Australian Music Vault unveils Advisory Committee

Arts Centre Melbourne CEO Claire Spencer has unveiled the members of the Advisory Group for the Australian Music Vault.

The Australian Music Vault is the official name given to the Australian Music Hall of Fame, which was announced late last year and is set to open in November 2017. The free interactive exhibition and education space at Arts Centre Melbourne, will be in the Gallery 1 area which currently hosts the successful Kylie On Stage exhibition.

After 15 years of lobbying for a music Hall of Fame, it came into being through a $10 million donation from the Victorian Government, through its Creative Victoria division’s Music Works package. Yesterday, music industry figures attended an event at Arts Centre Melbourne.

Claire Spencer talked about the venue’s role in curating music history collections from 1990 (2 million have seen the collections) and its work with 90 organisations for Arts Well Being to prevent and detect early signs of mental health problems within the arts and music sectors.

On display were some of the 600,000 items from of the Performing Arts Collection. These included Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum’s hat, Angus Young’s cap, draft lyrics for Nick Cave’s Knockin’ On Joe, venue flyers, draft designs for Split Enz costumes, a TISM fanzine, James Reyne’s harmonica and a copy of the pioneering cassette music magazine Fast Forward.

The Vault will feature some items from the Collection, depending on what theme the exhibition is running at that particular time. Items will also be donated by three of the four Vault patrons, Meldrum, Kylie Minogue and Michael Gudinski.

The fourth patron, Archie Roach, was at yesterday’s event to talk about the importance of documenting culture and stories behind songs.

“Storytelling is very important, especially in Aboriginal culture. (It’s) your story, my story…”

To emphasise the point, he recalled the romance between his Bundjalung clan tent boxer father from NSW and his Djab Wurrung clan mother – whom he never got to know as he was stolen at the age of three. Roach performed a sublime version of Old Mission Road, which he wrote as a way to cope with his loss.

Anecdotes and observations from music industry figures were then filmed for use in the Music Vault’s interactive section.

Earlier, the Advisory Committee met for the first time, to discuss the vision and stories for the Music Vault.

Committee members listed below alphabetically:

David Anderson, Program Manager – Performing Arts at Arts Centre Melbourne.

Peter Bain-Hogg, Producer of TV’s Rockwiz.

Janine Barrand, Head of Collections at Arts Centre Melbourne

Indigenous musician and actor Lou Bennett.

Freelance arts writer Shaad D’Souza.

Patrick Donovan, CEO of Music Victoria.

Radio presenter Jane Gazzo

Adam Jankie, Director & Chief Operating Officer from the Illusive Group.

Meg Labrum, Senior Curator, Film Documents and Artefacts, of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

Joel Ma aka MC, producer and multi-instrumentalist Joelistics.

Jenny Morris, APRA board Chair, and co-founder of The Art of Music initiative.

Bruce Milne, music entrepreneur, former retailer and venue owner.

Stephen Nagle of arts retailing Porchlight Brand Management.

Dobe Newton, President of the Country Music Association of Australia.

Kirsty Rivers, Manager. Contemporary Music, Creative Victoria

Dan Rosen, ARIA CEO.

Dan West, music producer.