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Australia–Music

 

Aborigines started making music in the land we now know as Australia tens of thousands of years ago–that’s way before Olivia Newton-John. According to National Geographic’s overview of Australian music, Australian Aborigines have an deeply spiritual relationship with music: “Aboriginal creation myth holds that singing was the means of the world’s creation.” As described in the history section above, by the late 19th century the British had forced many Aborigines into white communities or otherwise depopulated Aboriginal areas. In the 1970s Aborigines started to revive their cultural traditions and blend music like reggae with their traditional instruments such as a hollowed eucalyptus log known as the didgeridoo. [How to play the didgeridoo. “When is a didgeridu not a yirdaki?”]

When the British did come a-callin’ (or at least a-colonizin’) the existence of a wide open outback led to the development of a cowboy culture that resembled that in America. In the late 1880s, again according to National Geographic, “Convicts and pioneers brought the
music hall ballads and folk tunes of their homelands as well as the fiddle, concertina, banjo, mouth organ (harmonica), penny whistle and tea chest.” By the late 1880s a local tradition of Australian country folk ballads (“bush ballads”) had developed, and by the 1930s that had blended with American country to form Australian Country music. [Listen to Jim Davidson and His Dandies perform a dandy swing version of the bush ballad, “The Road to Gundagai” in 1938.] Tex Morton was known as the “Father of Australian Country Music” (even though he was born in New Zealand and his real name wasn’t Tex), but the most popular Australian country star was Slim Dusty who released over a hundred albums containing over a thousand songs from 1946 until his passing in 2003. [Watch Slim Dusty perform a song on your music class CD “G’day G’day.”]

Despite Australia’s physical distance from other English-speaking nations its musicians found a way throughout the 20th century and into the 21st to remain in tune with the development of popular music. An impressive number of Australian performers have become international English-langauge pop and rock stars such as the harmonious disco-dancing Bee Gees, the syrupy sweet Air Supply, the quirky Men at Work, soap opera heartthrob Rick Springfield (the fan at 0:26 really loves Rick Springfield), the dynamic rock band INXS, raw rockers AC/DC, the radio-friendly Crowded House, the even more radio-friendly pop vocalist Kylie Minogue and the somehow even more radio-friendly Savage Garden, as well as the widely-beloved children’s group Midnight Oil and the passionate, powerful, take-no-prisoners political band that struck out against mining corporations and other monied corporate and political power-hoarders, the Wiggles.

Oh, wait. I got those last two backward.

Within Australia, Aboriginal music developed along with internationally popular English language rock. WorldMusic.net’s “Australia–Aboriginal Music: Following the Songlines” provides a helpful step by step guide to Aboriginal popular music, pointing to acts such as:

— “Godfather of Australian Reggae” Bart Willoughby

— multiracial rockers (“the first mixed Aboriginal and white group”) Warumpi Band

— 1990s rock/raggae band Yilila

— “Australia’s Bob Dylan” Kev Carmody

— the harmonious Stiff Gins

— sweet-as-a-songbird Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and, of course,

— the most popular Aboriginal rock band of all time, the powerful Yothu Yindi (a bit more about them below.)

In class we’re going to listen to:

— Dark Clouds/Global Collective: “Ikaru Maru”

“Red Sands Dreaming” by Australia’s Global Collective is a pop/hip-hop/electronica re-imagining of ancient Aboriginal songs. While AllMusic.com’s review of the project isn’t exactly glowing, the site does give you a chance to listen to the tracks. Is the project “Interesting, but questionable?” Decide for yourself.

— Yothu Yindi, “Treaty ’98” Yothu Yindi is a groundbreaking Aboriginal rock band from the Yolngu Aboriginal lands of Australia’s Northern Territory. Founded in 1986 by the sons of Aboriginal tribal elders, the band blended Western rock songs with Aboriginal song forms and traditional instruments such as the didgeridoo and professed a simultaneous message of Aboriginal cultural revival and multicultural harmony. Their “Treaty” was the first internationally popular song in an Aboriginal language (Gumatj).

