Aussie rules country

USTRALIAN ABORIGINAL “& singer-songwriter Archie Roach appeared last month at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival.

Earlier this year he released an honest cut-to-the-bone affair. He once lived on the street, alcoholic and culturally dispossessed. Char- coal Lane, the debut released on Oakland, California-based Hightone Records, is a country fmausic-inspired stunner. It is also about healing.

Music Now met with Archie Roach at the festival.

ARCHIE ROACH... names Kris Kristofferson and Sam Cooke as

influences on his own music.

Music Now: Could you tell us about your background, how you got into music?

A.R. : “I first got into music a

long time ago, about when i was 13. { was very involved in music in the foster home that | was in.

“My foster sister played the Hammond organ. A friend asked me along to a church and I really wasn’t interested, but because he was a good friend |} went along. And this lady got up with just an acoustic guitar and bang — it moved me that much that | thought | wanted to play the guitar and sing songs and write about my own experiences, even at 13.

“‘Y wasn't aware of what my experience was at that time, but } just wanted to write about my

Michael Becker RECORD REVIEW

feelings. | picked up the guitar, and I'm basically self-taught on the “guitar, and { just love to sing. Music Now: To North Ameri-

can ears, what struck me as 1

first heard your songs were the country music influences.

ALR. : “Oh yea, very much so. | was influenced a lot. Whether you consider Kris Kristofferson country or not 1 don’t know, but t liked his lyrics. And as | was growing up in Australia, we never really had an identity as far as music goes. Everybody was doing covers of American songs.

“We started to pick up later on in the ‘60s to 70s when I suppose the Beatles hit the airwaves: Australian musicians decided to find an identity of their own.

“So the influences i had as a child were country, and {| was a fan of Sam Cooke, things like that.” Music Now: Can you tell us

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how you got involved with the political side cf your music? AR. : “t have to go back a way. ! lived in the streets for a number of years after | left my foster parents because of what happened to me. There's a policy called the assimilation policy, where they try to assimilate us — including, un- fortunately, aboriginal children in- to the mainstream of society. “They (the assimilated) have no knowledge of or have any desire to have anything to do with their own aboriginal culture. It wasn’t until f started coming out of my rut — my uncle told me one time, he said, ‘Why don’t you write songs about what happened to you, being taken away, and drinking down the alleys and that.’ “So ( did. | didn't really loak at it politically. There are so many things in life that are political without really thinking about it. So \ started reatly to write about my experience, life in general in Australia amongst aboriginal peo- ple.” Music Now: Part of the wonderful thing about this fes-

. tival is the contact between

entertainers of various musical

backgrounds. This year there

was a Strong indigenous peo-

ple’s contingent. It seems

everyone is coming from a

similar place. Have you had

any revelations here?

ALR. : “‘It seems it is pretty much

a universal thing and it affects real-

ly everybody as far as I’m con-

cerned. How indigenous people of

a country are affected really affects

what happens to everybody else. “It doesn’t have anything to do

with black or white or aboriginal

or non-aboriginal: it’s got to do

with how people treat each other

and why they feel the need to

want to conquer somebody else.

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