Music of Australia
Encyclopedia
The music of Australia is the music produced in the area of, on the subject of, or by the people of modern Australia, including its preceding Indigenous and colonial societies. Indigenous Australian music
is a part of the unique heritage of a 40–60,000 year history which produced the iconic didgeridoo
. Contemporary fusions of Indigenous and Western styles (exemplified in the works of Yothu Yindi
, Christine Anu
and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
) mark distinctly Australian contributions to world music
. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, and Australian folk music
and bush ballads such as Waltzing Matilda
were heavily influenced by Anglo-Celtic
traditions, while classical
forms were derived from those of Europe. Contemporary Australian music ranges across a broad spectrum with trends
often concurrent with those of the US
, the UK, and similar nations – notably in the Australian rock
and Australian country music
genres. Tastes have diversified along with post-World-War-II multicultural immigration to Australia
.
Notable Australian musicians include: the opera singers Dame Nellie Melba
and Dame Joan Sutherland
; country music
stars Slim Dusty
(Australia's biggest selling domestic artist) and John Williamson
; solo artists John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John, folk-rocker Paul Kelly
; Dance group The Avalanches
; jazz
guitarist Tommy Emmanuel
; pioneer rocker Johnny O'Keefe
, global folk-rock band The Seekers
, global rock and pop bands the The EasyBeats
, Bee Gees
, AC/DC
, INXS
, Little River Band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
, Midnight Oil
, Dragon, Silverchair
, Youth Group
, You Am I
and Powderfinger
; the "pop princess" Kylie Minogue
, Pendulum
, Pop Rock duo Savage Garden
and alternative music stars the John Butler Trio
and Xavier Rudd
.
and Torres Strait Islanders
. Music forms an integral part of the social
, cultural
and ceremonial observances of these peoples, and has been so for over 60,000 years. Traditional Indigenous music is best characterised by the didgeridoo
, the best-known instrument, which is considered by some to be the world's oldest. Archaeological studies of rock art
in the Northern Territory
suggest people of the Kakadu
region were playing the instrument 15,000 years ago.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian music has covered numerous styles, including rock and roll
, country
, hip hop
, and reggae
. Jimmy Little
is regarded as the first Aboriginal performer to achieve mainstream success, with his debut 1964 song "The Royal Telephone" highly popular and successful. In 2005, Little was presented with an honorary doctorate in music by the University of Sydney
. Despite the popularity of some of his work, Little failed to launch Indigenous music in the country—from the 1970s onwards, groups such as Coloured Stone
, Warumpi Band
, and No Fixed Address
would help improve the image of the genre. It would be Yothu Yindi
that would bring Indigenous music to the mainstream, with their 1991 song "Treaty", from the album Tribal Voice
, becoming a hit. would go on to reach #11 on the ARIA Singles Chart. The band's performances were based on the traditional Yolngu
dance, and embodied a sharing of culture. The success of Yothu Yindi—winners of eight ARIA Awards—was followed in by Kev Carmody
, Tiddas
, Christine Anu
, and numerous other Indigenous Australian musicians.
Indigenous Australian music
, is unique, as it dates back more than 60,000 years to the prehistory of Australia
and continues the ancient songlines through contemporary artists as diverse as: Jimmy Little
, Warumpi Band
, Yothu Yindi
, Tiddas
, Wild Water, Christine Anu
, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
, Saltwater Band
, Nabarlek
, Nokturnl
, the Pigram Brothers
, Coloured Stone
, Blekbala Mujik
, Kev Carmody
, Archie Roach
and Ruby Hunter
.
For much of its history, Australia's bush music belonged to an oral and folkloric tradition, and was only later published in print in volumes such as Banjo Paterson
's Old Bush Songs, in the 1890s. The distinctive themes and origins of Australia's "bush music" or "bush band
music" can be traced to the songs sung by the convicts who were sent to Australia during the early period of the British colonisation, beginning in 1788. 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 shearer
s. Convict and bushranger verses often railed against government tyranny. Classic bush songs on such themes include: The Wild Colonial Boy
, Click Go The Shears
, The Eumeralla Shore, The Drover's Dream, The Queensland Drover, The Dying Stockman and Moreton Bay.
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 vast distances. Isolation and loneliness of life in the Australian bush has been another theme.
Waltzing Matilda
, often regarded as Australia's unofficial National anthem
, is a quintessential Australian folk song, influenced by Celtic folk ballads. Country and folk artists such as Tex Morton
, Slim Dusty
, Rolf Harris
, The Bushwackers, John Williamson
, and John Schumann
of the band Redgum
have continued to record and popularise the old bush ballads of Australia through the 20th and into the 21st century – and contemporary artists including Sara Storer
and Lee Kernaghan
draw heavily on this heritage.
A number of British singers have spent periods in Australia and have included Australian material in their repertoires, e.g. A. L. Lloyd
, Martin Wyndham-Read and Eric Bogle
.
) of 18th and 19th century Europe. Celtic, English
, German
and Scandinavian
folk traditions predominated in this first wave of European immigrant music. The Australian tradition is, in this sense, related to the traditions of other countries with similar ethnic, historical and political origins, such as New Zealand
, Canada
, and the United States
. The Australian indigenous tradition brought to this mix novel elements, including new instruments, some of which are now internationally familiar, such as the didgeridoo
of Northern Australia.
Notable Australian exponents of the folk revival movement included both European immigrants such as Eric Bogle
, noted for his sad lament to the battle of Gallipoli
"And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
", and indigenous Australians like Archie Roach
and Paul Kelly
. Kelly's lyrics capture the vastness of the culture and landscape of Australia by chronicling life about him for over 30 years. David Fricke from Rolling Stone calls Kelly "one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard, Australian or otherwise.". In the 1970s, Australian Folk Rock brought both familiar and less familiar traditional songs, as well as new compositions, to live venues and the airwaves. Notable artists include The Bushwacker Band
and Redgum
. Redgum are known for their 1983 anti-war protest song "I Was Only Nineteen
", which peaked at #1 on the National singles charts. The 1990s brought Australian Indigenous Folk Rock to the world, led by bands including Yothu Yindi
. Australia's long and continuous folk tradition continues strongly to this day, with elements of folk music still present in many contemporary artists including those generally thought of as Rock
, Heavy Metal
and Alternative Music.
