I'd like to acknowledge and pay respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of the nation many of us call Australia.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be aware that this episode contains the voices and words of people who have died. This episode also contains adult themes, explicit language and references to sexual harassment and assault. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, and needs support in Australia call 1800-RESPECT, or in the United States, call 800-656-HOPE.
This is the second and final installment of our exploration of Australian protest and political songs. We pick up our story in 1990. Find the episode playlist on the Spotify Cara Diaria artist page. Send questions or compliments to mykindofscenepod[@]gmail.com.
Sources:
I'd like to acknowledge and pay respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of the nation many of us call Australia.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be aware that this episode contains the voices and words of people who have died. This episode also contains adult themes, explicit language and references to sexual harassment and assault. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, and needs support in Australia call 1800-RESPECT, or in the United States, call 800-656-HOPE.
This is the second and final installment of our exploration of Australian protest and political songs. We pick up our story in 1990. Find the episode playlist on the Spotify Cara Diaria artist page. Send questions or compliments to mykindofscenepod[@]gmail.com.
Sources:
Intro 00:00
I'd like to start this episode by acknowledging and paying respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of the nation many of us call Australia.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be aware that this episode contains the voices and words of people who have died.
This episode also contains adult themes, explicit language and references to sexual harassment and assault. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, and needs support in Australia call 1800RESPECT, or in the United States, call 800-656-HOPE.
Welcome to My Kind of Scene; where we uncover the past and present of Australian music.
I'm Cara Diaria, indie musician and music nerd, bringing my unique perspective to the hits and misses, the movers and shakers, the goodness and greatness that makes the Australian music landscape, My Kind of Scene.
This is the second and final installment of our exploration of Australian protest and political songs. In our last episode, we heard Yorta Yorta / Yuin artist Jimmy Little speak out about Indigenous employment discrimination in the 1950s. We discovered how lyrics written by '70s easy listening songbird Helen Reddy became the feminist anthem of a generation. We heard how John Schumann of Redgum's sensitive tale of Vietnam combat soldiers' trauma and PTSD helped open Australians eyes to their terrible treatment of Vietnam vets in the '80s, and we recounted the many times Midnight Oil brought environmental, social and racial issues into the foreground of public political consciousness through their chart-topping foot-stomping hits spanning several decades.
Let's pick up our story in 1990…
Took the Children Away 02:44
"Took the Children Away" was the debut single of Archie Roach, an Australian singer-songwriter born in 1956 in Mooroopna, Victoria. At age 11, Archie asked his beloved parents, who had helped him discover a love of music, why he was Black, and they were white. They told him his natural parents had died. Four years later, when he was 15, Roach's biological sister contacted him, to let him know his birth mother had just died. This was how he found out he was a member of the stolen generations. Between 1909 and 1969, Indigenous Australian children were forcibly removed from their families by Australian government agencies. He and his siblings were placed in an orphanage, and he was eventually fostered by a family of Scottish immigrants in Melbourne.
Upon hearing from his sister and discovering the truth about his life, Roach spent the next fourteen years on the streets, struggling to cope with the loss of identity and family. He found community in other displaced and dislocated people around Melbourne and Sydney's parks and pubs, as he descended into alcoholism. Drifting to Adelaide, he met his future life partner and musical collaborator, the late Ruby Hunter, who at 16 was also an unhoused member of the stolen generations. This was a turning point for Roach, who began to learn more about Hunter's Ngarrindjeri heritage, and started to explore a connection to culture and country.
By the late 80's, Roach had beaten alcohol dependency and he and Hunter moved to Melbourne. Roach wrote his first song, "Took the Children Away," about his experience of being forcibly removed from his family. Roach didn’t naturally gravitate towards writing about this experience, but was encouraged by Elder, Uncle Banjo Clarke, to share his story.
When his uncle first proposed the idea, Roach reacted with confusion.
<Quote> "'Why would I wanna write about that? I don't remember that much about it anyway, I was just a little fella.' And he looked at me and he said, 'Yeah, but I do.'" <Unquote>
Archie realized the extent of the impact of this disgraceful, racist policy to separate children from their families. It wasn't just his family, his history, and his culture that was stolen from him. There were entire generations of Indigenous children and families affected.