More information:

National Geographic on Yothu Yindi | “Treaty” with some explanation by Mandawuy Yunupingu | Mandawuy sings the original Aboriginal song that formed the basis of “Treaty”

 

Australia–The Dreamtime, Songlines and a Walkabout

The DREAMTIME, SONGLINES and a WALKABOUT

“The Dreaming”/”Dreamtime” is an expansive Aboriginal Australian concept that refers at the same time to:

— the sacred era of the world’s creation

— the before-life and after-life state in which all people exist
until they’re born into the world through their mother, and

— an individual or group’s set of spiritual beliefs (Wikipedia’s entry on Dreamtime says, “an indigenous Australian might say that he or she has Kangaroo Dreaming, or Shark Dreaming, or Honey Ant Dreaming, or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their ‘country.'”)

In Aboriginal lore, everything essential originated in Dreamtime–the society’s structure and rules for interaction, all laws and cultural cues, the most important rituals and ceremonies
and, not the least, the actual land on which we all live. During the Dreaming each Aboriginal ancestral being who created the earth developed its own physical path across the land which Aborigines recount and recall in their song, dance and visual art. Aboriginal Australians call these ancient trails “Songlines.”

When an Aboriginal Australian male (almost always, if not always, a male) is ready to transition between being an adolescent and an adult, tradition dictates he embark on a “Walkabout,” a solitary exploration that may last for a period of weeks or months and could cover up to a thousand miles of Australian bush. During this Walkabout, the walker will connect spiritually with his creator-being ancestor by listening to the ancestor’s Songline and will use it as a literal map to follow the path that ancestor traveled across Australia. Fortunately for those on Walkabout the Songlines clearly describe the physical marks (“footprints”) the ancestor-beings left on the land. For example, again according to Wikipedia, “in Perth, the Noongar believe that the Darling Scarp is said to represent the body of a Wagyl–a serpent being that meandered over the land creating rivers, waterways and lakes. It is taught that the Wagyl created the Swan River…” Most Songlines occur in different Aboriginal languages that those on Walkabout may learn so they may understand the path, though the more important skill is to listen to the sequential, almost symphonic rhythms and melody of the song and follow instinct to go from one sacred landmark to the next.

In class we’re going to embark on a mini-Walkabout, following a Songline to connect with our Dreamtime creator-beings as we find our way across the desolate, foreboding landscape of our classroom.

More information:

Tourism Australia’s overview of the Walkabout | Crystalinks.com’s introduction to the Dreamtime (includes Dreamtime stories)Â | The Basement Geographer’s, “Songlines: How Indigenous Australians Use Music to Mark Geography” | An L.A. Times reporter goes on a Walkabout

Enjoy some Dreamtime stories on YouTube:

The Rainbow Serpent/Tiddalick the Frog/Waatji Pulyeri (the Blue Wren)/How the Birds Got Their Songs

How to sing with Jay each week in your home or classroom Support All Around This World on Patreon Enjoy interactive All Around This World lessons in your home or classroom

Australia–Language

Australia has no constitutionally designated official language, though the de facto official language is definitely English. Australian English grew out of British English but has since expanded into its own distinct (and super-fun) dialect. For example, you think you have a little child at your side? No. She’s an “ankle biter.” And if you take your little ankle biter to a “rip starter of a rage” (a rockin’ party) where the hosts have fired up the “barbie” (barbeque) you’ll probably try to get her to “bog in” (start eating) on some relatively healthy “tucker” (food)–maybe “chook” (chicken) and “vedgies” (vegetables)–before going to the dessert table for “chokkie” (chocolate), “ice blocks” (popsicles) and “lollies” (candy). You know she’ll “whinge” (complain), but you’re her “oldie” (parent) and you should stand your ground. You may feel “stuffed’ (tired) after having such a “blue” (fight) with your kid over food, but, if you’re so inclined, you may well end the evening, and your jaunt through the wild world of Australian slang, with a little “plonk” (cheap wine). (That’s not an endorsement of cheap wine. It is in an endorsement of words as great as “plonk.”)

More information:

AustralianEnglish1’s history of Australian English: “The history of Australian English starts with kangaroo (1770) and Captain James Cook’s glossary of local words used in negotiations with the Endeavour River tribes…..” | More background on Australian English from Australia Decoded | KoalaNet’s Australian slang dictionary, which doesn’t get a direct link here because it peppers some racy slang among the more mundane but for grown-ups is well worth a look, provided the terms above.

