Country Down Under

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BBC Radio 4 Extra - Country Down Under

How country music became a powerful form of expression for Australia’s Aboriginal peoples.

4 Extra Debut. An exploration of how country music became a powerful form of expression for Australia’s Aboriginal peoples. From 2016.

Country music is commonly associated with downtrodden, lovelorn, white inhabitants of America’s rural south.

But it has also long been a significant form of expression for Australia’s Aboriginal peoples.

Country music became popular Down Under during the first half of the 20th Century. Thanks to gramophone recordings, wind-up radios and touring bands, it even reached the bush where most Aboriginals lived, often more or less imprisoned on missions and government-controlled reserves. 

At a time when their own cultural heritage was being systematically erased, country music became a medium through which they could maintain their practice of sharing stories via the oral tradition. 

Its resonance was enhanced by melodies which tended towards the melancholic. As one musician put it “country music was all about loss, and we’d lost everything”.  

Through country music, Aboriginal people were able to give voice to their personal experiences and ongoing struggles for justice. For example, songs describe the stealing of babies and land, incidents of racism, poor living conditions and high levels of incarceration.  

And so country music, far from its origins, has become a deeply moving and powerfully activist Aboriginal art form.  

With contributions from:

Auriel Andrew
Kev Carmody
Roger Knox
Sue Ray
Glenn Skuthorpe

Dedicated to the memory of Auriel Andrew.

Producer:  Rachel Hopkin

Mixed by Robin Wise.

Consultant: Clinton Walker

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in December 2016.

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