In 1988, Roach performed the song at a Bicentennial protest, and the crowd's response made him realize just how many people shared his experience. Performing the song on community radio and Indigenous TV, he caught the attention of Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly, who was riding high on his platinum-selling album, Under the Sun. Kelly invited Roach to open for his show at the Melbourne Concert Hall in 1989. It was a short set, only 20 minutes, and the final song was "Took the Children Away." Kelly told the Guardian that he had goosebumps and his hair stood on end as Roach sang; the audience was dead silent. The silence continued, even after Roach finished.
<Quote> "He just stood there for a minute, and there was still silence. Archie thought he'd bombed, that everybody hated it, so he just turned and started to walk off stage. And as he walked off, this applause started to build and build and build. It was this incredible reaction. I'd never seen it before – people were so stunned at the end of the song that it took them a while just to gather themselves to applaud." <unquote>
Kelly went on to produce Roach's first album, Charcoal Lane, and the song was released as a single in 1990. Although it wasn't the first song written about the forced removal of children from their families, it was released at a time when awareness of the Stolen Generations was increasing significantly.
The song resonated both inside and outside the Aboriginal community. Indigenous people finally heard their intergenerational trauma being shared on a national stage. On tour in Canada, another nation with a shameful history of enforced family separation, Roach met First Nations elders who said they found comfort in his song. And Roach would be approached by non-Aboriginal people, saying it meant so much to them, because they didn't have to be Aboriginal to understand the emotion of being separated from your mother.
Archie Roach won ARIA Awards for Best Indigenous Release and Best New Talent in 1991 and "Took the Children Away" received an international Human Rights Achievement Award. Rolling Stone magazine named Charcoal Lane one of the top 50 albums for 1992.
In 1995, the Federal Attorney-General launched the first official inquiry into the Stolen Generations. Perhaps an acknowledgement of Roach's role in raising awareness of the issue, he performed as a part of the presentation to the Human Rights Commission. The resulting "Bringing Them Home" report was handed to Parliament in May 1997, containing recommendations for acknowledgement, apologies, reparations, and support services for those impacted.
Following the report, services were created to link up Aboriginal people with their families. National Sorry Day was established, to acknowledge the devastation caused to families and Communities due to the forced removal of children. In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made an apology to the Stolen Generations in Parliament House in Canberra, on behalf of the Government of Australia. I remember exactly where I was when this happened. I had recently started work with a new company, who had flown me to Sydney for a few weeks of onboarding. I remember we all stopped work to watch the apology take place in real time, proud and happy that the Prime Minister we'd recently elected was taking this important step down the road towards reconciliation.
These actions are a good start, and there's more to be done. But we must acknowledge the tremendous courage and generosity of Archie Roach, who shared his personal story in this beautiful song, which helped so many Australians feel the pain and suffering of the Stolen Generations.
Roach said it well.
<Quote> "I suppose I'd just like people to know a little bit of the pain, a little bit of the hurt, you know? People just look at Aboriginal people and see one thing. They don't know what we've been through. They don't know. And they sit and judge. This history should be told. It's part of Australia's history." <unquote>
Today, Uncle Archie is an elder, lending his voice to up-and-coming Indigenous artists, raising their voices to be heard. He contributed the foreword to A.B. Original's 2016 album, "Reclaim Australia." More on that in a bit.
There's perhaps no protest song that better contrasts Archie Roach's quiet, personal ballad than Yothu Yindi's loud and proud 1991 demand for a treaty between the Australian Government and the Aboriginal people.
Treaty 12:09
During Australia's Bicentennial celebrations in 1988, Prime Minister Bob Hawke visited the Barunga Festival in the Northern Territory, where he was presented with a statement of Aboriginal political objectives. The Barunga Statement called on the Australian Government and people to recognize many rights of the Indigenous owners and occupiers of Australia, including self-determination and self-management, control and enjoyment of their ancestral lands, compensation for the loss of use of their lands, and protection of sacred sites and objects. The statement called on the Commonwealth to pass laws providing an elected Aboriginal and Islander organization to oversee Indigenous Affairs, a national system of land rights and a reformed police and justice system.