" from the late 19th century is one example. Waltzing Matilda
, often regarded by foreigners as Australia's unofficial national anthem
, is a quintessential Australian country song, influenced more by Celtic folk ballads than by American Country and Western music. This strain of Australian country music, with lyrics focusing on strictly Australian subjects, is generally known as "bush music" or "bush band
music." The most successful Australian bush band is Melbourne's The Bushwackers, active since the early 1970s.
Another, more Americanized form of Australian country music was pioneered in the 1930s by such recording artists as Tex Morton
, and later popularized by Slim Dusty
, best remembered for his 1957 song "A Pub With No Beer". Dusty married singer-songwriter Joy McKean
in 1951 and went on to become Australia's biggest selling domestic music artist with more than 7 million record sales. Australian country artists including Olivia Newton-John
and Keith Urban
have achieved considerable success in the USA. In recent years local contemporary country music, featuring much crossover
with popular music
, has enjoyed considerable popularity in Australia; notable musicians of this genre include John Williamson
, Gina Jeffreys
, Lee Kernaghan
, Troy Cassar-Daley
, Sara Storer
, Felicity Urquhart
and Kasey Chambers
. Others influenced by the genre include Nick Cave
, Paul Kelly
, The John Butler Trio and The Waifs
.
Popular Australian country songs include Click Go the Shears
(Traditional), Lights on the Hill
(1973), I Honestly Love You
(1974), True Blue (1981), and Not Pretty Enough
(2002).
series Playschool
, including veteran actor-musician Don Spencer
and actor and singer Noni Hazlehurst.
Children's music remained a relatively small segment of the Australian music industry until the emergence of groundbreaking children's group The Wiggles
in the late 1990s. The multi-award-winning four-piece group rapidly gained international popularity in the early 2000s and by the end of the decade they had become one of the most popular children's groups in the world. The Wiggles now boasts a huge fanbase in many regions including Australasia, Britain, Asia, and the Americas.
In 2008 The Wiggles were named Business Review Weekly's
top-earning Australian entertainers for the fourth year in a row having earned A$
45 million in 2007. They have been called "the world's biggest preschool band" and "your child's first rock band". The group has achieved worldwide success with their children's albums, videos, television series, and concert appearances. They have earned seventeen gold
, twelve platinum
, three double-platinum, and ten multi-platinum awards for sales of over 17 million DVDs and four million CDs.
By 2002, The Wiggles had become the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
's (ABC) most successful pre-school television program. They have performed for over 1.5 million children in the US between 2005 and 2008. They have won APRA
song writing awards for Best Children's Song three times and earned ADSDA's award for Highest Selling Children's Album four times. They have been nominated for ARIA's
Best Children's Album award fourteen times, and won the award eight times. In 2003, they received ARIA's Outstanding Achievement Award for their success in the U.S.
R&B and soul music had a significant impact on Australian popular music, although it is notable that many seminal recordings in this genre by American acts of the late 20th century were not played on Australian radio. Anecdotal evidence suggest that racism was a key factor—in his book on the history of Australian radio, author and broadcaster Wayne Mac recounts that when a local Melbourne DJ of the 1960s played the new Ike and Tina Turner single "River Deep Mountain High" it was immediately pulled from the playlist by the station's program manager for being "too noisy and too black".
As a result, many local soul/R&B hits of this period were cover versions recorded by Australian acts. Despite radio's relucatance to play American soul/R&B originals, these styles were avidly adopted by local performers however and covers of soul/R&B standards were staples in the setlists of many acts including Max Merritt and the Meteors, Doug Parksinon, Jeff St John, The Groop
, The Groove
, The Twilights, Renee Geyer
and many others.
Renee Geyer
is an Australian singer who came to prominence in the mid-1970s, has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of jazz, soul
and R&B
idioms. She had commercial success as a solo artist in Australia, with "It's a Man's Man's World
"Rock historian, Ian McFarlane described her as having a "rich, soulful, passionate and husky vocal delivery". Geyer's iconic status in the Australian music industry was recognised when she was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame
on 14 July 2005.
Parallel with Geyer's success, American born vocalist Marcia Hines
emerged as one of Australia's most successful solo singers. She first came to prominence in the early 1970s with critically acclaimed roles in the local stage productions of Hair
' and Jesus Christ Superstar
(in which she was the first African-American to play the role of Mary Magdalene) before launching a solo career. By the late 1970s she was one of Australia's top singing stars, winning several Queen of Pop awards and hosting her own national TV variety series.
Following their initial dissolution in 1982 Cold Chisel
lead vocalist Jimmy Barnes
embarked on a successful solo career that has continued from the 1980s to the present. Many of Barnes' albums have featured versions of songs from these genres and his chart-topping album Soul Deep
(1991) consisted entirely of covers of classic 1960s soul/R&B covers.
Australian soul singer/songwriters like Daniel Merriweather
, has after several successful collaborations with artists such as Mark Ronson
, released his official debut album, Love & War, in June 2009. It entered the UK Albums Chart at number two. After launching his career as the winner of an early series of Australian Idol
, soul singer/songwriter Guy Sebastian
has also made an impact on this genre in Australia winning awards at the Urban Music Awards Australia and New Zealand
for Best Male Artist and Best R&B Album. Sebastian's recent release "Like it Like That", was the highest selling Australian artist single in 2009 and charted at #1 for two consecutive weeks
R&B singer, Jessica Mauboy
made her musical debut in 2008 with the R&B hit, "Running Back
" which featured American rapper, Flo Rida
and peaked at #3 on the ARIA Singles Chart
Her debut album, Been Waiting
earned her seven nominations at the 2009 ARIA Music Awards
, winning the award of "Highest Selling Single" for "Running Back"
R&B and Pop singer Cody Simpson
has achieved international acclaim and has been compared to the likes of Justin Bieber
and Miley Cyrus
, and Simpson's music has charted all over the world.
and popular music, from the internationally renowned work of the Bee Gees
, AC/DC
, INXS
, Nick Cave
, Savage Garden
, the Seekers
, or pop diva Kylie Minogue
to the popular local content of John Farnham
, Jimmy Barnes
or Paul Kelly
. Indigenous Australian music
and Australian jazz
have also had cross-over influence on this genre.
