Australian folk music
Celtic, English, German and Scandinavian folk traditions predominated in the first wave of European immigrant music.
Early Australian ballads sing of the harsh ways of life of the epoch and of such people and events as bushrangers, swagmen, drovers, stockmen and shearers.
[2] Later themes which endure to the present include the experiences of war, of droughts and flooding rains, of Aboriginality and of the railways and trucking routes which link Australia's distances.
Country and folk artists such as Lionel Long, Gary Shearston, Marian Henderson, Margaret Roadknight, The Bushwackers and John Schumann of the band Redgum and country artists like Tex Morton, Slim Dusty and John Williamson have continued to record and popularise the old bush ballads of Australia through the 20th and into the 21st century – and contemporary country artists including Sara Storer and Lee Kernaghan draw heavily on this heritage.
The convict tradition also came to include songs popular in the English music halls, such as Botany Bay, and broadsheet ballads such as The Black Velvet Band.
In the century following European settlement of Australia, a musical tradition developed in the bush, particularly among itinerant workers such as shearers.
As in the convict era, most bush music was made by setting new words to well-known traditional or popular songs.
[citation needed] Written by Dick Diamond, the musical featured twelve or so Australian songs, which included Doreen Jacobs' setting of Helen Palmer's "Ballad of 1891", as well as the title song, Chris Kempster's setting of Lawson's "Reedy River".
As the musical was performed in Brisbane and other Australian cities, local "bush bands" modeled on the Sydney group, such as Brisbane's "The Moreton Bay Bushwhackers" featuring Stan Arthur and Bill Scott, sprang up in each place; many of these remained together following the closing of the musical, and spawned other, similar groups.
In Brisbane, from 1962 until it closed in 1977, the Folk Centre (renting facilities on Ann Street, adjacent to the People's Palace hotel) served as a crucible for both established and emerging artists.
The popularity of international folk-rock artists such as Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and The Band, along with the rise of protest movements, inspired new folk and folk-rock acts in Australia in the 1970s, such as Eric Bogle, Judy Small, Redgum, and the folk-punk band Roaring Jack.
Bogle wrote the song 'And the band played Waltzing Matilda' in 1971 as an oblique comment on the Vietnam war but instead referencing Australian involvement in Gallipoli.
In the 1980s and 90s Indigenous musicians such as Kev Carmody, Archie Roach and Tiddas gained a following combining acoustic folk songs with story-telling, and occasionally incorporating traditional Aboriginal instruments.
Brisbane's Rantan Bush Band, formed in 1977, continues to perform commercially on at least a weekly basis (2010) and still has three of its original line-up.