And it called on the Commonwealth to <quote> "negotiate with us a Treaty recognising our prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty and affirming our human rights and freedom." <unquote>
Prime Minister Hawke responded by saying that he wished to conclude a treaty between Aboriginal and other Australians by 1990, but he did not fulfill this promise before leaving office in 1991.
Yothu Yindi formed in the Northern Territory in the mid-1980s as a merger of two bands – a white rock group and an Aboriginal folk group, who came from Yolngu Homelands in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. The band merged both musical cultures, blending rock instruments with traditional yidaki, or didgeridoo, and bilma, or clapping sticks, English and Yolngu lyrics, and adapting traditional dance to accompany the music. The name, Yothu Yindi, means "child and mother."
Lead singer and founding member, Dr M. Yunupingu, was the first Aboriginal person from Arnhem Land to gain a university degree. As an educator and activist, he was frustrated by the lack of progress toward a treaty. It seemed to him like the issue was forgotten in the year or two following the Prime Minister's promise. His older brother had been fighting for Aboriginal land rights since the 60s, and the brothers wanted to put the issue back into the spotlight.
Dr. Yunupingu invited renowned Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly to Arnhem Land to work on some songs for Yothu Yindi's next album. Sitting around the campfire, they started playing around with some lyrics. Yunupingu told Triple J in '97, <quote>" My lyrics at that time were that I'd heard it on the radio and I saw it on the television, but where is it? Where is the treaty?" <unquote>
This was the initial kernel for the song, but it was far from fully formed. Kelly travelled with the band to Darwin to continue rehearsing album material. On the last day of the session, the band was jamming on a groove singing the one verse they'd written for "Treaty" over the top. For lack of additional lyrics, they started singing "Treaty yeah, Treaty now" along with the groove. Thinking they might be onto something, they recorded it on a little beatbox in the room.
Kelly later received a call from the band's manager to say the record company loved the song and were keen to put it out, but no-one could hear the words properly. Kelly realized that was because the lyrics were unfinished, and Yunupingu was likely mumbling a melody. He decided to involve a mutual friend, Midnight Oil frontman, Peter Garrett. Yothu Yindi had done some touring with Midnight Oil in 1988. Garrett made some arrangement suggestions and helped workshop the vocal, and they recorded the next day.
Despite its pointed message and star power, "Treaty" was not an overnight hit. It received minimal radio and TV exposure – mainly on public broadcasters ABC and SBS.
Those of you with sharp ears might be thinking… hang on, this isn't the version of "Treaty" I remember. You're right. The song's evolution didn't end there. After the initial release of the song failed to chart, Melbourne-based DJ Gavin Campbell, decided to create a remix. It's not clear whether this was officially sanctioned, but somehow he got hold of the masters and produced a version that updated the funky groove of the original to an uptempo club beat, and stripped out the majority of the English-language lyrics. The remix incorporated a vocal sample, "Clap your hands and dance!" from a 1978 funk song "Let's Start the Dance" by Hamilton Bohannon.
Legend has it Campbell's work with the remix was so good, that Mushroom Records had no choice but to release it and in July 1991, the Filthy Lucre remix of "Treaty" entered the ARIA charts.
Treaty's "Filthy Lucre" remix spent 22 weeks in the Australian charts, peaking at number 11 in September. It was the first song by a predominantly Aboriginal band to chart in Australia and was the first song in any Aboriginal Australian language to gain extensive international recognition, peaking at number 6 on the American Billboard Dance Club chart.
"Treaty (Filthy Lucre Remix)" came in at number 83 on the 1991 Triple J Hottest 100, which was the last year the annual poll invited listeners to vote for their favorite songs of all time, before switching to the current format of favorite songs of the year. It's noteworthy that "Treaty" was included in the count – clearly young Australians at the time felt its significance; that it deserved a place alongside alternative classics like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart."
"Treaty" won Song of the Year at the APRA Music Awards of 1991. At the ARIA Awards, Yothu Yindi won Song of the Year for Treaty, Single of the Year for the Filthy Lucre Remix (by the way, beating Daryl Braithwaite's "The Horses"), and best Indigenous release for the album Tribal Voice, which had enjoyed strong sales and peaked at number 4 on the ARIA Albums chart.
