Singing Pain
Aboriginal Music and the Stolen Generation.
"Before I go, before I leave, I want to go back to my Mother's country and bring back its songlines. I'm a songman among my people and I have to start fulfilling that role.” Archie Roach.
"Before I go, before I leave, I want to go back to my Mother's country and bring back its songlines. I'm a songman among my people and I have to start fulfilling that role.” Archie Roach.
Historically
significant events that hold particular meaning for all Australian Aboriginal
communities, such as deaths in custody, land rights and the Stolen Generation
can be conveyed in song as both a form of protest and expression of identity.
Just as the events themselves occupy thier own space in time – and perhaps form a site of significance - so
too can those songs that describe such events. Such songs can be shared, to
become woven into a societal fabric crossing cultural boundaries. As an
example of the core Aboriginal values of country and kinship, and the attendant
integral concept of songlines, Archie Roach’s song “Took the Children Away” becomes one that exists within a space layered with multiple meanings.
Archie Roach is a
songman for his people, variously described by other indigenous and
non-indigenous musicians as someone who brings belief to his art, balances
western and Aboriginal beliefs and simplifies complex feelings and emotions for
Aboriginal people.Archie’s 1992 song “Took the Children Away” describes his experience of forced
removal from his parents by government authorities at the Framlingham mission in
Victoria in 1959. In 1996 22% of the Australian Aboriginal population are reported to have been removed from their families. Archie’s story is one of kinship and country, inextricably linked with a specific point
in time that represents great pain and suffering for many Aboriginal peoples.
He has expressed the facts of the story simply in song and may even have done so in such a
way that adheres to traditional protocols of singing the land.
Mandawuy
Yunipingu, a musician and educator from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory,
has described his approach to music as being one that satisfied ideas of
following and honouring the ancestral precedent of his people. His people, the Yolngu, are the indigenous occupants and hereditary owners of
north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. The Yolngu traditions are an
intricate matrix of land; song and law, combined to tell the hereditary names,
songs and dances in a heavily regulated manner that adhere to strict protocols.
Yolgnu traditions demonstrate the complexity of the links between kinship,
country and songlines. The
traditions described here are not those of Victorian indigenous people of the
Kulin nation and are used only to illustrate the complexities involved. Victorian
author Jim Poulter describes
songlines in the Kulin context as Aboriginal travel routes cris-crossing
the Australian landscape, linking important sites and locations. Within these
songs the natural features and directions of travel were coded and hundreds of
thousands of lines and variations had to be learned. Pouter says:
Traveling
was a joyous occasion for Aboriginal people, as not only would they always be
singing the song that attached to their route and destination, but they would
also be singing the coded…relationships within each area.
It could therefore be
said that by singing the pain and suffering experienced in a historical
context, and placing it within a physical place, Archie gives the Stolen
Generation a place in the cultural landscape being sung, directing travellers
both emotionally and geographically.
He links the pain of the event with being removed from both kin and country:
This story's right, this story's true
I would not tell lies to you
Like the promises they did not keep
And how they fenced us in like sheep.
Said to us come take our hand
Sent us off to mission land.
Taught us to read, to write and pray
Then they took the children away,
Took the children away,
The children away.
Snatched from their mother's breast
Said this is for the best
Took them away.
I would not tell lies to you
Like the promises they did not keep
And how they fenced us in like sheep.
Said to us come take our hand
Sent us off to mission land.
Taught us to read, to write and pray
Then they took the children away,
Took the children away,
The children away.
Snatched from their mother's breast
Said this is for the best
Took them away.
“Charcoal Lane” 1990.
A similar concept of
songs occupying a significant place in time and space is explored by Crystal
McKinnon, specifically in terms of music as a form of resistance. Traditional
forms of resistance are recognised in non-indigenous communities as existing in
physical acts of protest. These might include protest rallies and marches,
petitions and letters, sit-ins or walk-offs. However, the very act of singing is a form of protest and when considered
against the songlines concept, it takes on a further layer of intricacy.
Singing becomes an act of resistance against a prevailing colonialist culture,
driven by an ideology of assimilation through denial of identity. By placing
his story within a rock/folk genre, a “kinless” resource that exists beyond
protocols, Archie “demonstrates how durable traditional ideas could be contemporised for
younger [indigenous] audiences” while also giving it accessibility to a wider
mainstream audience.
Archie has immersed the story of the Stolen Generation within music that allows
Aboriginal culture and identify to be “verbalised, affirmed, strengthened and
maintained.” By giving music to his personal suffering, Archie has expressed the suffering
felt throughout Aboriginal communities but also gives hope of change. Hope is a
central emotion to all resistance movements: it provides the base from which
individuals and communities’ can act to bring about change. Without it, there
is no imperative to change.
The song's closing words
are those which most closely illustrate the link between kinship and country, their
expression in song and the hope afforded by resistance:
One sweet day all the children came back
The children come back…
The children come back…
Back to their mother
Back to their father
Back to their sister
Back to their brother
Back to their people
Back to their land
Back to their father
Back to their sister
Back to their brother
Back to their people
Back to their land
“Charcoal Lane”
1990.
