Australia Day Seven Day Music Celebration #01

"My Island Home' Warumpi Band (Neil Murray)

Plenty has been and will be written and said about Australia Day in the coming week!! 

   Then too many (strong opinions included) will forget about it for another year. What started this time around with Triple J's timely decision to shift it's Hottest 100 has been a stronger (but no more helpful) debate on social media. 

   A mature country, with a history like ours, should be able have a sensible debate about something so important. Some indigenous people even see value in January 26th ability to provoke hard conversations. Unfortunately too many people are full of opinion and short on listening, especially to the most effected and vulnerable on the issue. Fear of some imagined challenges to freedoms or way of life seem to make lots of people completely irate when it come to questions of national identity and what's worth celebrating...

   There's a growing group of people who seem to share any number of 'love it or leave it' or anti muslim or anti asylum seeker posts alongside all sorts of random claims about threats to "the Aussie way of life." These seem to feed off themselves and have little or no basis in reality. Fear is a powerful distorter of truth. Just because someone takes a photo of a lamb chop and photoshops it over an Aussie flag, claiming these simple symbols are under threat, doesn't mean they actually are...

   Don't get me started about people claiming to be 'Christian' with little or no evidence of how those values shape, impact, digress from or enhance nationalism or patriotic fervour.

Some of what I celebrate about Australia:

- Our wonderful climate, freedoms, relative peace and ideals about equality and 'a fair go'

- Creativity, education, positivity, holidays, music and the arts

- Aboriginal story, culture, community, music and art

- Attitude to pretention, abuse of power and bad politics

- Opportunities

- Sport

Some of what I grieve:

- The scar on our soul that is our failure to fully embrace aboriginal history and culture 

- Cruelty to refugees and asylum seekers dressed up as 'stop the boats' when it hasn't anyway

- The growing gap between rich and poor

- The pain evident in society

   I'm a bit like those artists/bands who have and will continue to play at indigenous concerts and at Darling Harbour or Sydney's Domain all on the one day... Awabakal beginning to the day then BBQ or a pie and laminations for lunch but listening to Yothu Yindi, Dr Yunupingu, or the Warumpi Band and the Oils etc in the afternoon... glad not to be tuning in to the Hottest countdown!!

For what it's worth, what I have learnt in my limited but wonderful engagement with indigenous 'brothers and sisters', their stories and thoughts, is that 26th January is not an appropriate day for Australia Day. I would prefer it to be the last Monday in January, whatever that date was (or to wait until we choose to be a Republic and set that to start at the end of January). Same time of year, celebrated how it sometimes has been over the years... better than the jingoistic May 8 (better weather too!!) more rich than Federation or July and less conflicted than ANZAC Day or another dual celebration. Recognition or Treaty are two other markers...

   To change it is to live out the values of the Beatitudes, to not extinguish a flame or break a bent reed, to work for the common good, to value community and shared story over national constructs...

   It would value story over hype and would recognise 'it wasn't always thus.' Anyhow we haven't really done very well discussing it since 1938, so one wonders what the catalyst will be... 

I suspect it'll take more than a survey claiming most people wouldn't mind the change...

What I plan to do also is to celebrate seven days of music connected with Australia and this is Day #01 with the Warumpi Band...