‘A tale of five festivals’: Exploring the cultural intermediary function of Australian jazz festivals

This paper considers the cultural intermediary function of Australian jazz festivals.It presents a detailed analysis of programming patterns across five Australian Jazz musicfestivals
–namely, the Manly Jazz Festival, Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues,Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Brisbane International Jazz Festival, and BellingenJazz Festival– in the ten year period, 2004-2014. Using this data, this paper draws attention to the ‘search and select’ function of cultural intermediaries speaking to the broader significance of festivals as sites of popular music study.