The big surprise for many visitors to Australia is the sheer diversity of Aboriginal music. From the big rock sound of the Warumpi Band to the heartfelt guitar ballads of Archie Roach, the cruisey island reggae of newcomers Saltwater, and the echoes of an ancient culture in the work of Nabarlek (who sing mostly in their own language) there is no way of pigeonholing the music. And while there's no problem seeing Aboriginal bands, doing everything from metal to hip-hop and performing in all parts of the country, there's really no better way to immerse yourself than by attending an Indigenous music festival.
Most of the bands and artists mentioned below have work available on CD, while other outstanding artists whose albums are widely available include Yothu Yindi, No Fixed Address, Tiddas, Kev Carmody and Coloured Stone. Compilation albums are worth looking into also, particularly those that cover a wide range of styles: "Meinmuk - Music from the Top End" (1996) is a Radio Triple J compilation of songs by twenty-four different Arnhemland bands, covering rock, reggae, gospel and metal; "Demarru Hits" is another good one, available through CAAMA (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) in Alice Springs, and some music retailers.
Biggest of all Aboriginal Music Festivals is the Barunga Sports & Cultural Festival, which showcases up to forty bands, along with sports events, spear-throwing and didge-playing competitions. It's held at Barunga Community, 80km south of Katherine in the NT, over the first weekend in June (camp-sites with facilities are available). Also in the Top End, the Millingimbi Cultural Festival is purely a music event and, being harder to get to than Barunga, gets fewer white visitors. Dates for this one are hard to nail down, although it's always held sometime mid-year, on Millingimbi Island in the Crocodile archipelago. The return flight from Darwin costs around $250, otherwise you need permission from the Northern Land Council (Darwin Head Office tel 08/8920 5100; they also tell you the festival dates) to drive across Arnhemland to Ramingining to catch a barge. Traditional music and dance are featured, along with gospel bands and lots of Arnhemland rock.
The annual festival at Laura, in far north Queensland, attracts high profile performers like the Warumpi Band and Christine Anu, plus all the local Murri bands. Held in either May or June (it varies from year to year), there are usually quite a few backpackers and hippies about, as well as the local Murri community. It's roughly two hours drive (on sealed roads) north from Cairns to Laura, a small town 60km west of Cooktown. Otherwise, another intriguing possibility on the west coast just might be the "Stompin' Ground" festival. First staged in Broome, WA in 1992, and then again in 1998, it drew on the strong and highly independent Aboriginal communities of the Kimberley region, attracting singers, dancers and bands into the incomparable beauty of WA's far north. Although it is not really an "established" event, it could be well worth checking out. Radio Triple J is a good source for music festival info, and they broadcast Australia-wide.
And even if you find yourself stranded in the Big Smoke, you need not miss out; if you're in Sydney over summer, there's no better place to be on the Australia Day holiday (January 26) than at "Survival", Waverley Park, Bondi. This festival began as a highly political event, deliberately juxtaposed with the Australia Day festivities which mark the arrival of the first fleet of "white invaders". It continues as a celebration of the survival of indigenous people and cultures in the face of white oppression, and draws many of the biggest names in indigenous music.
Early Years
Johnny O'Keefe was, to Australians, the embodiment of the defiant new brand of music that was then sweeping the world. He was to become synonymous with 1960s TV programmes that showcased Australian rock'n'roll talent, even as his own recording efforts were gradually swamped by the peace-love-hair movement of the time. O'Keefe remained a presence on television and radio until his death of a heart-attack in 1978, aged just 43. In keeping with the requirements of rock God-dom, his last years were characterized by a series of breakdowns, bouts of depression and problems with alcohol. His rendition of the classic crowd-anthem "Shout" (1959) remains, to this day, an integral part of early rock'n'roll's global legacy (video footage of O'Keefe performing live also constitutes the opening sequence of the ABC's late-night music video programme, Rage).
From Chisel to the Church
Among hundreds of examples of Don Walker's craftsmanship in capturing the times/places/people/events that make meaning for Australians, "Khe Sanh" (1978) (Walker's treatise on the Australian experience of surviving the war in Vietnam), remains a work without peer, while "Star Hotel" (1980) captures, in three verses and a chorus, the mood and events of September 19, 1979, when, in the working-class steel-town of Newcastle police came to close down the city's main pub-rock venue, The Star Hotel, only to find themselves confronted by an angry crowd spoiling for a fight. Police cars were overturned and set alight in the course of a civil disturbance that echoed convict rebellions of two centuries earlier. The hotel was finally closed down, but the punters had made their point - and Chisel weren't going to let the police forget it.
Cold Chisel not only recorded the boozy summer nights, the trips up the coast, the girls, the fights, the pubs, the streets, the cities and towns, they sang it all back to the faithful in sweaty pubs and heaving stadiums night after night. When they called it a day in 1984, Chisel were Australia's greatest ever rock band, bar none. "Mossy" and "Barnesy" went on to fame and fortune as solo performers, but the band's long-awaited return did not come until 1998, when they released their first studio album in fourteen years "The Last Wave of Summer"; it remains to be seen whether they can be anything like as great again.