Later, Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter Kev Carmody reflected on the song's significance with online radio station, Double J. Being released at the time when the Mabo land rights case was in the High Court, he felt it highlighted the whole Indigenous movement.
<Quote> "It was one of the first commercial songs in about 20 years that had Indigenous input into it. We have Jimmy Little in the '60s and Lionel Rose, and then you have 'Treaty', it was a real high point and a pinnacle from an Indigenous point of view in music." <unquote>
In 2001, "Treaty" was selected as one of APRA's Top 30 Australian songs of all time. In 2009, it was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry. Yothu Yindi were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2012, and performed "Treaty" at the ceremony, with the help of Paul Kelly and Peter Garrett, as well as Indigenous Australian artists Jessica Mauboy and Dan Sultan.
And what about the song's impact in moving towards a treaty?
Well, it's complicated. The short answer is, there still isn't one. However, the song absolutely raised the issue in Australians' consciousnesses, giving voice to Aboriginal Australians in a new and modern way. Many First Nations artists to this day talk about the impact of "Treaty" for them, of seeing Aboriginal musicians on mainstream TV and radio, speaking out about this issue.
In the 30 years since "Treaty" came out, there has been continuing work on reconciliation. The good news is that it finally seems to be getting close. In 2018, just before the opening of the Barunga Festival, the Northern Territory Government signed a Memorandum of Understanding, to begin talks with all four of the Territory's Aboriginal land councils on the subject of a treaty. In June 2022, the final report on the recommendations was handed to the NT government, to be tabled in parliament in July. Keep your eyes peeled for news on that one. It breaks my heart a little, knowing both Yunupingu brothers died without ever seeing their efforts come to fruition, but I feel hopeful that we're finally getting close.
From Little Things, Big Things Grow 23:28
The early '90s was a fertile time for protest and political songs in Australia, in no small part thanks to Paul Kelly. And to campfires!
A little more about Paul Kelly – one of Australia's most celebrated singer-songwriters. Although he has helped kickstart and support the careers of many Indigenous artists, he himself is not an Indigenous Australian. Kelly grew up in Adelaide, a descendant of Irish immigrants to Australia in the 1850s on his father's side. On his mother's side, his grandfather was an Argentine-born Italian opera singer, who was touring Australia when World War I broke out, and ended up staying. His grandmother was Australia's first female symphony orchestra conductor, and his grandparents started the Italo-Australian Opera Company.
Kelly grew up playing trumpet and piano, and excelled in sports and academics. He started an Arts degree, but dropped out, disillusioned with academic life. He travelled around the country, working odd jobs, writing and learning guitar before moving to Melbourne in 1976. He rose to prominence through the 80s and early 90s with his groups, Paul Kelly and the Dots, and Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls, later renamed to Paul Kelly and the Messengers.
Around 1991, Kelly went on a camping trip with Kev Carmody, a Murri singer-songwriter from northern Queensland.
Kev Carmody was the son of a second-generation Irish descendant father, and an Aboriginal mother of Lama Lama and Bundjalung descent. He grew up in the 1950s on a cattle station in south eastern Queensland, living in a hut with a dirt floor. His parents were cattle drovers and had to hide their mixed-race boys from the authorities. Eventually, he and his brother were sent to a Catholic boarding school in Toowoomba under the assimilation policy as part of the Stolen Generations. According to Carmody, the "bush kids," as they were known, didn't get too much schooling – he didn't learn to read 'til he was 11. At age 15 he left the facility and returned to work with his family on the land.
When he was 33, Carmody enrolled in university, and started studying music. In keeping with the Indigenous tradition of oral history, he presented his research in musical format. This was perhaps the genesis for Carmody's musical career through the 1980s, and his albums were populated with acoustic guitar-driven tales of Aboriginal history and issues.
So, in '91, jamming around the campfire, Paul Kelly had a simple, cyclic chord progression going, and Kev Carmody had the idea to tell the story of the Gurindji strike.
From the 1800s, Indigenous communities had provided cheap, often free, labor on cattle stations in the Northern Territory. In August 1966, at the Wave Hill cattle station, Gurindji man and activist, Vincent Lingiari, announced that the Gurindji people – traditional owners of the land – were going on strike. The entire community walked off the station. Management eventually offered a pay rise, thinking the issue was working conditions. But the Gurindji people wanted their land back. The strike lasted for seven years.