Among the brightest stars of early Australian rock and roll
were Col Joye
and Johnny O'Keefe
. O'Keefe formed a band in 1956; his hit Wild One made him the first Australian rock'n'roller to reach the national charts. While US and British content dominated airwaves and record sales into the 1960s, local successes began to emerge – notably The Easybeats
and the folk-pop group The Seekers
had significant local success and some international recognition, while the bands the Bee Gees
and AC/DC
had their first hits in Australia before going on to international success.
Pub rock
was immensely popular in the 1980s, and the era was typified by AC/DC
, Divinyls
, Mental As Anything
, Midnight Oil
, The Choirboys
, The Angels
, Noiseworks
, Air Supply
, Cold Chisel
and Icehouse
. INXS
and Men at Work
also achieved fame worldwide, and the song "Down Under
" became an unofficial anthem for Australia. Australian hip hop
began in the early 1980s, primarily influenced by overseas works, but by the 1990s a distinctive local style had emerged, with groups such as the Hilltop Hoods
achieving international acclaim for their work.
The 90s saw an increase in the popularity of indie rock
in Australia. AC/DC
and INXS
continued to achieve commercial success in the United States, whilst a multitude of local bands, including Jebediah
, Magic Dirt
, Spiderbait
, The Superjesus
, Regurgitator
, You Am I
, Icecream Hands
, Powderfinger
, Silverchair
and Something for Kate
, were popular throughout the country. A small electronic music
scene emerged around Sydney and Melbourne
, with Severed Heads
, Ollie Olsen
's No
, and Foil all peaking in the 90s.
Australian music experienced somewhat of a rock renaissance in the 2000s with groups such as The Vines
, Corey Russell, Jet
, Airbourne
and Wolfmother
charting internationally. Hilltop Hoods
were the first Australian hip-hop group to reach the top of the ARIA chart. Channel 10
's Australian Idol
program was highly popular locally, as were the many "idols" produced.
spread across the world. Sydney's independent record label
Festival Records
was the first to get on the bandwagon in Australia, releasing Bill Haley & His Comets
' "Rock Around the Clock
" in 1956. It became the biggest-selling Australian single ever released up to that time.
American-born entrepreneur Lee Gordon
, who arrived in Australia in 1953, played a key role in establishing the popularity of rock & roll with his famous "Big Show" tours, which brought to Australia many leading American rock'n'roll acts including Bill Haley & His Comets, Little Richard, Bo Diddley
, Eddie Cochran
, Gene Vincent
, Buddy Holly
& The Crickets
and Jerry Lee Lewis
.
Gordon was also instrumental in launching the career of Johnny O'Keefe
, the first Australian rock
star, who rose to fame by imitating Americans like Elvis Presley
and Little Richard
. O'Keefe and other "first wave" bands were popular until about 1961, when a wave of clean-cut family bands took their place.
Though mainstream audiences in the early sixties preferred a clean-cut style – epitomised by the acts that appeared on the Nine Network
pop show Bandstand – there were a number of 'grungier' guitar-oriented bands in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne, who were inspired by American and British instrumental and surf
acts like Britain's The Shadows
– who exerted an enormous influence on Australian and New Zealand music prior to the emergence of The Beatles
– and American acts like guitar legend Dick Dale
and The Surfaris
. Notable Australian instrumental groups of this period included The Atlantics
, The Denvermen The Thunderbirds, The Planets, The Dee Jays, The Joy Boys, The Fabulous Blue Jays and The Whispers.
Jazz was another important influence on the first wave of Australian rock. Unlike the musicians in bands such as The Comets, or Elvis Presley's backing band, who had rockabilly
or country music
backgrounds, many musicians in Australian rock'n'roll bands – such as Johnny O'Keefe's famous backing group The Dee Jays – had a solid background in jazz.
. In the immediate wake of The Beatles' momentous Australian tour, many local groups that had formerly played guitar-based instrumental music recruited singers and took up the new 'beat' style. Some of the best-known and most popular acts in this period were Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs
and Ray Brown & The Whispers
, The Easybeats
, The Bee Gees
, The Masters Apprentices
, The Twilights, The Groop
, The Groove
, The Loved Ones
and cult acts like The Throb and solo star Normie Rowe
, who quickly became Australia's most popular male pop vocalist. During this period a wave of acts also came from New Zealand, including Ray Columbus & the Invaders
, Max Merritt & The Meteors
, Dinah Lee
, Larry's Rebels and The La De Das
.
Many Australian bands and singers tried to enhance their careers by moving overseas, in particular to England, then seen as the mecca of popular music but few bands were successful and of those who relocated to the UK only The Seekers
and The Bee Gees (who were actually born and raised in the UK) enjoyed any lasting success. Others that made the journey were The Easybeats (the first rock band to crack the UK market), The Twilights, The Groove, Lloyds World and the La De Das.
The "third wave" of Australian rock began around 1970, by which time most of the major local pop groups of the 1960s had dissolved and former solo stars like Normie Rowe
had faded from view. Few acts from this era attained major international success, and it was even difficult to achieve success across Australia, due to low radio airplay and the increasing dominance of overseas performers on the charts. A pivotal event was the 1970 radio ban
, which lasted from May to October that year. The Ban was the climax of a simmering "pay for play" dispute between major record companies and commercial radio stations, who refused to pay a proposed new copyright fee for playing pop records on air. The dispute erupted into open conflict in May 1970—many commercial stations boycotted records by the labels involved and refused to list their releases on their Top 40 charts, while the record companies in turn refused to supply radio with free promotional copies of new releases.
An unexpected side-effect of the ban was that several emerging Australian acts signed to independent label (who were not part of the dispute) scored hits with covers of overseas hits; these included The Mixtures
' cover of Mungo Jerry
's "In the Summertime" and Liv Maessen's cover of Mary Hopkin's Eurovision song "Knock, Knock, Who's There".
