‘These Are the Places I Call Paradise’: Community Musicking and Wellbeing in Derby, Western Australia

This thesis investigates how three community musicking institutions in Derby, Western Australia, contribute to emotional wellbeing in the community. Through ethnographic inquiry, the research finds that a community festival, a country music club and a community radio station afford many local Aboriginal musicians opportunities to traverse musical pathways, as well as imagined pathways to distant ancestral country. Moreover, by enabling democratic participation in music, these institutions provide spaces and moments within which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants can mediate relationships with each other and with their immediate environment, thus enhancing feelings of agency, capability and hope.