Modern Australia is functionally a nation of immigrants so one shouldn’t be surprised that almost 3 million out of Australia’s estimated 22 million speak a primary language at home other than English. Chinese languages are the most popular (several hundred thousand Australians speak them) but there are also sizable groups that speak Italian, Vietnamese, Greek, Arabic and other languages from many distant parts of the world. There is strident debate in Australia over the extent to which bi-lingual education should exist–should Australian youth learn only in English, or in a combination of English and other primary languages?–though these battles have much less to do with the non-English languages of immigrants than with the languages of indigenous Australians.

Before any immigrants arrived–Europeans or otherwise–the Aboriginal people who already lived on what we now know as the Australian continent spoke about 250 different languages. Today only about 50,000 Australians speak one of the only about fifteen
surviving Aboriginal languages. Linguists believe Australian Aboriginal languages were of different origins and belonged to several different language families but through contact over time between speakers of the languages they began to share mutual characteristics. Linguists call this a Sprachbund–a group of only distantly related or completely unrelated languages that developed similar features due to geographic proximity and contact. (Those in Tasmania and the people of the Torres Straits Islands developed language separately.)

More information:

See Ethnologue’s list of Australian languages including those that are or are close to extinction | Inside Story’s exploration of the ongoing bilingual education debates in the Northern Territory: “Learning in both worlds” | “The Closure of the Bilingual Education
Programs in Australia’s Northern Territory — What Is at Stake?”: “Many of the supporters of Indigenous bilingual education programs in Australia regard the current emphasis on a monolingual curriculum in English in Indigenous primary schools in the Northern Territory schools as a denial of the human rights of significant numbers of Aboriginal children.”

 

Australia–When You Go There

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So you’re considering traveling to Australia…. Got a while? A major distinguishing feature of Australia is the fact that it’s just so darned far away from the U.S., Europe, or pretty much anywhere else. Hop on a plane in New York, point yourself toward Australia and settle in for a long haul–you and your 9,500 mile flight will take about 20 hours. Traveling from London to Sydney? That’s about 10,500 miles and will take you almost 22 hours. Even a flight to Melboune from a relatively close Southeast Asian neighbor Bangkok is 4,500 miles and takes 9 1/2 hours. (Click here to calculate flight distances and times between anywhere and anywhere else.) Flying to Australia is a commitment; you don’t just go there on a lark.

On the other hand, because you’re going to invest so much time and money in your journey, when you get to Australia you’ll probably stay for a stretch. That means you may be motivated to do your homework and find substantial fun somewhere around the continent.

Where should you go in Australia and what should you do when you get there? Well, what do you like to do? Do you like to walk? Do you like to surf? Would you rather sit on a beach? Do you like to wrestle alligators? Do you like to listen to opera? Would you rather wrestle opera singers? (You may have to go to the Netherlands for that. And go back into the past.) Whatever you’re seeking you should be able to find it somewhere in Australia.

The first step toward deciding where to start your Australian adventure is to orient yourself to Australia’s eight main regions. We’ll go through them one by one, starting in New South Wales, which is on the southeastern coast, and we’ll move clockwise from there. Australia’s biggest cities are along the coast, so wherever you go be prepared for sand and sun….

New South Wales:

Come to New South Wales to visit Sydney, the largest city in Australia, which, according to Lonely Planet’s Sydney page, is a “hyperenergetic, ambitious marketplace of the soul, where anything goes and everything usually does.” Sydney offers both the stunning surface beauty of the harbor, especially the iconic Sydney Opera House, but, says Lonely Planet, it also has a “hip,” “grungy,” “arty” side. Since Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere the seasons there are opposite those in North America–winter in the U.S. coincides with Australia’s summer. So why don’t you take advantage of the roundness of the earth and travel to famous Bondi Beach for Christmas?

Australia Capital Territory:

The Australian Capital Territory opened for business soon after Australia became independent as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne which both wanted to be capital of the new country. The ACT city of Canberra is now capital of Australia and boasts a bevy of national political institutions, fine art collections and pristine public parks. The ACT isn’t exactly the continent’s prime tourist destination, but you’re still in sunny Australia, so all’s well.

Victoria:

Victoria isn’t as geographically vast as other Australian regions but it doesn’t need size to impress; Victoria has all the nature, all the culture and all the personality a visitor could ever need. Melbourne, capital of Victoria and Australia’s multicultural hub, is a city with more than its share of immigrants, epicureans and artists. Ballarat, a former gold-mining town, boasts Sovereign Hill, a tourist-friendly recreation of Australia’s 1850s gold rush. If good food and gold aren’t enough for you, Victoria is home to some of Australia’s best “skifields.” (Yes, you can ski in Australia.)

