Sounds of Empire: Popular Politics and Music in the Nineteenth Century

What did popular politics sound like? After 1848 thousands of disgruntled British radicals sought freer air in the colonies of settlement: Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Cape. Music had a central place in the repertoire of politics that they had grown up with and it played a critical role in the transmission of the political culture that they took with them. This research will trace the contours of the multi-directional flows of music and politics to better understand the lived experience of popular politics through music: its production, its consumption and the mechanics of its transmission through melody and words, through print and oral traditions, and its role in connecting past and present.