LAUSR

This short book offers an overview of the key characters active in Australian country music and some academic concepts that help explain its relevance from inception to recent days. It documents the development of a style of music that has always been problematic for Antipodean cultural historians, especially those who have searched in vain for music and sound that clearly speak of the Australian condition. The author offers little detailed discussion of the challenges in analysing the Australian country music sound. This results in a book that steps away from the generation of popularmusic scholarship that explored the cultural distinctions between Australian and United States musical artefacts. Indeed, Yodelling Boundary Riders presents a history that barely pursues critical questions about why Australian country music developed the way it did, taking at face value the events that offered the nation Tex Morton, Slim Dustry, Chad Morgan, the LeGarde Twins and the dominant male world of white Australia. Despite these limitations, author Toby Martin helpfully poses questions early on that suggest the trajectory of the book: