Themes in Australian Music: A National Identity

Australia is a young country, still forming much of its identity, so how it is portrayed in music is of great importance. Australia’s national image and identity has is constantly evolving, prompted by and reflected through the songs that have been written and performed regarding Australia. In Western traditions of music, Australia has traditionally been depicted as “a big, wide-open country populated by fun loving, white, Anglo-Celts” (Douglas, 2000). Most songs that deal with Australia and what is ‘Australian’ include concepts of travelling, the rural/local/Outback/land, Aboriginals, war or a mix of these themes.

When asked to name a song which refers to Australia, one of the first songs that typically comes to mind is Men at Work’s ‘I Come From a Land Down Under’.



This song, like Peter Allen’s ‘I Still Call Australia Home’, is about an Australian travelling the world, while the classic song ‘Waltzing Matilda’ by A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson and Colin Buchanan’s ‘North Bourke Bridge’ draw the theme of travelling back within Australia, while also dealing with concepts of the rural and Outback (“Oh-oh the locals know / The outback calls you back / They knew that I’d be back”). Eric Bogle’s ‘Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ starts with both these themes and moves on to deal with war. Conflict has played a large part in shaping Australian history and identity, many iconic songs of Australia deal with the subject –, Cold Chisel’s ‘Khe Sanh’, Redgum’s ‘I Was Only Nineteen’ and Australian Crawl’s ‘Reckless’ being some of the more prominent ones, telling the sad stories of men forever changed by conflict. The shifting attitude towards Aboriginals is evident when comparing ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’ (which was released in 1963 and originally contained a verse pertaining to “let[ting his] Abos go loose”, treating Aboriginals as property) and both The Seekers’ 1987 hit ‘I Am Australian’ and ‘Dead Heart’ by Midnight Oil, released in 1986. More recently, The GetUp Mob’s 2008 adaptation of Paul Kelly’s ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ has incorporated Kevin Rudd’s national apology to Indigenous people as well as other speeches concerning Indigenous issues.

Many Australian-themed songs thus are closely interlinked, sharing themes and sampling pieces from each other. For example, the melody of Marion Sinclair’s ‘Kookaburra Song’ is featured as a flute piece in ‘I Come from a Land Down Under’, and ‘Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ features ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as a constant theme, including its melody at some points as well as appropriating its final two lines as its own closing lyrics. This interlinking emphasises the patriotism and single identity of Australians, and promotes an image of a local, close community, while illustrating the effect that intercultural relations have on the building of the image of Australian and what is Australian.