The public interest it raised was a factor in the 1967 constitutional alteration that gave the federal government power to make laws concerning Indigenous Australians, previously a state responsibility. Gough Whitlam's election as prime minister in 1972 increased attention on land rights, and at a ceremony in 1975, Whitlam finally returned a portion of the Wave Hill land to the Gurindji people. This was a key moment in the movement for Aboriginal land rights in Australia, and led to the passing of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, which allowed Indigenous Australians to apply for freehold title to traditional lands in the Northern Territory.
Kelly and Carmody's lilting folk song, influenced by a long line of protest and folk songs, tells the tale of how a seemingly small protest became a matter of national significance. While the story is specific, the refrain is universal: "From little things, big things grow." It inspires others to take action, no matter how small it seems.
Paul Kelly recorded a version with his band The Messengers for their 1991 album, Comedy. Kev Carmody recorded it, with Kelly as guest vocalist, for his 1993 album Bloodlines.
"From Little Things Big Things Grow" has been performed and recorded by many different artists since, including John Butler, The Waifs, Jessica Mauboy, Electric Fields, and Ziggy Ramo, as well as American folk artist Joan Baez, during her 2013 Australian tour.
The GetUp Mob, organized by political advocacy group, GetUp!, released a contemporized version in 2008 that featured Carmody and Kelly, as well as a host of artists including Urthboy, Missy Higgins, Mia Dyson, Dan Sultan, and Ozi Batla, and peaked at number 4 on the ARIA singles chart.
This simple protest song has become a part of the fabric of Australian society and will no doubt continue to be shared and reinterpreted for years to come.
January 26 33:09
For many Aussies, Australia Day means summer, a day off work, a barbie, maybe going to the beach, probably a beer or two. For young people, it might include going to a music festival, or until recently, listening to the Hottest 100 countdown on Triple J. As well as being the anniversary of the First Fleet's arrival in Australia, it's a day where new Australians are welcomed at citizenship ceremonies, and we celebrate our high-achievers and heroes with Australia Day Honors and Australian of the Year Awards.
Observing Australia's national holiday, one that is intended to celebrate our nation and its diverse people, on a date that, for Indigenous Australians represents invasion, colonization and the beginning of genocide, has long been controversial.
This dissonance was brought into the public eye as early as 1938, the 150th anniversary of British settlement, when several progressive Aboriginal groups declared the 26th of January to be a day of Mourning and Protest. Their manifesto cried, <quote> "This festival of 150 years' so-called 'progress' in Australia commemorates also 150 years of misery and degradation imposed on the original native inhabitants by white invaders of this country." <unquote>
Ever since, protests have been held on Australia Day, decrying the treatment of Indigenous Australians and their lack of rights and autonomy. The day is often referred to as Invasion Day, or Survival Day. There have been repeated calls for the date of our national holiday to be changed, or to abolish it altogether.
In 2016, a song was released that brought even more attention to the issue, and although it hasn't yet resulted in a change to the national holiday, it did help bring about some real change.
A.B. Original is an Australian hip hop duo founded in 2016 whose name stands for Always Black, Original. Both members are Indigenous Australians – rapper Briggs is a Yorta Yorta man from Victoria and producer Trials is Ngarrindjeri from South Australia. The two met in the hip hop scene in the early 2000s and were naturally drawn to each other, being two of the very few Indigenous artists on the scene.
By 2016, both stars had risen. On the strength of his debut EP, Briggs was signed to the Hilltop Hoods' label Golden Era. He toured with the Hoods in Europe and subsequently released a couple of albums, the second of which found him collaborating with celebrated Indigenous artist, Dr. G. Yunupingu (who was, by the way, a later member of Yothu Yindi alongside his brother, Dr. M. Yunupingu, and went on to become an extremely celebrated solo artist in his own right). Briggs was also honing his writing and acting chops on ABC sketch show Black Comedy as well as landing a role in acclaimed drama series Cleverman, the first two seasons of which were actually scored by his A.B. Original partner, Trials.