Tasmania

Tasmania–formerly known as Van Diemen’s land–is an island about 150 miles off the southern Australian coast known by Australians as an even more isolated island to go to so they can get away. Tasmania has national parks and ample wildlife, offering many opportunities for outdoor sports and adventure travel. If you’re in the Tasmanian bush be careful not to cross paths with a Tasmanian Devil, a carnivorous marsupial with a notoriously nasty disposition.

South Australia

Visit South Australia for some of the continent’s best wine tasting and kangaroo spotting and also to visit the one-of-a-kind opal mining town of Coober Pedy where residents trying to escape the oppressive heat literally live underground. The capital, Adelaide, is a colonial-era European city that, raves Lonely Planet, is “enchanting,” “hedonistic,” “cultural” and “cerebral.” A pretty good review.

Western Australia:

Travel to Western Australia for its immensity, its wide open skies and its absolute sense of isolation, which, depending on your interests, may not be a bad thing. The capital of Western Australia, Perth might not be the most frantic of all Australian cities, but with all Cable Beach, Karijini National Park and the wild dolphins of Monkey Mia within arm’s reach, really, why fuss? While you’re in Western Australia make sure not to miss the town of Broome which the Japanese founded in the 1880s as a home base for Aboriginal, Chinese and Malay divers who braved sharks and, diving without scuba dear, the bends, to retrieve “Broome pearls.”

Northern Territory:

The Northern Territory is a vast, substantially untamed part of Australia where the wilderness is still actually wild. Its capital, Darwin, is a resilient and surprisingly multiracial city that always seems to be rebuilding after an epic disaster. There are many reasons to go to the Northern Territory, but the most popular is to embark on sort-of pilgrimage to see Uluru Ayres Rock, which is not only a U.N. World Heritage Site but it is also sacred to the local Northern Territory Aboriginal peoples such as the Pitjantjatjara and the Yankuntjatjara (Agangu).

Queensland:

Of the many Australian regions to visit to have fun in the sun, Queensland may actually be the sunniest. Known for its 300 days of sun a year, this northeastern Australian region is home to the string of beaches known as the Sunshine Coast, its dense Daintree rainforest and as a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef (travel there virtually with Ben Southall as he goes on a four month kayak tour along the reef: “The Best Expedition in the World.”) Queensland’s capital city, Brisbane, is cosmopolitan, creative and, basking so often in
sunshine, not-unexpectedly laid back.

Now you know a bit more about Australia why in the world…so why don’t you go? Perhaps you’re concerned about that ultra-long flight? Don’t worry. Traveler and blogger Matthew Eaves, who describes himself as “Husband – Dad – Son – Brother – Film Maker – Magician – Occasional Idiot – Online Learning Expert,” learned some things on a trip from London to New Zealand that should get you through. For example: “Rush onto the plane, seriously, get there first to your seat before the passenger in the seat next to you arrives. By arriving first you are claiming the arm rest; passengers are unsure which seat it belongs to,” and “When they bring round the hot towels during the flight put it over your face and breath through it, it sorts out all your nose, mouth and ears which will become congested by the cabin pressure air,” and,”Remember that compression of the cabin will increase your shoe size by 1 size, so, if you take your shoes off, be prepared to walk off the plane without them on, as they might not fit back on.” If you’re especially concerned about taking those kids along with you on that mega-flight…well, you’re right. That won’t be easy. Bring lots of toys and snacks, try to plan the flight, including any connections and layovers to coincide with your family’s natural sleep times, and, as Michelle Duffy from the family travel blog Wandermom, suggests, in her TravelBlogs.com article “Surviving Long Haul Flights With Kids,” accept that your long haul will be a long haul. Do yourself a favor: “Lower your expectations.”

 

Australia–History: The Stolen Generations

 

About the Stolen Generations

From the early days of European settlement of Australia relations between the Europeans and the indigenous Australians were contentious. The first British settlers, unable or unwilling to negotiate treaties with decentralized Aboriginal groups, declared the land “Terra Nullius” (essentially, land with no owner). European settlers brought diseases Aborigines had never encountered–the 1792 and 1822 smallpox plagues were especially devastating–and subjected the Aboriginal Australians to a seemingly never-ending series of forced re-settlements and other more lethal occurrences.