Despite commercial radio resistance to the more progressive music being produced by bands like Spectrum
and Tully
, acts as diverse as AC/DC
, Sherbet
and John Paul Young
were able to achieve major success and develop a unique sound for Australian rock. From 1975, key agents for the increased exposure of local music were the nationally broadcast ABC-TV television
pop show Countdown, which premiered in late 1974, and Australia's first non-commercial all-rock radio station Double Jay
, which opened in January 1975. Hard rock
band AC/DC
and harmony rock group Little River Band
also found major overseas success in the late 70s and early 80s, touring all over the world. Meanwhile, a score of Australian expatriate solo performers like Helen Reddy
, Olivia Newton-John
and Peter Allen
became major stars in the USA and internationally. Icehouse
also formed in the late 1970s.
This period also saw bands like Skyhooks moving towards New Wave music
, and the late 1970s saw the emergence of pioneering punk rock
bands like The Saints
and Radio Birdman
, as well as electronic music
al groups, such as Cybotron, Severed Heads
and Essendon Airport
. Perhaps most influential of the 'underground' scenes, however, was the burgeoning Australian pub rock
circuit, which developed in the early 1970s and played a key role in the emergence of major bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Cold Chisel
and The Angels
, and in Sydney Midnight Oil
.
From the post-punk
music scene which had sprung up in Melbourne came The Boys Next Door
featuring Nick Cave
. The Boys Next Door would eventually become The Birthday Party
.
The Australian Music Industry as a business began to formalise during the late 1960s and the 1970s. Although not taken seriously by the mainstream business community in those early years, none could discount the pioneering spirit and business acumen of the likes of Michael Gudinski
, Michael Chugg, Ray Evans
, Dennis Charter
, Glenn Wheatley
, Harry M. Miller
, Harley Medcalf, Michael Browning, Peter Rix, Ron Tudor, Roger Davies
, Fred Bestall, Lance Reynolds, Alan Hely, Frank Stivala, Sebastian Chase, Philip Jacobsen, Peter Karpin, Roger Savage
, John Sayers, Ernie Rose, Bill Armstrong, Kevin Jacobsen
, Phil Dwyer
, Ken Brodziak, Denis Handlin, Stan Rofe
, Jade Johnson
, Terry Blamey and Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum
. These were the people largely responsible for promoting and developing the Australian music ‘business’ during those formative years.
Clubs and venues catering for the demand of live band entertainment flourished in capital cities all over the country, however, the central development of the Australian Music Industry during these years was in Sydney and Melbourne. Clubs such as Chequers
, the Bondi Lifesaver and the Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney, and the Thumpin Tum, Catcher
, Berties, Sebastian’s, the Hard Rock Cafe
and the Q Club in Melbourne were synonymous with the biggest names in Australian Rock & Roll.
In 1970 the first ever outdoor music festival, modelled on Woodstock, was held at Ourimbah
near Sydney, and several other followed over the next two years, but most were a financial failure. In 1972 the first festival that proved successful enough to be repeated was the 1972 ‘Festival’ which attracted some 35,000 music fans from across the country to Sunbury
, Melbourne.
‘Pop’ magazines such as Go-Set
(which began in 1966), the Daily Planet
, RAM, and Juke, and television programs such as Countdown, Uptight, Sounds Unlimited and Happening 70 promoted Australian popular music to a youth market who had never before experienced such media exposure of their idols and stars. ‘Pop Stars’ were now being created by direct marketing to a targeted teenage audience. Recording studios such as 301, Alberts’ and Trafalgar in Sydney and Armstrong Studios and TCS in Melbourne became legendary. Independent label Mushroom Records
was founded in 1973 and although it struggled to survive for its first two years of existence, it was saved in early 1975 by the nationawide commercial breakthrough of Skyhooks, whose debut LP became the biggest-selling Australian rock album ever released up to that time; this success enabled Mushroom to become a significant player in the Australian music industry and compete with established companies like EMI, CBS and Festival.
The bands and solo artists who shaped Australian Music during these seminal years were: – The Choirboys
, INXS
, Noiseworks
, Skyhooks, AC/DC
, Renée Geyer
, Spectrum
, Chain
, Daddy Cool
, Marcia Hines
, Zoot
, The Masters Apprentices
, Dragon
, Air Supply
, The Radiators, The Angels
, Axiom
, Kevin Borich Express, Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, Carson, Cheetah
, Richard Clapton
, Cold Chisel
, John Farnham
, Healing Force, Lobby Loyde
and the Coloured Balls, Hawking Bros, Flake, Buffalo
, Bjerre, Wendy Saddington
, The Seekers
, Ronnie Charles, Company Caine
, Trevor Spry, Radio Birdman
, Buster Brown
, Little River Band
, Ray Burgess, Mental As Anything
, Marty Rhone, Ariel
, The La De Das
, Peter Allen
, The Dingoes
, Babeez, Mondo Rock
, Icehouse
, Midnight Oil
, Doug Parkinson, Jon English
, Blackfeather
, Ronnie Burns, The Ferrets, Mike Brady
, Martin Gellatley, Hush
, Tully
, Madder Lake, Supernaut
, Russell Morris
, Allison Durbin
, Olivia Newton-John
, Ross D. Wylie, The News, Max Merritt and the Meteors, Debra Byrne
, Rose Tattoo
, The Reels
, The Saints
, Sebastian Hardie
, Lash, William Shakespeare
, Sherbet
, Silver Studs, John St Peters, Jeff St John, Stylus
, Jim Keays
, Tamam Shud
, Ted Mulry
Gang, Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs
, Ol' 55
, Mark Holden
, Lyndon Hart, Stevie Wright, John Paul Young
, Helen Reddy
, Redgum
, Hot City Bump Band, Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons
, Colleen Hewett
, Linda George
, Ayers Rock
and Brian Cadd
.
said that before the 80s, "Australia still needed America or England to tell them what was good". An example of Australians breaking free from convention came in TISM
. Formed in 1982, the band is known for its anonymous members, outrageous stage antics, and humorous lyrics. In the words of the band, "There's only one factor left that makes us work. And that factor, I think, we've burned away, with the crucible of time, into something that's actually genuine."