Trials, born Daniel Rankine, came to prominence as MC and producer of hip hop act Funkoars, who recorded and toured consistently through the naughties. In 2013, they also signed to Golden Era Records, spawning a number 11 chart position with fourth album The Quickening. By 2016, Trials also had production credits with artists including Reason, Drapht, Seth Sentry, and Briggs himself, on his 2010 debut album The Blacklist.
So, with careers intertwined, the two decided to make it official as A.B. Original and set out to make a statement with their album, Reclaim Australia. The pair felt this could be Australia's answer to American hip hop groups Public Enemy or N.W.A., whose political rap were both controversial and immensely influential in the late 80s and early 90s. They invited artists including Caiti Baker, Dr. G. Yunupingu, Thelma Plum, Dan Sultan, Paul Kelly, and, as I mentioned earlier, Archie Roach, to contribute to their provocative opus, addressing issues affecting Indigenous Australia such as youth incarceration, racism, deaths in custody, and disparities in health and life expectancy.
The album's fifth and final single was called "January 26" and used a metaphor that most young people could relate to. Trials told the Huffington Post, <Quote> "We want to make people think from our perspective. Imagine if we had a holiday to piss on your nan's grave. We want people to take that and think 'yeah wow that's pretty disrespectful'. Now think about that as a whole, all your ancestors are having their deaths celebrated, then we can have a conversation." <unquote>
The track featured Dan Sultan on guest vocals and, like previous singles, received strong airplay on public youth radio station Triple J, which evidently felt the pressure from artists and the public to move the date of its annual Hottest 100 countdown from Australia Day. Shortly after the single's release in August, the station announced that the countdown would be broadcast on Australia Day the following year, however it would continue consulting with Indigenous communities, artists and its audience about the issue.
"January 26" was at the center of a social media campaign that encouraged people to vote for the song in the 2016 Hottest 100. It's impossible to say whether it was due to this campaign, the bouncy catchiness of the tune, or the message that resonated with Australia's youth, but the track landed at number 16 in the poll – an uncomfortable victory, given the date of the countdown. Briggs and Trials lent their support to the movement to change the countdown's date. Briggs told Triple J's Hack program, <quote> "I'm not saying that changing the date of the Hottest 100 is going to alleviate the trials and the oppression [of Indigenous people], but it would be a step forward, and a mark of solidarity, and a big move of the Australian music industry." <unquote>
After extensive consultation and a listener survey, Triple J did indeed change the date of the annual poll, to the fourth Saturday in January. Although this wasn't the ultimate goal of A.B. Original's song, it did demonstrate the power of music to effect social change and it helped build momentum towards potentially even bigger change in the future.
"January 26" and the Reclaim Australia album were widely acclaimed. The single won Song of the Year and Film Clip of the Year at the 2017 National Indigenous Music Awards, and Best Song and Best Video at the South Australian Music Awards. The top 10 album won ARIA, AIR, Music Victoria, South Australian Music and J Awards, as well as the prestigious Australian Music Prize.
In early 2017, another collective of Australian Hip Hop artists collaborated on a track called "Change the Date" – another effort to influence public perception and pressure the government to move the national holiday, in partnership with Indigenous TV channel, NITV. Twelve artists, including members of heavyweights The Herd, Koolism and Thundamentals, alongside Indigenous artists Kaylah Truth, Nooky, Birdz and Tasman Keith, traded no-holds-barred verses that addressed the many devastating effects of colonization and the incongruity of the national holiday.
Midnight Oil also included a track titled "Change The Date" featuring Dr. G. Yunupingu and Dan Sultan on their 2020 mini-album, The Makarrata Project. Yes – the Oils are still raising their voices in protest and solidarity, decades on from their eighties heyday.
Unfortunately, while public awareness of the issue of Australia Day has risen greatly, opinion is still divided. Polling shows a high appetite amongst young people to change the date to one more inclusive of all Australians, but older generations appear determined to ignore the plea, no matter the damage.
