department of Music at the Norwegian University fo Science and Technology (Trondheim). In Finland I have worked at the Universities of Tampere and Joensuu, and here at Turku’s Department of Cultural History where I currently hold affiliation as Honorary Docent, having left UNSW in 2005 to take up a range of appointments elsewhere. In addition to the Turku affiliation, I am Adjunct Professor in the Department of Contemporary Music Studies, Macquarie University and Visiting Professor of Music at the Universities of Glasgow.
I have been active for over thirty years in concert, touring and recording work as a jazz musician. I was involved in radio broadcasting as administrator, and award-winning programme producer and presenter. I established two specialist contemporary and archival jazaz record labels and was the prime mover in setting up the Australian Jazz Archives in Canberra. I have also worked on government advisory bodies on music policy formation and development. In Turku I have been closely involved in setting up the International Institute for Popular Music (IIPC).
Research
The history of the modern era as an acoustic phenomenon: the role of sound in the confrontations which generated modernity as mapped through such demarcations as class, gender, nation state, race. This work involves such areas as literacy and literature as an information economy competing with sound, sound and visual technologies, the acoustics of the modern city, and music. I am working on how power relations are mediated sonically, and two current related projects are a book I am writing with Dr Martin Cloonan at Glasgow on music and violence, and another that I am editing on sound in pornographic film. Other research and publishing commissions currently in progress are articles on:
- The internationalization of jazz (for the Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World)
- The physiology of sonic affect
- The representation of the city in nineteenth century English literature
- The politics of World Music
Teaching
My teaching and research supervision have embraced the period from the Renaissance to postmodernity, and has included doctoral supervision at the University of Turku. I received the University of New South Wales’s highest teaching honour, The Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence.
Selected publications
My career publication list runs to nearly 400 items, including contributions to major reference works including the
Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World,
New Groves Dictionary of Jazz,
Cambridge Companion to Jazz,
Oxford Companion to Australian Music,
Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia ed. John Whiteoak and Aline Scott-Maxwell
Books
Sole author
Johnson, B. (1987) The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz Melbourne, (Oxford University Press) Nominated "Outstanding Academic Book. 1988-89" by the academic review Choice
Johnson, B. (2000) The Inaudible Music: Jazz, Gender and Australian Modernity (Sydney, Currency Press) (Book and CD)
Recent publications
Johnson, B. (2003) "Naturalising the Exotic: The Australian Jazz Convention", in E.T. Atkins (ed) Jazz Planet: Transnational Studies of the "Sound of Surprise" (University Press of Mississippi), 151-168.
Johnson, B., with Gaye Poole. 2005. ‘Scoring: Sexuality and Australian Film Music, 1990-2003’, in Reel Tracks: Australian Feature Film Music and Cultural Identities, ed Rebecca Coyle (Eastleigh UK: John Libbey Publishing), 97-121.
‘Australian Jazz: A Cultural and Historical Overview’, Sonus: A Journal of Investigations into Global Music Possibilities, 26/2 (Spring 2006), pp 1-22.
With Martin Cloonan, ‘Killing me softly with his song: an initial investigation into the use of popular music as a tool of oppression’, in Popular Music (2002) 21/1, pp. 27-39
‘Two Paulines, Two Nations: An Australian case study in the intersection of popular music and politics’ Popular Music and Society Vol 26, No 1, 2003 (Routledge), pp. 53-72.
‘Hamlet: voice, music, sound’, Popular Music (2005), 24/2, 257-267.
‘Divided Loyalties: Literary Responses to the Rise of Oral Authority in the Modern Era’, Textus, XIX (Spring 2006), pp 285-304
‘From John Farnham to Lordi: The Noise of Music’, Altitude, vol. 8, 2007, Special Issue: Popular Music: Practices, Formations and Change – Australian Perspectives. Refereed online journal at www.altitude21c.com ISSN 1444-1160
Johnson, B. 2006. ‘White Noise: Jazz and Australian Modernisation’, in Neil Levi and Tim Dolin (eds), Antipodean Modern (Perth: Curtin University of Technology, Australian Research
Government Reports
With Shane Homan (2003). Vanishing Acts: An Inquiry into the State of Live Popular Music Opportunities in New South Wales. Commissioned by the NSW Ministry for the Arts, and the Australia Council. Published May 2003.
Broadcast Series
"A History of Jazz in Australia" 2MBS, 20 1 hour programmes. Winner of two broadcasting awards
"A History of Australian Jazz for Schools", 2MBS; 5 1 hour programmes, researched, scripted and produced by me with funding from the NSW Premier's Department.
Recordings
*Producer
^Performer
Career total, around 20 albums
Eclipse Alley Five, Among Friends EACAS-1, 1995 *^
Ted Nettelbeck Trio, "Reflections in a Bird Bath", MBS-JAZZ 10, 1996 ^
Jazz Notes: Fourth Australian Jazz Convention, CD/NFSA/TA003, Linehan Series 1998 *
The Sydney Jazz Concerts 1947-1951, CD/SSA/JZ0015, Linehan Series, 1999*
Jelly Roll Morton: A Musical Tribute (2CD Set), WSCD 006 and 007,2002 *^
Memphis records: The Southern Jazz Group and Friends. Classic Australian Jazz from the 1940s. (2 CD Set), CD/SSAML0033, 2004 *