Children of the revolution: The new sound of Australian dissent
Political songs in Australia have changed a lot since the rock-fuelled protest heyday of the 1980s and ’90s, but the rage remains, and the new guard are fighting for change on everything from ‘Invasion Day’ to refugees and gay marriage.
By Monique Ross
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following story contains images and voices of people who have died.
‘Celebrating a massacre’
Australian rocker Dan Sultan doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the state of Indigenous affairs.
“Aboriginal people are second-class citizens, we’re seen as flora and fauna in this country, we’re not recognised in the constitution,” he tells the ABC.
“I mean look at our coins — you’ve got a platypus, a kangaroo, a bunch of animals, and then an Aboriginal man. It’s infuriating.”
He fires up as he lends his voice to the growing momentum to change the date of Australia Day to one that is “far more inclusive” than January 26.
“It was a massacre at Sydney Cove, and it was the start of a continuing genocide in this country,” says Sultan, who recently teamed up with hard-hitting rap power couple A.B. Original on a track about the issue.
Sultan, who has Indigenous heritage, says it’s “not about being all gung-ho and militant” and banning the celebration entirely — it just can’t be on “that terrible, terrible date”.
“I like the idea of Australia Day. I love Australia and I love who we all are — Aboriginals, non-Aboriginals, immigrants. I think it’s beautiful, we’re so free in this country,” he says.
“But January 26 is … a day of mourning. It’s not a celebration for us.
“It excludes Aboriginal people and it excludes anyone who has one bone in their body with any sympathy for Aboriginal people.”
Fight for their rights
Sultan, who is currently touring Australia, isn’t alone in raising his voice in a bid to help reframe the national identity.
Hip hop MC and producer Tim Levinson, better known by his stage moniker Urthboy, has spoken out on everything from sexism to domestic violence, racism and the plight of refugees.
His track Don’t Let It Go was “very much about expressing anger” over the 2014 murder of Reza Barati during a riot in the Manus Island detention centre, and Australia’s asylum seeker policies.
“It was also that I know I’m going to be having conversations with my daughter, and maybe with her children one day, where I have to try and explain the things we did when I was an adult, when we stood by as a lot of these things happened,” says Levinson, who’s also a founding member of The Herd.
“Irrespective of whether you’re for or against the policies that violate United Nations conventions and have exposed the colder and darker side of the Australian psyche, we’re all complicit.
“We’re all part of this passage of Australian history, and we’re going to have to explain why we allowed the hideous things that are happening in these gulags to continue.”
Levinson has been expressing outrage on how Australia treats asylum seekers for more than a decade.
During the Children Overboard scandal, The Herd released 77%, which includes the line “77 per cent of Aussies are racist” — a reference to the reported level of support the Howard government got for its response to the Tampa affair.
“You’re expressing an anger and seeing if there’s anyone who will come along with you,” Levinson says of protest songs.
“The main power in music as far as I understand it is being able to show people that they’re not alone. If you can gather around something and be galvanised by the emotive quality of that song, or the anger, that expression can bring people together.”
Voice for the voiceless
While anger and shame drive Levinson to speak out against Australia’s asylum seeker stance, for others, political music springs from a place of great sadness.
The shocking images of the small body of three-year-old Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach in Turkey last year prompted an international outpouring of grief and put the spotlight on the global refugee crisis.
They also left indie darling Missy Higgins reeling.
“I had a very emotional reaction. I had just had a child six months earlier and it suddenly hit home what it must be like to lose a child,” she says.
“I suddenly felt the weight of responsibility for my country, and the fact that we are detaining all these refugees indefinitely in horrific conditions, and I just felt so helpless.”
Higgins wrote Oh Canada, her first original release since 2012, from the perspective of Aylan’s father Abdullah Kurdi, who lost his two boys and wife at sea.
“These stories need to be told, and these people need to be humanised. Them losing a child is just as painful as it would be for us to lose a child,” Higgins says.
Black and strong
Others, like Dizzy Doolan, whose rap style includes Indigenous lingo, language and “the blackfella accent”, turn their attention to exposing dark issues that hit close to home.
“I write from my experience, so as someone who has been through domestic violence, for example, I can talk about it,” she tells the ABC ahead of this weekend’s Yarrabah Band Festival, near Cairns.
“And there might be women sitting in the audience thinking, ‘oh my God, she is right’. And it might give people the courage to get up and do something about it.”
She says while she doesn’t set out to write political songs, being a passionate Indigenous woman means she can’t shy away from politics.