Anthem 45:02
Ok, so we've reached the point in the episode where I tend to lament the lack of female and diverse voices coming through in the story. Racial diversity is less of an issue here – it turns out members of minority, disadvantaged groups of society have a lot to protest about. But apart from Helen Reddy's feminist triumph back in the seventies, it was very hard to find women singing about political topics through most of Australia's pop history. I'm hoping you'll email me and tell me what I'm missing so I can do a follow-up, but I will say, it wasn't for lack of trying.
This male-dominated industry contains so much systemic sexism that for decades, women were not able to have careers singing about important issues. "Just sing about love and look sexy," they said. "No-one wants to listen to an angry woman," they said. "Tell that to Alanis Morissette," I say.
"And absolutely no-one wants to listen to a queer woman. Or an Indigenous one."
The barriers women, gay, and gender-diverse artists have faced in the relatively small pond of Australian music are real, and the cost is high. Who might have been a female Peter Garrett if given the chance? An Archie Roach? A Yothu Yindi? How many more incredible songs could we have had that opened Australia's hearts and minds to important issues, if women were given a chance to go toe-to-toe with the boys and speak up about injustices.
I have to give a band like Tiddas a lot of credit. Their literal existence can be seen as an act of protest. Being a trio of women, two of whom were Indigenous and one of whom was queer, singing acoustic folk songs during the '90s, when the airwaves were dominated by male-driven alternative rock, it's shocking they were able to have a career at all. They certainly met their fair share of resistance, although their striking blend of voices with something important to say perhaps made them the perfect antidote for those fed up with all the rock dogs.
Tiddas is a Koori word for "sisters," bestowed upon the trio of Amy Saunders, Lou Bennett and Sally Dastey, by the aforementioned Aboriginal singer-songwriter and partner of Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter.
Lou Bennett remembers being acutely aware of how out of place Tiddas were at their first Big Day Out festival performance, worried that they wouldn't be heard over big rock acts like Ramones and The Cruel Sea. It took a while to realize that they were chosen as an intentional respite from the wall of sound.
Tiddas didn't always sit easily with the activist and feminist labels given to them – in their eyes, they were just three friends who loved making beautiful harmonies together around their kitchen table. This is too often the burden of the first or only members of minorities to be in the spotlight – like it or not, they become the avatar for the cause, the spokesperson for the movement.
Tiddas' first few years was a whirlwind – for the first 2-3 years after forming in 1990, they were playing 200-400 shows a year. During one of their first NAIDOC weeks – which, by the way, stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, and today represents a week of celebrating and recognizing the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples – Tiddas played 6 shows in just one day.
"Anthem" was an album track from Tiddas' second and self-titled studio long player, and highest-charting album, released in 1996. Side note: I know this podcast has a high listenership within the Luscombe family, so I'll give a shout out to second-cousin Peter Luscombe who played the drums on this album. I dare say it won't be the only time his work is featured on this podcast, he's such a prolific figure on the Australian music scene.
Lou Bennett recalled Tiddas' performance of the protest song "Anthem" having a big impact live. At the aforementioned Big Day Out, it gave her goose bumps.
She later told Double J, <quote> "I remember singing this song and the reaction from the audience, knowing what we were singing about, and that we were singing predominantly to a non-Aboriginal audience... We could have been booed off stage or we could have been celebrated. Thankfully, we were celebrated and there were young people in the audience who were ready to take on that message."
"It gave people the opportunity to go yeah, unfortunately, Australia isn't fair. It's been founded on a lot of heartache and a lot of violence and we need to acknowledge that so the next generation understand where we're coming from and how we go about healing." <unquote>
Past Five Years 51:59
The musical output of the past 5 years or so gives me a lot of hope and optimism about the future of protest songs in Australia, especially with respect to women and diverse voices speaking up and out. An excellent Guardian article from 2018 name-checks quite a few modern-day political songs which, while maybe not huge hits to the extent of some of the others discussed on this episode, are no less powerful. A groundswell of independent and alternative artists addressing topical issues does its work to engage young, curious listeners and hopefully will eventually spill over into the mainstream.
Mo'Ju, formerly known as Mojo Juju, speaks of belonging, identity, displacement and erasure in their soulful 2018 single "Native Tongue," that featured The Pasefika Vitoria Choir. In Mo'Ju's words, it was, <quote> "expression of some complex emotions, such as grief for a loss of culture and Indigenous languages and other impacts of assimilation, colonisation and the white-washing of non-western cultures. This is not a song of self-pity, [but rather]... a song of self-empowerment." <unquote>
"Native Tongue" won Song of the Year at the National Indigenous Music Awards and its video won the J Award for Australian Video of the Year.