During this period, Midnight Oil by no means played second banana to Cold Chisel; rather, they had a different agenda, and their commitment and energy in delivering it live were never in question. Always highly political (lead singer Peter Garrett narrowly missed out on a Senate seat and he was leader of Australia's Nuclear Disarmament Party), "the Oils" brought aboriginal land rights into the forum of pop culture, even as their uncompromising album "Diesel and Dust" (1987) brought them worldwide success. Twenty-year veterans with twelve albums to their credit (and bracketed by critics with Queen and U2 as the most powerful live act in the world), Midnight Oil remain establishment cage-rattlers par excellence.
Among the distinguished musicians of the 1970s and 1980s, two songwriters stand (alongside Don Walker) above the rest as chroniclers of their culture and environment: Richard Clapton and Paul Kelly. Clapton's 1977 album "Goodbye Tiger" is unmatched as a celebration of the very fact of life in Australia - riding the city tram, searching for the perfect wave, soaking up the streetscapes of Oxford Street and King's Cross. Paul Kelly is a more contemporary presence, and his songs go unerringly to the heart of the matter: "Have You Ever Seen Sydney From a 727 at Night?" (1985), "From St Kilda to King's Cross" (1985) and "Adelaide" (1985) capture their respective subjects better than any photograph, while his ode to "Bradman" (1987) - written in homage to Australia's greatest Test cricket batsman Sir Donald Bradman -The Don, is the stuff of a true bard, a composition in verse honouring the glorious return from battle of a people's champion.
But in order to appreciate the depth and diversity of Australian music as it reached maturity, one needs to take a stroll out to the fringes. With a well-established canon of "major" Australian bands now in place, others were finding looser creative environments in which to operate. The Triffids, The Birthday Party (with star alumnus Nick Cave), The Church and the Go-Betweens seemed tied to weirder and more eclectic influences (such as The Velvet Underground, David Bowie and Bob Dylan) than their "mainstream" counterparts. Although musically diverse, they held several characteristics in common: their songs seemed more committed, or more poetic, or just more sensitive to light-and-shade; they were also far less commercially successful in Australia, and all made a big impact in Britain and Europe where they received critical acclaim. Among all of these, The Church alone continue to record and tour from various bases in Europe, while Nick Cave remains intent upon perfecting the art of the murder ballad; his album "Murder Ballads" (1996) features a duet with Kylie Minogue. Australia could boast, too, a white-hot outfit schooled in the nasty traditions of 1970s British punk: The Saints. Although known for their Sex Pistols-ish two-minute thrash exercises, The Saints were nevertheless real musicians, and survivors Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper continue to record and perform songs of the highest quality.
Livin’ in the seventies
Sherbet seemed almost serious by comparison, doing without the make-up and looking as though they only wore the satin pants, silly shoes and poncy scarves because that was what fashion dictated. It was a highly accomplished band no matter what they were wearing, and led by virtuoso pop vocalist Daryl Braithwaite, they recorded several standout tracks, including "Child's Play" (1976), "Howzat" (1976), "High Rolling" (1977) and "Summer Love" (1975). Although both bands flirted with overseas success, touring the US (and subsequently expressing bitterness at not having cracked the big time), history has conferred upon them the honour of having kicked open the rock music establishment's door, on behalf of an Australian music fraternity that had simply been waiting around for someone to show them "we're just as good as those bands from overseas".
Proof perhaps of the depth of talent concentrated in these two bands is the continued presence of individual members in Australian music and media today. Trivia buffs will find the following Skyhooks alumni alive and well: Graeme "Shirley" Strachan - former lead singer, now a popular television presenter; Red Symons is still strumming and cast forevermore as the villain on television's Hey Hey it's Saturday; and Greg Macainsh is in high demand still, as a bass-player and songwriter. Stalwarts of Sherbet have likewise soldiered on: Daryl Braithwaite the lead singer is now a successful solo performer; Harvey James, one of the first Australian guitar-heroes, graduated to session musician and guitar-ace-for-hire; and Garth Porter, former keyboardist, who has gone on to assume the unlikely mantle of producer/guru for many of Australia's top country music performers.
But even as Glam Rock was fading from cool to kitsch, a clannish group of young Scottish immigrants were beginning to play their own version of Chuck Berry-inspired blues-rock, only three times as loud and with heavily distorted guitars. AC/DC not only had the skills, the songs and the "muscle" to back it all up, they also boasted two figures who were destined to become universal icons of rock'n'roll rebellion: guitarist Angus Young's delinquent schoolboy persona had to share the adulation of wannabe rock rebels with singer Bon Scott, who was possessed not only of a genuine, self-destructive, live-hard-die-young ethos, but also sported the most mischievous grin ever seen in tandem with a microphone. It's unlikely anyone besides Bon could have delivered songs such as "Highway to Hell" (1979), "Whole Lotta Rosie" (1978), and "Dirty Deeds…Done Dirt Cheap" (1976) with the required sass to make them acceptable in a 1970s commercial market.
