Middle-class urban kids dancing to Aboriginal music? It would have seemed impossible a generation ago. Larry Schwartz examines the popular push towards black rock.
WHILE grandmother vamped it up at the piano, uncles strummed guitars and sang. There was “a lot of love and a lot of togetherness”, says Richard Frankland.
The Melbourne musician was reminded of Christmas as a boy when he returned recently to a funeral at his Western Districts’ home. Cousin John, “a great singer/ songwriter”, was there. So was cousin Monty, and his wife, Betty, who play music at Adelaide schools. Also, Frankland’s musician
sister, Amy, and brother, Wally.
“I looked around and all the people in our age bracket were musicians, artists and they were talented people,” says the 28-year-old vocalist and guitarist in a 10-piece Melbourne rock band called Djaambi.
“I thought: `Well jeez, if we’d have grown up with the opportunities that a non-Aboriginal kid normally gets, then perhaps we would be even more forwards in the music industry now.”‘ Half of Djaambi’s members are Aborigines. The band’s name means “brother”. Frankland describes its
music as “Koorie rock”. “We sing about the land,” he says. “We sing about love. We sing about commitment to people. We sing about the hurt … deaths in custody, we sing about that. We sing a multitude of things.” Djaambi opened for Prince in Melbourne and Sydney recently and have
recorded an EP, tentatively called `Misfits and Miscreants Programme One’. It is among a host of bands cautiously heartened by the success of Aboriginal performers such as Yothu Yindi, Kev Carmody and Archie Roach.
Mushroom Records claims Yothu Yindi has sold more than 140,000 copies of its latest album, `Tribal Voice’. The band that this year collected five ARIA awards, has secured a contract with Hollywood Records, a new US label that is part of the Disney corporation.
“We’re going places, mate,” says its leader, Mandawuy Yunupingu, whose four daughters recently collaborated in song with Jimmy Barnes’ children (`The Tin Lids’).
Numerically at least, Archie Roach’s achievements seem more modest. He has sold around 15,000 of his debut, `Charcoal Lane’, but is now among Australia’s most widely respected singer/songwriters.
Now on the road with Joan Armatrading in America, playing 2000 to 3000 capacity venues, `City Pages’, in Minneapolis, enthuses at his “exquisite writings on personal and political struggles …” The `San Francisco Examiner’ talks of his “songs performed with almost frightening intensity”.
`Billboard’ magazine proclaims “the arrival of a stunning talent”.
Though there has not before been this level of attention, Aboriginal bands such as No Fixed Address, Coloured Stone and Scrap Metal have long been knocking at the door of Australian mainstream music.
What chance of a breakthrough for the likes of Djaambi or, say, the Melbourne trio, Tiddas, now that kids in dance clubs are yelling “Treaty Now!” along with Yothu Yindi?
What chance of success, for that matter, for a host of others around the country, including the many talented but little known Northern Territory bands with little access to urban airwaves? The Wirringya Band, from Galiwinku? The Sunrise Band, from Maningrida? The Wairuk Band, in Daly
River?
MANDAWUY Yunupingu sees the success of his band’s work, which makes more use of traditional music than many, as proof that the mainstream here is waking up to the fact “our music is equal to the rest of the world”.
Of course, it is naive to assume that others are assured of a foot in the door, particularly when so-called Aboriginal rock is diverse, incorporating rock, reggae, country and traditional music, played by people from different tribal and linguistic groups?
Among the bands at the recent Stompem Ground Festival at Broome, Scrap Metal has been around since the mid-1980s. Rhythm guitarist and vocalist, Steve Pigram, 32, has been playing in bands since he was 16.
In the early 1980s, he was among the members of a Broome band called Kuckles and collaborated with Jimmy Chi on the musical, `Bran Nue Dae’, that tells the story of an Aboriginal boy’s flight from the city to his traditional land.
Pigram says Scrap Metal borrowed heavily to put out there first two albums, `Just Looking’ and `Broken Down Man’, plus a $25,000 video. A third, self-titled, was released by ABC Records. But the lack of commercial success was such that Pigram and band members (including Steve’s brothers, Alan, David and Philip) returned to day jobs five months ago .