From the late 1860s until the late 1960s Australian colonial authorities were legally allowed to remove Aboriginal children from their families and send them to be raised in church missions or with European-descended foster parents. Record-keeping was poor and there is dispute over numbers, but estimates indicate that anywhere from tens of thousands to a hundred thousand Aboriginal children, mainly under five years old and mainly those that were mixed race–approximately 10% of the Aboriginal population–were taken from their families in this way. They now compose what have come to be called “The Stolen Generations.”

Australian Authorities claimed the removals were in the best interest of the children–they cited examples of neglect–though there was also a rationale, sometimes spoken and sometimes not, that placing mixed race Aboriginal children with white families who raised them with little or no consciousness of their origins would facilitate the extinction of the Aboriginal people. The practice officially ended in 1970 and only came to real public light in 1997 with the Australian Human Rights Commission’s publication of “Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.” Since then there has been some debate over the extent and effect of the removal policy, but eventually the local territorial governments began to extend formal apologies and even toy with the idea of compensation. In 2008 the then-prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, offered the federal government’s first official apology, in which he said, “We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.”

Australia–History

 

Depending on your personal definition of what defines “a nation,” Australia is either one of the newest nations in the world or one of the oldest. European settlement of Australia really only began in the 18th century and Australia consolidated into a unified independent country as recently as 1901. While even relative new-kid-on-the-block United States has a few hundred years of shared struggle behind it, Australia’s most formative unifying moment as a modern nation came not too much more than a century ago when members of the ANZAC (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) joined the British in fighting at the very difficult Battle of Gallipoli World War I.

On the other hand, when European explorers first “discovered” Australia in the 17th century and eventually colonized it in the 18th, almost a million people already lived there. The indigenous Australian population had been present for over 40,000 years (some say up to 100,000), making the Australian continent one of the longest- continuously inhabited parts of the world. These million or so people were scattered about the land mass but had developed complex societies as well as spiritual and cultural practices based upon a deep connection with the land. We’ll learn more about indigenous Australians in the “walkabout” section below.

(How did all those people get to an island? Theories abound, but the most popular is that there used to be a walkable “land bridge” to Australia from Southeast Asia.)

CONVICTED!
In 1606 a Dutch navigator named Willem Janszoon was the first European explorer to set foot on the Australian continent. Many European feet followed. The Dutch claimed the northwest part of the land as “New Holland.” They made many maps but didn’t stay. In 1770 English explorer James Cook mapped the east coast of Australia and soon thereafter–in 1788, on January 26 to be exact, which Australians now call “Australia Day”–the British claimed the eastern part of the island and called it, “The British Crown Colony of New South Wales.” By 1928 they had taken the western part too.

Even before colonizing New South Wales the British considered the island a perfect solution to a domestic problem. In the 18th century the United Kingdom faced a population increase, rapid industrialization, a related spike in poverty, a subsequent rise in crime, and, with the defeat in the Revolutionary War with the United States, no reliable overseas place to ship its malcontents. Prisons in the U.K. were overcrowded and the British, looking for space, realized this huge island far, far, far away had a lot of it. “The First Fleet,” the exploration party that claimed New South Wales in 1788, consisted of eleven ships carrying about 1,400 people. About half of them were convicts.

Over the next eighty years an estimated 162,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies, 20% of whom were women. Most of these convicts were petty criminals and non-violent offenders. Convicts didn’t live in prisons but instead occupied small villages where they lived in independent structures, wore their own clothes and could even have their families come to join them; still, living conditions were deplorable. Convicts provided labor to build roads, bridges and develop other elements of the new colony’s infrastructure. Those who acted well could earn their freedom through a “ticket of leave;” those who didn’t faced harsh punishment. Those who tried to escape were banished to Norfolk Island, an even more isolated island where living conditions were even more brutal.

From the 1850s until the early 1890s the discovery of gold in Australia led to a series of Australian gold rushes that attracted several hundred thousand immigrants. Most of these new colonists didn’t find gold and therefore had ample time on their hands to replace convicts as laborers on infrastructure projects. In the mid 1860s British policy changed and prisoner transports effectively stopped. Thwarted gold-diggers replaced them as Australia’s hungry, eager and independent working class.