Men at Work
, Divinyls
, and Hoodoo Gurus
, all formed between 1979 and 1981, would go on to be hugely successful worldwide. Men at Work's "Down Under
" hit number one in Australia, Europe, the UK, and the United States, and was considered the theme song of Australia's successful showing at the 1983 America's Cup
. Hoodoo Gurus, meanwhile, hit it big on the US college circuit—all of their 80s albums topped the chart.
In the 1980s, numerous innovative Australian rock bands arose. These included Hunters & Collectors
, The Church
, TISM
, Divinyls
, Hoodoo Gurus
, Mondo Rock
, The Sunnyboys
, Men at Work
, The Go-Betweens
, The Triffids
, The Celibate Rifles
, the Cosmic Psychos
and the Hard-Ons
. During this period a number of Australian bands began to reflect their urban environment in songs dealing with day to day experiences of inner-city life e.g. Paul Kelly
& the Coloured Girls perhaps best exemplified in his songs "From St. Kilda to Kings Cross" and "Leaps & Bounds", John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong
in songs such us "King Street" and The Mexican Spitfires
in tracks like "Sydney Town" and "Town Hall Steps." This decade also saw the rise of world music
groups like Dead Can Dance
; of special importance is Yothu Yindi
, who helped found the field of Aboriginal rock
. In 1985, the Newsboys
emerged and produced the hit albums Not Ashamed
, Step Up to the Microphone
, Devotion, and more. Then soap star Kylie Minogue
began her music career in the late 1980s and released The Loco-Motion
which became the biggest selling single in Australia for the decade and quickly catapulted her to worldwide stardom.
The first annual ARIA Music Awards
were held in 1987. John Farnham
and Crowded House
were the most successful artists at the event.
The 1990s saw continued overseas success from groups such as AC/DC
, INXS
, Men at Work
, Midnight Oil
, The Bad Seeds, and a new indie rock
scene started to develop locally
. Sydney-based Ratcat
were the first new band to achieve a mainstream following, while bands such as the Hoodoo Gurus
got off to a slower start; their debut album Stoneage Romeos
earned a small following but failed to captivate a mainstream that at the time "didn't get it". Later reviews would describe the band as "integral to the story of Aussie indie music", influencing bands including Frenzal Rhomb
and Jet
. The band would go on to become an ARIA Hall of Fame
inductee. The Church
, meanwhile, was highly successful in the 1980s, only to see their careers diminish in the next decade; 1994's Sometime Anywhere
saw the band recede from a mainstream audience.
Alternative rock
began to gain popularity midway through the 90s, with grunge
and Britpop
styles especially popular, resulting in a new wave of Australian bands. Some, such as Savage Garden
and Silverchair
, also gained quick success in the United States, while You Am I
, Jebediah
, Magic Dirt
, Something for Kate
, Icecream Hands
and Powderfinger
gained more success locally. Bands such as Regurgitator
and Spiderbait
were hit heavily by the post-grunge
backlash, losing in sales and critical acclaim.
Much of the success of rock in Australia is attributed to the non-commercial Australian Broadcasting Corporation
's radio station Triple J
, which focuses heavily on Australian alternative music, and has done so since its formation as 2JJ in 1975. Throughout the station's history, they have helped jump start the careers of numerous bands, through programs such as Unearthed, the Australian Music program Home & Hosed and the Hottest 100
. The Big Day Out
festival has showcased Australian and international acts, with line-ups
spanning multiple genres, with an alternative focus. It has become highly popular amongst musicians; Foo Fighters
lead singer Dave Grohl
said "We play the Big Day Out because it's the best tour in the world. You ask any band in the world – they all want to play the Big Day Out, every single one of them." Other festivals, such as Homebake
, Livid
, and Splendour in the Grass
, are also rock focused, and together with Big Day Out are "united by the dominant presence of
the indie-guitar scene".
Electronic music
in Australia emerged in the 1990s, but takes elements from funk
, house
, techno
, and numerous other genres. Early innovators of the genre in Australia include Severed Heads
, who formed in 1979 and were the first electronic group to play the Big Day Out
. The band achieved long term success, winning an ARIA Award in 2005
for "Best Original Soundtrack" for The Illustrated Family Doctor, where lead singer Tom Ellard
said the band would never fit into mainstream music. However, not all contemporary Australian music is electronic; bands such as Yves Klein Blue
continue to expand the indie rock genre with their innovative punk-style tunes such as "Polka", "Soldier", and "About the Future".
The Avalanches
received widespread acclaim across the globe for their debut album Since I Left You
and it has been considered one of the greatest Australian albums ever made.
The genre has developed a wide following, to the point the University of Adelaide
offers an Electronic Music Unit, teaching studio
production and music technology
. Traditional rock bands such as Regurgitator
have developed an original sound by combining heavy guitars and electronic influences, and rock-electro groups, most notably Rogue Traders
, have become popular with mainstream audiences. The genre is considered to be most popular in Melbourne, with multiple music festival
s held nationally in the city. However, Cyclic Defrost
, the only specialist electronic music magazine in Australia, was started in Sydney (in 1998) and is still based there. Radio
still lags somewhat behind the success of the genre—producer and artist manager Andrew Penhallow told Australian Music Online
that "the local music media have often overlooked the fact that this genre has been flying the flag for Australian music overseas".
Recently, bands such as Angelspit
, Cut Copy
, The Presets
, The Potbelleez
, Art vs. Science
, Polo Club
, Empire of the Sun
and Pnau
have made a name for themselves in the genre. The success of The Presets at the ARIA Music Awards of 2008
and the Potbelleez in the mainstream media was indicative of the rapidly growing popularity of electro house in Australia. Cut Copy frontman Dan Whitford has attributed the band's success to a change in public attitude as much as the band's quality, explaining "It's a case partly of timing and a growing awareness of electronic music in Australia". Pnau's first album, Sambanova, was released in 1999, at a time when many in Australia considered electronic music to be a dying breed. Nonetheless, the band travelled around the US and Europe, and slowly made a name for themselves, and for a rebirth of electronic music in the country.
The earliest western musical influences in Australia can be traced back to two distinct sources: in the first settlements, the large body of convicts, soldiers and sailors who brought the traditional folk music of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland; and the first free settlers, some of whom had been exposed to the European classical music tradition in their upbringing. Very little music has survived from this early period, although there are samples of music originating from Hobart
and Sydney
that date back to the early 19th century.