In the documentary of
Aboriginal protest music Murunduk,
recorded after Kevin Rudd’s historic apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008,
Archie says that “these songs are relevant – if not more so – today than when
they were written and recorded.” Archie’s
reference to the Northern Territory intervention however is at odds with his
comment that “we don’t have to write a political…or protest song [anymore].” Dan Sultan, reasonably considered the “next generation’
of Aboriginal musicians to bring his stories to mainstream Australia, says in
the same documentary that Archie’s work means younger artists can sing more
conventional songs. However, Sultan’s lyrics such as those from “Old
Fitzroy” cannot be read and heard without a sense of the song being physically
placed within the historical context they describe. They direct listeners to
actions of resistance and sorrow, and hopefully for the non-indigenous,
understanding:
Been locked up since twenty one
I was my mother’s
only son
Forgotten most from the early days
But I remember what
she used to say
Little boy you’re my pride and joy
The
only good thing about old Fitzroy
‘Get Out While You Can’ 2009
In
2013 Archie was the recipient of a Deadly Award for “Lifetime Contribution to
Healing the Stolen Generation” and “Took the Children Away” has been added to
the National Film and Archives Sounds of Australia Collection. His work connects Aboriginal people with traditional
notions of kinship and country – by placing significant events in a space
of resistance and hope Archie educates
both Aboriginal and non-indigenous people alike. For me, a non-indigenous,
non-spiritual woman, Archie Roach’s songs represent an emotional GPS for the
stories and laws of resistance and victory of Aboriginal Australia.
October 2013
REFERENCES
Sam Bungey, 'The next
Stolen Generation' The Saturday Paper, Online 17 May (2014) Accessible: http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2014/05/17/the-next-stolen-generation/1400248800
Aaron Corn, 'Land,
song, constitution: exploring expressions of ancestral agency, intercultural
diplomacy and family legacy in the music of Yothu Yindi with Mandawuy
Yunupingu' in Popular Music, 29/1 Online (2010), pp81-102
Accessed 06 March 2014
Peter Dunbar‐Hall & Chris Gibson, ‘Singing about nations
within nations: Geopolitics and identity in Australian indigenous rock music.’ Popular Music and Society, 24/2 Online
(2000) pp45-73
Published online 24 July 2008 Accessible : http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007760008591767
Accessed 06 March 2014
Martin Flanagan, 'Too
Long Apart' Aboriginal & Islander Health Worker Journal, 31/5
September/October Online (2007), pp6-7
Accessible: http://0-search.informit.com.au.alpha2.lrobe.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=956336656574619;res=IELIND
Accessed 06 March 2014
Crystal McKinnon,
'Indigenous Music as a Space of Resistance' Tracey Banivanua and Penelope
Edmonds (eds), Making Settler Colonial Space, Online 2010,
pp255-272 Accessible: http://0-www.palgraveconnect.com.alpha2.lrobe.edu.au/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9780230277946
Accessed 06 March 2014
Murundak: Songs of
Freedom, Dir. Natasha Gadd & Rys Graham,
Daybreak Films Film, 2011
National Film and Sound
Archives, ‘New Sounds of Australia are a ‘Real Thing’’ Online 21 August 2013
accessible:
Accessed
17 May 2014
Karl
Neuenfeldt, 'Aboriginal Contemporary Music as Australian Cultural Heritage: The
Black Image's CD, Beautiful Land and Sea' Popular Music and Society,
31/4 June Online (2008), pp453-467 Accessible: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007760802052916?src=recsys
accessed
on 06 March 2014
Jim Poulter, ‘Sharing Heritage in Kulin Country’ Melborne, Red Hen (2011)
Online, accessible at http://www.jimpoulter.com/article13.html
Acessed on 17 May 2014
Archie
Roach, ‘Charcoal Lane’ Hightone, CD,
24 May 1990
Archie
Roach, ‘Biography’ ArchieRoach.com, online 2014 accessible: http://www.archieroach.com.au/#!/page_More
Accessed
17 May 2014
Rowena
Robertson, 'Murundak - songs of freedom' Metro Magazine – Media and Educion Magazine 169 Online
(2011) pp52-55 Accessible: http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=599362081886406;res=IELLCC
Accessed
17 May 2014
Nicholas
Rothwell, 'Songlines project sparks indigenous culture war' The Australian,
Online 22 March (2014) Accessible:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/songlines-project-sparks-indigenous-culture-war/story-fn9n8gph-1226860453606
Accessed
18 May 2014
Kevin
Rudd, “”Sorry, Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generation” Ten News, Online
12 February 2008 Accessible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3TZOGpG6cM
Accessed
17 May 2014
Dan Sultan, ‘Get Out
While you Can’ Independent/MGM
Distribution, CD, 6 November 2009
Comments
Post a Comment