It’s a cliché to hate the cliché now, but I still flinch when I hear people say they like all music except country and western. Barely better is when people say they like “some” country, but not “the really hokey stuff.”
I am not really from the country. I grew up in the last suburb before you make a turn on Albany Highway after which point the next real stop is Albany. Yes, my high school had a farm of sorts, with chickens and cows and emus (I never really understood why we had emus…) but it wasn’t so far out we didn’t have more than one video shop to choose from, it wasn’t so far out that we didn’t see all the most popular fast food places spring up around the place as I got older. I grew up in the average beige colour of every other suburb in Western Australia. But my Mum lived there when it was a tiny town. In the 1950s it really was the country, and my Mum’s two older sisters married rural kinda fellas who wore akubras and rode horses and also (oddly) had an assortment of jumpers with screen prints of Australian animals on them. Their names were Col and Jed. They were country. They listened to a lot of country music and upon reflection, it was hokey. To be honest though, I didn’t know what hokey meant as a kid. I didn’t have any middle class sensibilities that made me embarrassed about listening to ‘A Pub With No Beer’ without a dash of irony. I have memories of listening to this music while sitting on garden chairs in backyards with yellow lights in the trees and insects snapping in the bug zapper, eating sausages in bread and drinking cans of passiona. Or hearing it come out of car stereos as we sat around in the bush eating picnic sandwiches. So, do I like ‘hokey’ country music? You bet your middle class city loving arse I do – it connects me to a lost version of the suburb I grew up in.
When a friend pointed out the album Stranger In My Country by Roger Knox to me, I was interested because I like country and western. I didn’t realise how amazing a project it really is – I didn’t realise what a political project it is. The album covers a variety of Indigenous Australian musicians whose music is obscure and for the large part forgotten or incredibly difficult to access, like Dougie Young and Vic Simms. These songs discuss the stolen generation, deaths in custody, and alcoholism. They also talk about a love of country that is at once familiar and utterly separate from my understanding of the Australia I grew up in.
What was amazing to me about this album was that I hadn’t heard many of these artists before, despite growing up having listened to a lot of country and western music, despite being tuned into many of the issues that they discuss, despite the fact that I do listen to other indigenous artists like Archie Roach and Tiddas.
I’m an Australian.
I grew up in a Left leaning household where we could swear a proverbial blue streak, but racial slurs against the First Nations people of our country were not okay.
I like country music, even when played by men who are not cool and never hung out with the Rolling Stones.
Why hadn’t I heard these songs before?
Even a cursory perusal or viewing of Clinton Walker’s Buried Country shows that Australia is rich with Indigenous country and western artists. The history of this musical form in this country is not white, but despite this there is an overwhelming whiteness blanketing how it’s remembered. That’s why I love this album, because it sings out silenced voices and I think there’s something incredibly important and political in this action. If we allow parts of Australian culture to be white washed when actually the history is bicultural, then that perpetuates racist ideas about Australians’ past and our future. In an interview with CBC Music in Canada, Roger Knox said this:
“I find it really hard to visualize a world not divided by race. However, I am hopeful that by developing better understanding about each other this may open the doors to acceptance. I can’t be anything other than what I am. If people of different races, beliefs, religions and culture can understand our ways, then we have a better chance of appreciating and accepting each other for who we are.”
There’s so much I really don’t understand about the indigenous culture of the country I grew up in, that my parents grew up in, that their parents grew up in, etc. I’ll never understand it if I don’t pay attention to culture that helps fill in the gaps.
I guess this misunderstanding, or lack of understanding, is the reason why I have an intense blockage when it comes to writing about Knox in my thesis. The stakes are high if I don’t get this right.
felicitycullwrites 