Peter Parkhill was a musician, singer and ethnographer who died in 2020. He made an extensive and important audio collection of a variety of folk musics played in Australia from the 1970s into the late 1990s.
He also conducted the ‘Voices from Illawarra’ interviews with people who lived in the Illawarra region from the 1920s to the 1990s, as well as a project on the aftermath of the Newcastle earthquake of 1989.
These recordings are held in the National Library of Australia https://www.nla.gov.au/selected-library-collections/parkhill-collection
He was active in disseminating his work through commercially available recordings, notably the Transplanted Musical Traditions set of 2 CDS and a 72-page booklet produced through the Centre for Studies in Australian Music at Melbourne University. As well as his own recordings, this included material from the ABC and private collections. https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/product/transplanted-musical-traditions-in-australia
Peter’s range was diverse, providing an insight into the rich traditions of music played in Australia by a variety of linguistic, ethnic and cultural groups, including Greek, Italian, Irish, Arabic, Persian, Hungarian, South American and Turkish, as well as English language folksingers, folklorists and researchers. See WorldCat ebnry
http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n2008058980/
Peter also published in print some aspects of his work, including in Meanjin and in
Antipodean Traditions: Australian Folklore in the 21st Century (published for the Australian Folklore Network by Black Swan Press, Curtin University, 2011).
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