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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lInspired by a journey, and still troubled times
By Emily Dunn 24 October 2007 - Archie Roach never planned the release of his new album to coincide with a federal election. This month the Prime Minister, John Howard, put indigenous Australia on the election agenda, and, coincidentally, it happens to be a subject Roach has been singing about for more than 20 years. "I didn't really plan to be releasing it on the election; that's just the way songs happen. It took us a few years to get it all together, and we thought the time was right," the ARIA-winning singer songwriter says of his fifth album, Journey. The album is a companion piece to the documentary Liyarn Ngarn, which featured Roach, the indigenous leader Patrick Dodson and the English actor Pete Postlethwaite travelling from Western Australia to Roach's home country in south-west Victoria; from the spiritual Ngurrarra paintings near Fitzroy Crossing to Fremantle jails where Aboriginal prisoners have died in custody. Roach's first album since 2002, Journey comes 15 years after his debut album, Charcoal Lane, which had the breakthrough single Took the Children Away. The song traced the plight of the stolen generation and was inspired by Roach's experience of being taken from his family as a child and placed in foster care. The song won two ARIA awards and an international Human Rights Achievement Award, and Charcoal Lane was named among the Top 100 Albums of 1992 by the magazine Rolling Stone. Musicians and friends, including the singer-songwriter Paul Kelly - who first encouraged Roach to move from performing to recording - the country singer Troy Cassar-Daley, and Shane Howard and David Bridie appear on the new album, a collection of songs inspired by the Liyarn Ngarn journey. Howard, with Dave Arden and Roach's son Amos, will also perform a series of concerts in Sydney this month, followed by a tour of northern NSW early next month. For Roach, 52, singing the story of indigenous Australia is as important today as when he left his foster home as a young man, living on the streets and playing music before going on to record and travel the world. Roach lives with his long-term partner and performer, Ruby Hunter, on a rural homestead near Berri in South Australia where, in addition to caring for their own family, the couple operate an "open house" for troubled young Aborigines. "You have got things like the Bringing Them Home report, there are recommendations that were not or put in place …We had Palm Island recently which has gone hush-hush since then," he says. "But [the music] is also more than just politics … Before I even started recording the music was always there." Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
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its one year on from the Australian Governments controversial intervention into NT Indigenous communities
action Roll back, listen to Indigenous community voices speaking about the intervention |
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