RUBY
Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Paul Grabowsky, Australian Art Orchestra
(AAO)
Reviewed by John Clare
I have no fixed idea about the virtues or otherwise of pre-settlement Aboriginal culture; nor do I have statistics on how many benefitted and how many suffered from the removal of children. I did, however, go to school with Aborigines in the 1940s and remember a most unpleasant attitude to them. Also an eerie sense of something gone from the sandhills and lagoon. I had an Aboriginal friend called Jackie Mills, who lived with his family and a herd of dogs in a shack made of kerosene tins and galvanised iron over the giant sandhill that has since been flattened for development. I took some flack for this friendship but gained much from it. One of the books I read around this time was Brimming Billabongs by Bill Harney, which was an account told by an old Aboriginal called Marmel to the author (who was a Northern Territory patrol man) of life pre-white settlement, of being taken as a child for a trip to Malaya on a trepang (sea cucumber) boat, and of working as a stockman.
The feeling of Aboriginality that hung over old Maroubra blended with a sombre sense of the second World War. There was a rifle range, gun positions around the cliffs, and for a long time barbed wire on the beach. There were also several sources of wet clay, with which we sometimes daubed ourselves before diving into the great Pacific. We played football against La Perouse, which was an Aboriginal settlement, and they always thrashed us. I understand how the culture turned resentfully inward, yet still despair at the self-defeating hostility of Aborigines who live around me today.
Ruby Hunter, whose life is evoked in music and song on this remarkable disc, has said that she remembers nothing but happiness from before she was taken from her parents at the age of eight. Archie Roach sings on a song we all know – Took The Children Away – “Teach us how to live, they said/Humiliated us instead”. Roach’s songs alternate here with Hunter’s.
There is a pain of loss in this music that goes right into my bones. But there is also a rich evocation of things that remain – notably the river as meeting place and carrier of memories – and infectious memories of childhood fun. Roach sings with an emotional quality drawn from American country music (adopted long ago by Aborigines) and black American soul. His flowing time, manipulations of vocal tone, and his weird and affecting slow vibrato, make for one of the most distinctive presences in Australian popular music.
Ruby Hunter is something else. Sometimes there are spooky hollows in her low dark voice. There is a range of textures, inflections and rhythmic quirks that is quite unique. This is the voice of extreme experiences that are somehow passed over by the paper trails of the history wars.
The flexibility of Paul Grabowsky, his mastery of idioms both as pianist and arranger, will astonish those who may have found the spiky dissonances of the Art Orchestra hard to grasp.
On the first track he pairs Roach’s beautiful singing with James Greening’s rich and soulful trombone. Can contemporary jazz musicians play like this? Of course they can. Part of the jazz avant-garde agenda was to revive the larger-than-life soulful playing that was in danger of being refined away.
Note also John Rogers’s violin, Paul Cutlan’s clarinet, Phil Slater’s trumpet, and the glorious setting that Grabowsky has devised for those wonderful singers and musicians.
The recorded sound, by Melbourne’s Robin Gray, is superb. Certainly one of the most important recordings in recent times.
OLD SCHOOL
Theak-tet
(Birdland)
Reviewed by William Maynard
Theak-tet’s new disc Old School sounds terrific, clean and sharp. That’s not surprising given it was recorded at the famed Rainbow Studios at Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug, house studio and engineer respectively for ECM records.
Good recording can’t make bad music interesting. Fortunately this is good music. Above all, its strength is that this is a tight, strong group, with the energy and fluidity that comes from long experience and enjoyment playing together.
David Theak’s warmth, swing and sound reminded me of Hank Mobley. I often find jazz guitar boring but James Muller’s fire and precision was a joy to listen to, and blended with Brendan Clarke’s strong bass to push the music forward. Felix Bloxsom has a terrific variety of drumming techniques to keep the band swinging in a way that both works and often surprises.
I particularly enjoyed the ballads such as Ki-Ki and Green Eyes, but a lot of listeners might enjoy even more the power of the faster numbers.
As a final note, it’s a pleasure to have another disc on the Birdland label after such Australian jazz classics as Mark Simmonds’ Fire. This disc continues its list of strong recordings of Australian jazz where American and European stars have been listened to and their approaches absorbed but a strong and individual music is being made.