Consensus and collaboration in the making of the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia

This chapter examines the development of the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia (NRPIPA) in the context of the collaborative relationships that moulded its formation and working practices. We explore how Australian Indigenous modalities of interpersonal and intercultural engage- ment have significantly influenced research approaches among NRPIPA partners, and in doing so have contributed markedly to the ongoing development of an Australian ethnomusicology that embraces a plurality of diverse intellectual traditions and expressive modalities, and seeks to deliver relevant, useful outcomes for the communities with whom we engage in research collaborations. We will show how the pluralistic format of our annual Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance manifests this overarching ethos, and ask whether this has provided us, perhaps inadvertently, with a generative, consensus-driven model for consti- tuting the NRPIPA that is informed by classical ceremonial mechanisms for expressing Australian Indigenous polities.