Among Aboriginal musicians from remote Central Australian desert communities, performances in white-dominated towns are commonly portrayed as desirable occasions for engaging with a white-dominated socio-musical realm. This seminar explores how such racially informed cross-cultural notions are put to work in the accumulation of Aboriginal male and musician status. I then describe how Aboriginal town gigs are in fact organised, carried out and evaluated by various Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal stakeholders. I suggest that instead of producing congenial cross-cultural exchanges, most Aboriginal town gigs are particularly powerful and passionate mono-cultural happenings for the reproduction of real and imagined division of “blackfella” and “whitefella” domains, with distinct forms of sociability.