The establishment of choral societies
(c. 1850) and symphony orchestras
(c. 1890) led to increase compositional activity, although most Australian classical composers of this period worked entirely within European models and many undertook their training in composition in Europe
or the United Kingdom
. One of the earliest known composers was George Tolhurst
, whose oratorio Ruth was the first composed in the then colony of Victoria in 1864. Some works leading up to the first part of the 20th century were heavily influenced by folk music (Percy Grainger
's "English Country Gardens" of 1908 being a good example of this).
From the time of Australia's Federation
in 1901, a growing sense of national identity began to emerge in the arts, although a patriotic attachment with the "mother country", that is Britain
, and the British Empire
continued to dominate musical taste. In the war and post-war eras, as the Australian national identity continued to build, composers looked to their surroundings for inspiration. John Antill
in his famous ballet Corroboree
, Peter Sculthorpe
and others began to incorporate elements of Aboriginal music, Richard Meale
drew influence from south-east Asia (notably using the harmonic properties of the Bali
nese gamelan
), while Nigel Butterley
combined his penchant for International modernism with an own individual voice.
By the beginning of the 1960s other strong influences emerged in Australian classical music, with composers incorporating disparate elements into their work, ranging from Aboriginal and south-east Asian music and instruments, American jazz and blues, to the belated discovery of European atonality and the avante-garde. Composers like Don Banks
, Don Kay
, Malcolm Williamson
and Colin Brumby
epitomise this period. Others who adhered to more traditional idioms include Arthur Benjamin
, George Dreyfus
, Peggy Glanville-Hicks
and Robert Hughes
. In recent times composers including Julian Cochran
, Gordon Hamilton
, Liza Lim
, Nigel Westlake
, David Worrall
, Graeme Koehne
, Elena Kats-Chernin
, Carl Vine
, Brett Dean
, Martin Wesley-Smith
, Georges Lentz
, Richard Mills
, Ross Edwards
, Stephen Leek
, Matthew Hindson
and Constantine Koukias
have embodied the pinnacle of established Australian composers.
Well-known Australian classical performers of the past and the present day include:
State-based symphony orchestras, originally managed under the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(ABC) but now operating as separate independent bodies, have played a major role in performing mainstream orchestral repertoire for the general public as well as commissioning new works from Australian composers and ensuring that works by contemporary international composers are introduced to their audiences. These include the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra
, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra
and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
. There are also professional orchestras whose role is related specifically to opera and ballet performance, chiefly the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
based at the Sydney Opera House
and Orchestra Victoria
based in Melbourne
.
There are several chamber
orchestras which focus on works for smaller ensembles. These include the Australian Chamber Orchestra
which tours regularly throughout Australia and has been well-received overseas, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra and the Camerata of St. John's. Orchestral ensembles which concentrate on historically informed performance
include the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
and the Orchestra of the Antipodes.
Leading chamber ensembles include the Australian String Quartet
, the Goldner String Quartet
, the Australia Ensemble
, Synergy Percussion, Dean Emerson Dean, TRIOZ, the Sydney Soloists, the Southern Cross Soloists, Guitar Trek, Collusion, the Elandra String Quartet, the Zephyr Quartet
, and the Tinalley String Quartet.
Chamber ensembles involved in historically informed performance include Marais Project, Accademia Arcadia, La Compania
, Ironwood
and probably Australia's oldest group of this kind, The Renaissance Players.
Musica Viva Australia
, now the largest entrepreneur of chamber music in the world, was founded in 1945 and has provided a major stimulus for public interest in chamber music by organising annual subscription programs of concerts by leading international and Australian ensembles. Further interest has been stimulated by events such as the Australian Festival of Chamber Music
which was founded in 1991 and is held each year in Townsville, the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and the Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition, both of which are organised by Chamber Music Australia and held every four years in Melbourne.
Several Australian composers have written chamber works. Among the older composers, Peter Sculthorpe
stands out because he has written 17 string quartets up to 2010, with performances in Australia and overseas and recordings by leading groups such as the Kronos Quartet
. In the next generation, Brett Dean, himself a violist of note and a composer who has received world-wide recognition, has written several works for various ensembles including a string quartet called "Eclipse" which was commissioned by the Cologne Philharmonie for the Auryn Quartet, a string quintet entitled "Epitaphs" premiered in 2010 at the Cheltenham Music Festival
, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
, La Jolla SummerFest and the Cologne Philharmonie, and a sonata for violin and piano commissioned by Midori
for performance in 2010 in Stockholm
and the Wigmore Hall
, London. Dean's near-contemporary, Julian Yu has written over 30 works for various chamber ensembles including conventional trios and quartets, as well as unusual combinations such as a quintet for four percussions and piano, a septet for flute, percussion, harp, violin, viola, cello and double bass entitled "Pentatonicophilia", and an unconventional reworking of Mussorgsky
's "Pictures at an Exhibition
" for 16 instruments.
Other piano and chamber works of special merit include Peggy Glanville-Hicks' Concertino da camera for flute, clarinet, bassoon and piano, Richard Meale's "Las Alboradas" for flute, violin, horn, and piano, Riccardo Formosa's "Vertigo" for flute (piccolo), oboe, clarinet and piano, Nigel Westlake's "Refractions at Summer Cloud Bay" for flute, bass flute, clarinet, soprano saxophone, violin, cello and piano, the piano works of Julian Cochran
, Ross Edwards' "Laikan" for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin and cello, Carl Vine's String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5, his Elegy for flute, cello, trombone, piano four-hands, organ and percussion, and "Inner World" for amplified cello and tape.
