Historical Silences, Musical Noise

Slim Dusty, Country Music and Aboriginal history

Authors

  • Toby Martin University of Sydney Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39715

Keywords:

country music, Aboriginal history, Slim Dusty, settler-colonial history

Abstract

Much Australian history has argued that Australian culture and academic writing were largely silent on the issue of Aboriginal history prior to 1968. Further, there has been a common argument—and assumption—that non-Indigenous country music did not deal with Indigenous Australians in this period at all. However, Australia’s most popular recording artist, the country singer-songwriter, Slim Dusty, did in fact record several songs that dealt with issues such as the history of frontier massacres and Aboriginal pastoral labour during the 1950s and 1960s. These songs provide fascinating examples of alternative history-making, and show that there was a conversation—albeit limited—about difficult settler-colonial issues occurring in postwar popular culture. Dusty’s songs also provide new ways of thinking about music and politics in the civil rights era, supplying rich examples of the ways in which popular music in general can engage with complex historical narratives, and how popular culture can disrupt conventional ways of telling history.

Author Biography

  • Toby Martin, University of Sydney

    Toby Martin is Lecturer in Contemporary Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, and honorary research fellow at the University of Huddersfield. He is a historian of popular music, as well as a songwriter, musician and practice-led researcher. He has published in the areas of country music in Australia, Aboriginal popular music, and music and colonial tourism, including the monograph Yodelling Boundary Riders: Country Music in Australia since the 1920s (Lyrebird Press, University of Melbourne, 2015).

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Published

2020-08-21

How to Cite

Martin, T. (2020). Historical Silences, Musical Noise: Slim Dusty, Country Music and Aboriginal history. Popular Music History, 12(2), 215–236. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39715