“I’m always talking about being a strong black woman, and being proud of your culture,” the Queenslander says.
“I’m protesting half the time when I’m performing and not even realising it, because I’m just passionate about issues.”
But Sultan says being Indigenous shouldn’t instantly equal being political.
“Why is being a successful Aboriginal man a political statement? Why can’t an Aboriginal man have a house, or a car, or be successful, or be educated?” he asks.
“We’re sort of second-class citizens so when someone gets the job done, it’s seen as something different to if someone who wasn’t Aboriginal was to do it.
“It’s a shame, and it’s a bit embarrassing.”
Everything old is new again
A host of musicians are also putting their own spin on the classic protest anthems of eras past.
Sultan, Higgins and Levinson were part of The Getup Mob, which adapted the classic From Little Things Big Things Grow alongside its authors Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody.
“Kev has such an incredible and profound body of work. It’s nice just to dip our feet in that great well of knowledge he has passed down in his songwriting,” Levinson says.
Carmody — a legendary storyteller dubbed by Higgins as “the Bob Dylan of Australia” — says the reinvention of his songs is “really, really exciting”.
“It’s great to see the younger ones grabbing hold of stuff that I’ve done, and it winds up in hip hop or rap,” Carmody tells the ABC.
“Take The Herd, Urthboy. They got an old poem I did called Comrade Jesus Christ, and they put their own words to it and it goes to another dimension.”
Carmody says the reinvention of his music also carries on the oral tradition of Indigenous culture.
“I just like the concept of a musical family. It’s not just Kev Carmody stuff anymore, its everyone’s, and it can be passed on from generation to generation,” he says.
“I think it’s really exciting — I can sit back here and plant my bean seeds and prune my fruit trees and that’s all I’ve got to do.”
Archie Roach, the iconic voice behind Took The Children Away, agrees. His classic track was recently the inspiration for Briggs’ The Children Came Back.
“It was great to listen to that song,” Roach says of the revamped song, which he performed alongside Briggs last year on the anniversary tour of his breakout album Charcoal Lane.
“What I love about the track is it’s talking about all the children coming back home, but he also mentions all the heroes — Uncle Doug Nicholls, Lionel Rose the boxing champion, Patty Mills the basketball champion, and all those fellas that did positive things that young people can look up to.”
Change is gonna come
But can political music actually change how a person thinks?
Higgins says music is “an incredible vessel for talking about social issues” because it is “wrapped up in a beautiful, poetic, digestible package”, but it’s impossible to nail down a tangible effect.
“It’d be hard for me to say that songs alone can change the world, but they can inspire great people to do great things, and be a catalyst for change,” she says.
Levinson is also firmly rooted in reality on the real change one song can spark, as “most people are so entrenched in their views now”.
“There’s nothing like the US election to prove that if you’re on one side or the other, you’re not changing your mind — this idea of the swinging voter seems to be less and less relevant,” he says.
“If you expect a song to … suddenly change the minds of people who are so entrenched in their views, you are setting yourself up for a delusion.”
But he says music does have the ability to catch people off guard, “invite a listener to rethink their perspective”, and boost awareness.
The conversation isn’t always an easy one.
Levinson, who is as outspoken on his social media accounts as in his music, cops blowback for anything remotely political.
“Anything political is always a recipe for really being exposed to what a lot of Australia is: racist, sexist, xenophobic. That’s the cold hard reality,” he says.
“We only need to mention Adam Goodes — he was a lightning rod for all the racists. The suffering that he had to endure … it still makes my heart sink.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s not important to speak up.
“If you have some kind of influence, be it high profile or low profile, then you are part of the public conversation anyway. That conversation is moving, and that is important to how this country makes its decisions,” Levinson says.
“It’s not necessarily a responsibility … but if artists abandon the role they can play in that conversation, that’s a sad day, it’s a bit of an indictment on arts and artists.
“If you didn’t have artists speaking out and following through on their own principles, it would be insincere and that would be really disappointing.”
Sultan, meanwhile, is confident change is inevitably going to come in at least one area that matters to him: marriage equality.
“Not every gay person wants to get married, and I’m straight and I don’t want to get married. But if I want to get married, I have the right to,” he says.
“And for someone out there to not have that fundamental right to not be discriminated against by their own government is appalling.
“It’s 2016 and we live in a first-world country, a developed nation. It’s just ridiculous.
“For me it is just about what’s right thing to do. Just be compassionate, be good to one another.”
