Subject: RE: Australian Bush Bands
From:
Bob Bolton
Date: 23 Feb 99 - 02:00 AM
G'day Les,
The concept of a "Bush Band" is, to some degree, a polite fiction. In the pioneering days any instruments around the place were used and this extended to the more portable 'orchestral' instruments like clarinet, cornet etcetera. In fact many people reckoned the best dance bands around were the "German Bands" - not the "Oompah" brass bands of Prussia, but the various preipheral 'Germanic' people that came to Australia as refugees from the conquest of their homelands as part of the 'Unification' of Germany. Of course many of the same sort of people ended up in America.
Many recent band s play a mix of standard folk revival instruments - guitars are big, despite being vary rare in the bush before modern adhesives and plywood made the guitar feasible in the extreme temperatures and dryness of the Australian outback. The more traditionally inclined will often feature a button accordion - usually 2-row - or a concertina ... the Anglo types are thetraditional bush instrument ... English and duets systems were the province of the Salvation Army and British concertina bands.
Portable instruments played a large part in forming an Australian accent in this music. Great distances were covered by itinerant workers and nothing larger than a fiddle can be wrapped up in a swag. Whistles and mouthorgans were often the mainstay of dances at stations and other bush sites. The concertina and the very small accordions of late 19th c. brought a measure of power and harmony.
The novelty (more correctly: improvised) instruments like the tea chest bass and the lagerphone (an old broomstick covered in loosely nailed bottletops, plus folly bells and jingles ... played by bouncing on a rubber tip while rhythmically tapping and stroking with a notched stick) as well as bones and other rhythm devices of fencing wire and scrap tin, often give colour to a band. Commercial bands tend to stick closer to standard instrumentation.
All the threads of English, Scottish, Irish, and assorted European traditions went into the melting pot and produced a few interesting new mixes. The Dance music had a base in the Dance Hall and Ball Room but acquired a distinctive democratic twist, with many dances, which in their original form involved a lot of watching one couple do their bit, were done with everyone doing the same steps. this shows up, for instance when one compares the Australian style of 'Haymakers' with the Irish form or the English original 'Sir Roger de Coverley'.
During the nineteenth century, dance fashions moved through the older line, circle dances with the very British jig and reel tunes, to the quadrilles (sets, such as the 'First Set' or the 'Lancers') on to the various couple dances - polkas, mazurkas and waltzes, but also a real long-time passion for the varsovienne.
In the folk revival, bands originally were very much song-oriented, doing traditional and contemporary songs from a strongly Irish influenced British tradition. Dancing was often from English (e.g. EFDSS) sources and it was some time before field collectors thought to collect Australian dances along with the tunes and songs.
Most bands that seek to have a strong Australian feel to their dance music concentrate on the various types of sets, even though couple dances were the great crazes of the latter part of the 19th century. A lot of music that feels quite different from the all-pervasive Irish sessions comes from this period and my group, 'Backblocks Musicians' (working entirely from Australian-collected material - which obviously has past histories all round the place) concentrates on these styles.
A good site for further, detailed information is: Australian Bush Music Wongawilli Style at . This is put together by a really good traditional band "Wongawilli" and 'The Wongawilli Dancers'. It looks as if the Wongas will be touring America this year, if they can scrape the money together and they are really keen about their dancing and their music.
Regards,
Bob Bolton
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