Australia can lay claim to a heritage in song so rich, vibrant and entertaining that it forms a viable oral history of a young nation born in brutality, tested by adversity and moulded by tenacity.
These are more than just primary school ditties about convicts, squatters, stockmaen, gold panners, shearers and pub patrons. Based upon traditional folk melodies and salty sea shanties carried thousands of miles from the "old world", many of these songs are distinctly antipodean expressions of joy, anger and wry irrespressible humour.
Just as the African slaves labouring in the fields and mills of a young United States eased the pain of their burden with passionate vocal laments, the wretched refuse of Britain's shores deposited upon a harsh land beneath the southern cross employed the song and its attendant humour as a release from the deprivations and despairs they faced daily.
In time, as Australia was transformed by a gold rush and the influx of free settlers from a cruel penal colony to a thriving, pioneering nation-in-embryo, the very nature of its songs changed. Neroes emerged - bold bushrangers who fought the noble fight against tyranny in uniform, the "big gun" shearers whose skills took them from state to state, the tireless drovers who could spend days in the saddle, the rugged settler who carved a niche in an inhospitable bush, plucky tent boxers with more stamina than kangaroos, champion cricketers who made the world sit up and take notice and soldiers who willingly gave their lives and limbs for a motherland they had never seen.
These larger-than-life heroes were immortalised in popular songs which, in some cases, have been rendered faithfully for more than 200 years in every corner of this wide brown land. Songs which evoke the smell of gum leaves, the colour of wattle, the chime of the bellbird and the cry of the victorious "ringer". From Banjo Patterson's rollicking Waltzing Matilda to Eric Bogle's wrenching And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, from Peter Allen's affectionate I Still Call Australi
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AussieTravelTours