We all know not to judge a book by its cover but sometimes the temptation to be at least a little influenced by it can be hard to resist. This is especially so when an author (or, in this case, editors Amanda Harris and Clint Bracknell) draws particular attention to it. 

Those familiar with the traditional format of Cambridge Companions will note that Harris and Bracknell chose not to style their own contribution as a ‘Companion to Australian Music’, but rather a ‘Companion to Music in Australia’, even though the former would have chimed with comparable volumes such as The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (2006) or The Cambridge Companion to French Music (2015). In their Introduction they explain that this was done to acknowledge ‘the dynamic fluid nature of music itself and the complexity and contestation inherent in the term “Australia”’. Given that there is also a hint of possession and erasure in the conjunction ‘Australian music’, this heightened sensitivity towards how their book would be titled is understandable. They also wished to signal to the reader that this book will be unapologetically vague about what the physical and conceptual boundaries of a companion to Australian music might be (beyond a declaration that the music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples will be ‘at its very heart’).