Bushrangers & Swagmen - Folk Songs of Old Australia

Bushrangers & Swagmen 

Folk Songs of Old Australia

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 A billyful of recordings from the late-50's into the new millenium. Folk group The Sundowners were Aussie pioneers in the genre. Folk-rockers The Bushwackers Band are back in town with trademark songs, yarns and instrumentals from between 1974 & 1981. Cobbers, The Colonials and Ants Bush Band each brought their own distinct sounds and flavours in the 70's & 80's. Slim Dusty & The Hawking Brothers bring a taste of Australian country music to the brew.

Classic Aussie poems Clancy of the Overflow and Ballad of Ben Hall were collected & preserved by Australian Banjo Paterson (1864-1941) who also penned songs like The Man from Snowy River and the world-famous unofficial anthem Waltzing Matilda. Other yarns like Holy Dan and Hold-Up at Eugowra Rocks come from uncredited & anonymous sources.

We set sail with a few convict laments with outstanding renditions by A.L. Lloyd & John Kirkpatrick. Bushranger tunes centre around the legends of outlaws Jack Donohue, Ned Kelly and the Ben Hall & Frank Gardiner (nee Christie) Gang. Many songs document & idealise the lifestyles of the many itinerant agricultural workers who used to travel from state to state following the seasons - the shearers, croppers and drovers, or overlanders, swagmen, but also highlights their tribulations. Martyn Wyndham-Read, an Australian folk specialist, does some particularly beautiful versions of the old songs. Songs here taken from his A Rose From the Bush (1984) and Great Australian Legend (with A.L. Lloyd & Trevor Lucas 1971) LPs. Lucas had a fabulous voice. He started out in the early 60's and later went on to join Fairport Convention & Fotheringay in the mid-70's (he married & fathered a child with Sandy Denny during that period). He sadly died in 1989 at just 45 while Lloyd had passed on in 1982 aged 74. Lucas' cut of Waltzing Matilda is from 1960. The Pogues and Shane MacGowan were deeply influenced by Aussie music (which itself had been forged from Scots, English and, notably, Irish traditions). Here's their initial, pared-down 1984 cut of The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. John Williamson, The Sundowners & Slim Dusty see the funny side of life with a few light hearted parodies later on. Two recordings by folklorist and concertina player Dave Du Hugard including a deep cut of Moreton Bay. Canberra native James Fagan (of The Fagans fame) does an atmospheric acapella version of The Green Bushes and teams up with Nancy Kerr for a storming cut of The Banks of the Condamine.

The almost total absence of any indigenous music by native Australians is lamentable and we acknowledge that this mixtape was never going to be a fair or equitable representation of the music of that continent. Rather it focuses on and helps preserve a certain aspect of life down under during the colonial period. The only concession to native traditions here is the inclusion of didgeridoo on a couple of the tracks. Keep an eye out for another, more inclusive mixtape of Australian musical traditions later on...

Continuous mix 2hrs 46

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