Music broadcasting has played an important role in providing classical music and jazz to the Australian public. Prior to the introduction of FM
into the country, the ABC produced classical music programs which were broadcast through their local stations. Professor A.E. Floyd's program "Music Lover's Hour" was heard for over 25 years, beginning first on the local Melbourne ABC station in 1944 before being broadcast nationally. Pianist and academic Lindley Evans
broadcast a series of programs called "Adventures in Music" on the ABC, but was probably better known and more influential through his appearances each Thursday under the pseudonym "Mr Music" on the ABC's national "Argonauts Club
" program. Ralph Collins, formerly a record librarian at the ABC with an acute knowledge of music, hosted his own national music program for over 30 years from the early 1960s, and he was eventually nicknamed "Mr Sunday Morning" by the general public. John Cargher
, a record retailer, avid collector of records and author of many books, presented two programs. The most popular was "Singers of Renown
", which began on the local Melbourne ABC station in 1966 and was transferred by public demand to Radio National
at the end of only 10 weeks and remained on air for 42 years. The other program, "Music for Pleasure", began on Radio National in 1967 and continued until 1996.
The national FM music network ABC Classic FM
was established in 1976 to broadcast classical music, jazz, operas, recitals and live concerts from Australia and overseas, music analysis programs and news about music activities. Its audience is now estimated as being about one million people, not taking into account a growing number of international users who access its programs via its online service. At about the same time, community not-for-profit
FM stations were set up to enable volunteers to produce and present classical music and jazz programs. These included 2MBS FM
in Sydney, 3MBS FM
in Melbourne and 4MBS Classic FM
in Brisbane. More recently a similar station, 5MBS FM, has been established in Adelaide.
and Bendigo
. Minstrel orchestra music featurics including improvisatory embellishment and polyrhythm in the (pre-classic) banjo playing and clever percussion breaks. Some genuine African-American minstrel and jubilee singing troupes toured from the 1870s. A more jazz-like form of minstrelsy reached Australia in the late 1890s in the form of improvisatory and syncopated coon song
and cake-walk music, two early forms of ragtime. The next two decades brought ensemble, piano and vocal ragtime and leading (mostly white) American ragtime artists, including Ben Harney, 'Emperor of Ragtime' Gene Greene and pianist Charlie Straight. Some of these visitors taught Australians how to 'rag' (improvise unsyncopated popular music into ragtime-style music).
By the mid 1920s, phonograph
machines, increased contact with American popular music
and visiting white American dance musicians had firmly established jazz (meaning jazz inflected modern dance and stage music) in Australia. The first recordings of jazz in Australia are Mastertouch piano rolls recorded in Sydney from around 1922 but jazz began to be recorded on disc by 1925, first in Melbourne and soon thereafter in Sydney.
Soon after World War II, jazz in Australia diverged into two strands. One was based on the earlier collectively improvised called "dixieland" or traditional jazz. The other so-called modernist stream was based on big band swing, small band progressive swing, boogie woogie, and after WWII, the emerging new style of bebop
. By the 1950s American bop, itself, was dividing into so-called 'cool' and 'hard' bop schools, the latter being more polyrhythmic and aggressive. This division reached Australia on a small scale by the end of the 1950s. From the mid-1950s rock and roll
began to draw young audiences and social dancers away from jazz. British-style dixieland, called Trad, became popular in the early 1960s. Most modern players stuck with the 'cool' (often called West Coast) style, but some experimented with free jazz, modal jazz, experiment with 'Eastern' influences, art music and visual art concept, electronic and jazz-rock fusions.
The 1970s brought tertiary jazz education courses and continuing innovation and diversification in jazz which, by the late 1980s, included world music fusion and contemporary classical and jazz crossovers. From this time, the trend towards eclectic style fusions has continued with ensembles like The Catholics, Australian Art Orchestra, Tongue and Groove, austraLYSIS
, Wanderlust, The Necks and many others. It is questionable whether the label jazz is elastic enough to continue to embrace the ever-widening range of improvisatory musics that are associated with the term jazz in Australia. However, mainstream modern jazz and dixieland still have the strongest following and patron still flock to hear famous mainstream artists who have been around for decades, such as One Night Stand players Dugald Shaw and Blair Jordan, reeds player Don Burrows
and trumpeter James Morrison
and, sometimes, the famous pioneer of traditional jazz in Australia, Graeme Bell
.A non-academic genre of jazz has also evolved with a harder"street edge" style.The Conglomerate,The Bamboos,Damage,Cookin on Three Burners,John Mcalls Black Money are examples of this.
See:
Andrew Bisset
. Black Roots White Flowers, Golden Press, 1978
Bruce Johnson. The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz OUP, 1987
John Whiteoak. Playing Ad Lib: Improvisatory Music in Australia: 1836–1970, Currency Press, 1999
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Dancing with the Stars Australia
Indigenous Australian music
Australian indigenous music includes the music of Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are collectively called Indigenous Australians; it incorporates a variety of distinctive traditional music styles practiced by Indigenous Australian peoples, as well as a range of contemporary...
is a part of the unique heritage of a 40–60,000 year history which produced the iconic didgeridoo
Didgeridoo
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia around 1,500 years ago and still in widespread usage today both in Australia and around the world. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe"...
. Contemporary fusions of Indigenous and Western styles (exemplified in the works of Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi are an Australian band with Aboriginal and balanda members formed in 1986. Aboriginal members come from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land...
, Christine Anu
Christine Anu
-Early life:Anu was born in Cairns, Queensland to a Torres Strait Islander mother from Saibai and Mabuiag Islands.-Career:Anu began performing as a dancer and later went on to sing back-up vocals for The Rainmakers, which included Neil Murray of the Warumpi Band. Her first recording was in 1993...
and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu is an Indigenous Australian musician, who sings in the Yolngu language.He was born in Galiwin'ku , off the coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Australia about 350 miles from Darwin. He is from the Gumatj clan of the Yolngu and his mother from the Galpu nation...
) mark distinctly Australian contributions to world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, and Australian folk music
Australian folk music
Australian folk music is a term which may be applied, relatively narrowly, to traditional folk music of Australia, also called "bush music" or more broadly to traditional music from the large variety of immigrant cultures and those of the original Australian inhabitants.Celtic, English, German and...
and bush ballads such as Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
were heavily influenced by Anglo-Celtic
Anglo-Celtic
Anglo-Celtic is a term used to describe people of British and Irish descent. The term today is mainly used outside of Britain and Ireland, particularly in Australia but also in Canada, New Zealand and the United States, where a significant diaspora is located....
traditions, while classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
forms were derived from those of Europe. Contemporary Australian music ranges across a broad spectrum with trends
Timeline of trends in Australian music
The trend of Australian music have often mirrored those of the United States and Britain. Australian Aboriginal music during the prehistory of Australia is not well documented; this timeline will concentrate on the time since radio began broadcasting in Australia .-1950s:Because Australia had...
often concurrent with those of the US
Music of the United States
The music of the United States reflects the country's multi-ethnic population through a diverse array of styles. Among the country's most internationally-renowned genres are hip hop, blues, country, rhythm and blues, jazz, barbershop, pop, techno, and rock and roll. The United States has the...