True to form, Bon died a rock star's death in London in 1980, poisoned by alcohol in the back seat of a car. It was, ironically, smack in the middle of a golden age for Australian music, when, during the period 1977-1983, bands Men at Work, Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel, INXS, Air Supply and Little River Band were lining up right alongside AC/DC to take the pop music world by storm.
Oz music grows up
During this period, Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel and INXS stayed closer to home, recognizing perhaps that their styles were less easily translatable from an Australian to a global audience. It is surely no coincidence that among these bands (all highly-accomplished, and equally revered at home) the least identifiably "Australian" act - INXS - was the first to experience worldwide fame and fortune, when in 1987 their album "Kick" plundered the US charts. (This wave of success held tragic implications for singer Michael Hutchence; he would struggle to make the transition from rock star to rock superstar, suffering depression until his death by suicide in late 1997). Of the other two, most needs to be said about the band that had the biggest impact at home, and the least impact abroad - Cold Chisel. If the period three years either side of 1980 was to be remembered as the grand era of Oz "pub rock", then Chisel was the band that owned it, lock, stock and smoking barrel.
Surviving the sixties
The Seekers, however, were operating well clear of the crowded rock music mainstream, creating their own musical niche by building three-part harmonies around chords strummed on acoustic guitars, the two male voices cushioning the pristine power of lead vocalist Judith Durham. Songs like "If I Had a Hammer" (1965) might sound like hippie anthems today, but The Seekers' brand of idealism appealed to millions of record-buyers, and a successful recent comeback tour showed that their popularity has barely waned.
It was in 1967, however, that millions of Australians witnessed the decade's most significant music industry event - and not a single one of them even knew it. A young man named Johnny Farnham had appeared on television, performing a cute but innocuous ditty entitled "Sadie (the Cleaning Lady)" (1967). Good-looking and with a superb voice, as well as charming beyond his years, Farnham endeared himself immediately to Australian audiences; it was a promising debut, but nobody could have predicted how far he'd go. His name shortened these days to John, Farnham is now into his fourth decade as a performer, and continues to shift with apparently effortless ease between roles as rock star, stage-musical lead and TV personality. From 1982-86 he was a popular frontman for the hugely successful Little River Band (having replaced Glen Shorrock), but it was in 1987 that his career peaked, with the release of his album "Whispering Jack", which sold millions of copies worldwide, driven, appropriately enough, by the success of the single "You're the Voice" (1987).
The nineties and beyond…
The roaring success of these soap-star singers goes some way to explaining the listlessness that afflicted the music community during the late 1980s-early 1990s. It seemed the moment Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue were formally adopted by an adoring British public, Australian musicians breathed a collective sigh of relief, and got straight back to work. You Am I, The Whitlams, The Cruel Sea and Skunkhour had always been likely to show the way by writing and recording with passion and originality. By the mid-1990s, quality Australian bands were once again jostling for position in local and overseas markets, this time led by three scruffy-looking fifteen-year-old schoolboys.
In 1994, Newcastle high-school trio Innocent Criminals sent a demo tape to radio Triple J in response to a band competition, the prize for which was use of the station's recording facilities. The song, "Tomorrow", had the Seattle grunge sound all over it, and an awesome rock vocal performance from singer/guitarist Daniel Johns. He didn't sound like a fifteen-year-old, although the band's written entry should have given some kind of clue; their "twenty-five-words-or-less" were written in green felt marker-pen on yellow cardboard: "We're not rap or hip-hop, we're rock and we love to play". "Tomorrow" arrived atop the Australian singles charts where it stayed for several weeks, and with the band renamed silverchair, their 1995 album "Frogstomp" took them into league - and onto a stage - with grunge giants like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, even as the three "boys" were negotiating their last year of high school.
With the new millennium dawning, the feeling is that Australian music has the stuff to tackle it head-on. From rock outfits Powderfinger, Grinspoon and The Superjesus and the thrashier Spiderbait, Jebediah and The Living End, to the stylish and witty The Whitlams, the dance-pop of Savage Garden, and the rock/techno crossover work of Regurgitator, the array of talent is dizzying. Tune in as the next great era of Australian music unfolds.
Top ten great rock Oz albums
- Livin' in the Seventies - Skyhooks. Mushroom Records, 1974.
- Howzat! - Sherbet. Sherbet Records, 1976.
- Goodbye Tiger - Richard Clapton. Infinity Records, 1977.
- Back in Black - AC/DC. Albert Records, 1980.
- East - Cold Chisel. WEA, 1980.
- Business As Usual - Men At Work. CBS, 1981.
- Circus Animals - Cold Chisel. WEA, 1982.
- Kick - INXS. WEA, 1987.
- Diesel and Dust - Midnight Oil. CBS, 1987.
- Eternal Nightcap - The Whitlams. Phantom Records, 1997.