“Prior to that, for five or six years we were full out into the music,” says Pigram, who now counsels Aboriginal youth for Broome CES. “It’s a bit hard when nothing comes of it and your wives and kids start saying: `why don’t you make some money?’. It’s a bit hard.” Others in the group had
trades to fall back on, panelbeaters, electricians, a mechanic.
Pigram says the band’s relative isolation has undermined its chances of success. “Record companies want you to tour to back the record up, obviously. We can see the point. But when you’re based in Broome and you have to fly around the country, I mean, as soon as we jump on a plane and
go to Sydney it’s $5000. And who’s going to pay for it? They don’t seem to like that idea.” Aboriginal bands are also disadvantaged because publicans are reluctant to engage them to perform, says Mark Manolis, a sound engineer recording at the Alice Springs studios of CAAMA Music (the Central
Australian Aboriginal Association).
Scrap Metal’s Steve Pigram believes a close connection with tradition enjoyed by Yothu Yindi, most of whose members are from the Gamutj clan in the remote Yirrkala region of Arnhem Land, 600 kilometres east of Darwin, has given them an image that has
become a convenient “gimmick” for marketing purposes.
(At Mushroom, executive Simon Baeyertz acknowledges the value of the Yothu Yindi image at a time when, as he puts it, it is “harder and harder for anything to stand out and say `hi”‘. He cites other factors including Mandawuy Yunupingu’s charismatic performance, strength of the music
and savvy of its Darwin-based manager).
Though Pigram learned a little of his traditional language, Yawuru, from his grandmother, he says the culture in Broome was regarded as “a taboo thing, sort of stamped out from the town areas”. In outlying areas where the likes of Mandawuy Yunupingu grew up, he says, “the culture is a
bit stronger”.
“Not all Aboriginal bands will be incorporating that amount of traditional stuff with the contemporary stuff,” the guitarist says. “I hope that people who are opening the doors do not expect all bands to have that same (Yothu Yindi’s) approach to it. Hopefully they’ll accept Aboriginal bands
for whatever kind of music they play.” Mainstream interest in Aboriginal bands gained momentum when non-Aboriginal bands started to pay attention to their sounds. Bands such as Goanna and Midnight Oil. The latter toured outback communities around the country with the Warumpi
Band in 1986. They are said to have enjoyed a mixed response: a walkout at Docker River; enthused crowds dancing to their beat at Yuendumu.
The popularity of `Diesel and Dust’, the 1987 album inspired by the tour, could only have intensified an interest in outback sound and imagery, reinforced soon afterwards by the CBS double-album, `Building Bridges’, featuring both non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal performers _ No Fixed
Address, Areyonga Desert Tigers, Scrap Metal, Coloured Stone, Ilkarimaru, to name a few Aboriginal bands.
Guitarist Steve Connolly, of the Messengers, has produced Kev Carmody’s second album, `Eulogy’, and co-produced (with Paul Kelly) Archie Roach’s `Charcoal Lane’.
Roach was a little-known performer when Connolly saw him play `Took The Children Away’ on SBS three years ago. Struck by his obvious talent, he enlisted the support of Paul Kelly. Roach would open for the Messengers at Melbourne Concert Hall.
Connolly and Kelly managed to convey their enthusiasm to Mushroom. `Charcoal Lane’ was the first album on a Mushroom label, Aurora, for acoustic-based music, which has since featured (non-Aboriginal) performers such as Chris Wilson and will soon bring out an album by Roach’s
partner, Ruby Hunter.
Yothu Yindi (the name means “child and mother”) came to the fore in a relatively short time. Two years after the band formed in 1986, it was already touring the US with Midnight Oil.
Others, such as Us Mob, No Fixed Address, Coloured Stone and the Malandarri Band, from Borooloola, south-east of Darwin, have enjoyed only limited success.
They were among the bands whose members benefited from stints at the University of Adelaide-based Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM), founded in the early 1970s by Dr Cath Ellis, then professor of Music at the Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide.