Thelma Plum's 2019 single "Better in Blak" was written about the Gamilaraay artist's experiences with people trying to remove color from the conversation. Plum's catchy rebuke won her the 2020 Vanda and Young Songwriting Competition. The song charted at number 9 on the Triple J hottest 100, which was the highest ever ranking of an Indigenous artist in the annual countdown.
In 2017, the #metoo movement upended Hollywood and many other industries, outing and ousting perpetrators of harassment and sexual violence against women. Hundreds of women in the Australian music industry spoke out about their horrifying experiences of sexual harassment and assault in their places of work. This prompted several Australian artists – notably Jaguar Jonze, Camp Cope and Stella Donnelly, to share their experiences in a public way. The former, through the media, and the latter two, through their music.
J Award nominee Camp Cope's 2018 single "The Opener" contained cutting lyrics detailing the belittlement female artists receive from misogynist bookers and promoters. Of course, this wasn't the first time the self-described power emo group had spoken out about related issues. In 2016, the band led a campaign called "It Takes One," to prevent and record sexual assault incidents at concerts and festivals. Their second single, released the same year, "Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams" spoke to the blind eyes and victim blaming that occur when women are harassed and assaulted.
It wasn't until December 2021 that the Australian music industry finally announced a national review investigating sexual harm, sexual harassment, and systemic discrimination in the contemporary music industry, after investigations into Sony and Universal's Australian operations resulted in several high-profile dismissals, including Sony Australia's CEO, Denis Handlin. Recommendations are due in August 2022 – watch this space.
Stella Donnelly's 2017 single, "Boys Will Be Boys" also called out victim blaming and rape culture, in an even more personal way. It was an intimate recounting of her friend's sexual assault story and her own confrontation of the perpetrator. The song's lullaby quality is a chilling contrast to the harrowing details shared and it drew attention at home and overseas, resonating with so many women who unfortunately have experience with sexual violence and feel shame, blame and helplessness.
In 2018, Courtney Barnett branched out from her deadpan tales of urban ennui with the track "Nameless, Faceless," which poignantly contrasted men's fears of being ridiculed by women with women's fears of being murdered by men.
Another issue brought to light in 2017 was marriage equality and the rights of members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Jen Cloher's 7-minute, 45-second epic, "Analysis Paralysis," criticized parliament for their lack of decisive action on this and other issues.
Zimbabwean-born, Melbourne-based artist, Kudzai Chirunga, now simply known as Kudzai, released "4 Deep In the Suburbs" in 2018, in response to the media and politicians' inflammatory reporting and commentary on crime, suggesting a quote-unquote "African gang crisis." This was strongly disputed by Victoria Police, but caused a real crisis of safety for Melbourne's African population, particularly those originally from South Sudan.
And speaking of immigration issues – let's round out this episode with a beautiful 2016 story-song by Missy Higgins, "Oh Canada," which tells the tragic tale of a little Syrian boy who died at sea, while attempting to seek asylum in Canada. While Higgins' heartfelt pleas ring out to our colonial counterparts in the Northern Hemisphere, Australian listeners can't help but reflect on our own country's appalling treatment of asylum seekers.
Outro 1:05:46
I hope you've enjoyed the second part of our exploration of Australian political and protest songs. I know these topics were heavy, especially at a time when the future can look kind of bleak, but it felt like the right time to tell these stories and honor the artists who had the courage to use their art to make a difference.
If you want to hear the songs we played again, check out the Cara Diaria page on Spotify – you'll find a playlist featuring all the tunes, plus playlists from previous My Kind of Scene episodes.
What topic would you like us to explore next? I'd love to hear your episode ideas. Send me an email at My Kind of Scene Pod [@] gmail.com.
Thanks for listening to My Kind Of Scene. This episode was written, recorded and produced by Cara Diaria. Theme music by Cara Diaria. Source links are in the show notes. If you enjoyed it, please rate and review us, and tell your friends.