New & updated edition of Clinton Walker’s ‘Buried Country’

Good news – Clinton Walker‘s classic history of Australian Aboriginal country music, Buried Country, has just been republished in a new and updated edition through US publisher Verse Chorus Press.

A series of Walker’s drawings from Deadly Woman Blues, Buried Country‘s forthcoming sister volume, appeared in Contrappasso #3.

Here is the Press Release for Buried Country redux:

Long before Aboriginal creativity could be expressed freely across contemporary Australian culture, before ­Aboriginal artists, writers, performers and directors were widely acclaimed, it was country music that first gave the original Australians a voice in modern Australia.

It might seem an unlikely combination, but country has always offered a vehicle for the disposessed to tell their stories. Aboriginal country music has a rich history, from the great pioneer Jimmy Little through Vic Simms, Harry and Wilga Williams, Bobby McLeod, Bob Randall and Isaac Yamma to Roger Knox and Kev Carmody, Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter. These pivotal figures and many more are vividly captured in Clinton Walker’s magisterial and compelling account of this unique Australian tradition.

Hailed on publication as “an act of restitution” (Rhythms), a work that “traces new pathways into the songlines of a hidden and resonant Australian musical history” (The Age), Buried Country draws on the author’s extensive research and in-person interviews. This expanded and updated edition is lavishly illustrated with rare photographs and memorabilia, and includes a full discography.

Visit www.clintonwalker.com.au and Verse Chorus Press. You can also buy the book at Amazon.com.

from issue #3: ‘Songwomen’ by Clinton Walker

Editor’s note: Clinton Walker is a Sydney writer, an art school drop-out and recovering rock critic, who John Clare has called “our best chronicler of Australian grass-roots culture.” Since his 1981 debut Inner City Sound, he has published another eight books on Australian music and popular culture. His now-out-of-print book Buried Country (2000), the secret history of Aboriginal hillbilly music, was widely hailed and made into a documentary film with accompanying soundtrack CD. Now, with Buried Country due to come out again in a new edition through US publisher Verse Chorus Press in 2014, Walker is also completing the book that was always meant to be not so much a sequel or prequel or even companion piece to Buried Country as its sister volume, about black women in Australian music. This book marks Walker’s return to the art he gave up over thirty years ago to concentrate on writing.

Contrappasso #3 features a number of raw illustrations from this new work in progress. They make up just a small proportion of the gallery of further-artworked portraits that will make up the book, which is also due to be published by Verse Chorus in 2014. Here are a few examples (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that some images here represent people who have passed away) :

“Sarah”, stringband musician, Wynnum near Brisbane, c. 1900

Heathermae Reading, club singer, Sydney, 1970s—2000s

Kylie Auldist, soul singer, the Bamboos, Melbourne, 2000s

Fannie Numbulwar, Borroloola Songwoman, NT, 2012

The Sydney Scene: The School Bus Gang

Who says there are no literary schools in Australia?

Here’s a close-knit group of Sydney writers, many past or future Contrappasso contributors, a cross-generational literary school known around town as the School Bus Gang.

Left to right: Clinton Walker, Vanessa Berry, Peter Doyle, Matthew Asprey, and Raymond Devitt.

Photo credit: Simon Yates.