An ethno-musicologist, Dr Ellis had done research at Indulkana in the 1960s among the Pitjantjatjara. CASM, officially founded in 1975, has helped strengthen links between urban and traditional music.
One of its teachers, Ron Nicholls, arrived only months before Steve Pigram, who was there with the Broome group, Kuckles, in 1981 and 1982.
Nicholls says the success of some high-profile Aboriginal bands has inspired some students now studying three-year diplomas at CASM (the course features traditional singing, theory of music, ethno-musicology and at least two instruments).
But he is concerned that commercial success may be detrimental and the occasional student succumbs to a phenomenon he describes as the “star complex”. Just because we now have a few highly paid rock musicians does not necessarily mean this is the way to go, he says.
Highly paid? Not according to Mandawuy Yunupingu. “We’re still poor,” says Yunupingu, who has taken time off work as a school principal to further his musical career. “We’re still waiting for the money to turn over, you know.” Baeyertz, of Mushroom (and Aurora), explains that a lot of the
money from record sales would have gone to Hollywood Records, which had underwritten their costly North American tours.
He is incensed at the failure to secure a Government grant for Archie Roach’s US tour on the grounds that it is commercial _ Mushroom has had to foot the bill _ and says there is a misconception in the local Aboriginal community that Roach must now surely be rich.
Mandawuy Yunupingu, his teacher wife and family live in a rented Government house. He says he hopes eventually to make enough to be comfortable and build a larger house. But much of the money his band earns will go to their Gamutj community.
“When we were talking to the A & R (artists and repertoire) person from America _ she came out bush _ she said it’ll take something like a year for the money to start turning …
“But I’m already rich anyway. I’m rich in my culture. My land … nothing can take that away from me.” YOTHU YINDI, which has two non-Aboriginal members (formerly from a Darwin band, the Swamp Jockeys), has taken care not to betray tradition in the sound and imagery of its music.
“We operate at two levels,” Yunupingu says. “One is the restricted, the forbidden element. Things that only initiated people can understand.
The other is public knowledge … for women and children and … white man can join in.” So there is an aspect of his culture which will forever remain inaccessible to outsiders? “Yes. Like I’ll never be a white man and a white man is never going to be you.” Such is the diversity of influences,
says Richard Franklin, who has a day job with Oz Music researching employment in the music industry, there is “no real generic form of Aboriginal music”.
However, he sees a common factor in artists as diverse as Carmody, Roach, Joe Geia, Tiddas, Lucy Cox and Ruby Hunter, in the attempt to articulate to non-Aboriginals “basically what happened to us over the last 200 years, what happened to us before
then”.
“They’re all fantastic artists. Everyone of them is an artist in their own right. And they are all saying the same thing, and singing the same thing, that every other Aboriginal artist in Australia is.” He sees no necessary compromise in the fact that a popular “filthy lucre” dance remix of the video
for Yothu Yindi’s `Treaty’ omits most of the English lyrics and imagery, including Bob Hawke playing a didgeridoo and throwing a spear. Mushroom’s Baeyertz says the changes were made for musical and aesthetic, not political, reasons.
Asked about the intended impact of `Treaty’, Mandawuy Yunupingu says: “Yothu Yindi is trying to bring about understanding in order to make it easy for the white man, to give them access to our world.” He says there are many ways to deal with racism in Australia and he deliberately sought
a moderate approach after being ejected from a St Kilda bar this year. (“They picked the wrong bloke, he says. “I’ve got a big mouth.”) Instead of seeking redress through the courts or Human Rights Commission, he had insisted only on a public apology on TV.
Similarly, aware of the responsibilities of the limelight, Djaambi’s Richard Franklin insists his band has more than just stardom in its sights. “Sure every young band wants to be big and they all have dreams and aspirations,” he says. “I think in
us achieving that, it’s a different thing again from a non-Aboriginal band achieving it.
“With us it serves a multi-purpose. Sure it satiates our own needs and desires to one degree on a personal basis … Particularly if Koorie kids and non-Koorie kids see black and white kids performing together, maybe we can curb some racism in the future. Maybe we are going to change
attitudes.”
The Sunday Age, 18th of October 1992
Larry Schwartz Writer 