, the UK, and similar nations – notably in the Australian rock
Australian rock
Australian rock, sometimes called OZ Rock is used to describe the various rock and many pop bands and solo artists from Australia. Australia has a rich history of rock music and an appreciation of the roots of various rock genres, usually originating in the United States but also Britain, Ireland,...
and Australian country music
Australian country music
Australian country music is a part of the music of Australia. There is a broad range of styles, from bluegrass, to yodelling to folk to the more popular. The genre has been influenced by Celtic and English folk music, by the traditions of Australian bush balladeers, as well as by popular American...
genres. Tastes have diversified along with post-World-War-II multicultural immigration to Australia
Immigration to Australia
Immigration to Australia is estimated to have begun around 51,000 years ago when the ancestors of Australian Aborigines arrived on the continent via the islands of the Malay Archipelago and New Guinea. Europeans first landed in the 17th and 18th Centuries, but colonisation only started in 1788. The...
.
Notable Australian musicians include: the opera singers Dame Nellie Melba
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
and Dame Joan Sutherland
Joan Sutherland
Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....
; country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
stars Slim Dusty
Slim Dusty
David Gordon "Slim Dusty " Kirkpatrick AO, MBE was an Australian country music singer-songwriter and producer, with a career spanning nearly eight decades. He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson that represented the Australian Bush...
(Australia's biggest selling domestic artist) and John Williamson
John Williamson (singer)
John Robert Williamson AM is an Australian country music singer-songwriter. Williamson has released over thirty-two albums, ten videos, five DVDs, and two lyric books...
; solo artists John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John, folk-rocker Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly (musician)
Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...
; Dance group The Avalanches
The Avalanches
The Avalanches are an Australian electronic music group formed in 1997 with mainstays Robbie Chater on keyboards, Tony Diblasi on keyboards, bass and backing vocals, and Darren Seltmann on vocals and keyboards. They are known for their live DJ sets and their debut album Since I Left You , which was...
; jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
guitarist Tommy Emmanuel
Tommy Emmanuel
William Thomas "Tommy" Emmanuel AM is an Australian guitarist, best known for his complex fingerpicking style, energetic performances and the use of percussive effects on the guitar. In the May 2008 and 2010 issues of Guitar Player Magazine, he was named as "Best Acoustic Guitarist" in their...
; pioneer rocker Johnny O'Keefe
Johnny O'Keefe
John Michael O'Keefe, known as Johnny O'Keefe was an Australian rock and roll singer whose career began in the 1950s. Some of his hits include "Wild One" , "Shout!" and "She's My Baby"...
, global folk-rock band The Seekers
The Seekers
The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...
, global rock and pop bands the The EasyBeats
The Easybeats
The Easybeats were an Australian rock and roll band. They formed in Sydney in late 1964 and broke up at the end of 1969. They are regarded as the greatest Australian pop band of the 1960s, and were the first Australian rock and roll act to score an international pop hit with their 1966 single...
, Bee Gees
Bee Gees
The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...
, AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, INXS
INXS
INXS are an Australian rock band, formed as The Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney, New South Wales. Mainstays are Garry Gary Beers on bass guitar, Andrew Farriss on guitar/keyboards, Jon Farriss on drums, Tim Farriss on lead guitar and Kirk Pengilly on guitar/sax...
, Little River Band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian alternative rock band, formed in Melbourne in 1983. The band is fronted by Nick Cave and has featured international personnel throughout their career.-Formation and early releases :...
, Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
, Dragon, Silverchair
Silverchair
Silverchair were an Australian rock band, which formed in 1992 as Innocent Criminals in Merewether, Newcastle with the line-up of Ben Gillies on drums, Chris Joannou on bass guitar and Daniel Johns on vocals and guitars. The group got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo...
, Youth Group
Youth Group
Youth Group are a rock band based in Newtown, Sydney, Australia signed to Ivy League Records.- Biography :Youth Group formed in Sydney in the late 1990s. They have released four albums in Australia, with the three most recent albums also gaining releases worldwide...
, You Am I
You Am I
You Am I are an Australian alternative rock band, fronted by vocalist/guitarist and main songwriter Tim Rogers. They were the first Australian band to have three albums successively debut at #1 on the ARIA Charts, and are renowned for their live performances.-History:Tim Rogers formed the first...
and Powderfinger
Powderfinger
Powderfinger was an Australian rock band that formed in Brisbane in 1989. From 1992 until their breakup the band lineup consisted of vocalist Bernard Fanning, guitarists Darren Middleton and Ian Haug, bassist John Collins, and drummer Jon Coghill....
; the "pop princess" Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE - often known simply as Kylie - is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing...
, Pendulum
Pendulum (band)
Pendulum is an Australian drum and bass and electronic rock band founded in 2002 in Perth by Rob Swire, Gareth McGrillen, and Paul Harding.Swire and McGrillen were members of the rock band known as Xygen. After hearing Konflict's "Messiah" at a club, they were inspired to enter into the drum and...
, Pop Rock duo Savage Garden
Savage Garden
Savage Garden were an Australian pop rock performance and songwriting duo. Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones formed the group in Brisbane, Queensland in 1994...
and alternative music stars the John Butler Trio
John Butler Trio
The John Butler Trio are an eclectic roots and jam band from Australia led by guitarist and vocalist John Butler. They formed in Fremantle in 1998 with Jason McGann on drums and Gavin Shoesmith on bass guitar...
and Xavier Rudd
Xavier Rudd
Xavier Rudd is an Australian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He was born in 1978 and grew up in Torquay, Victoria. He attended St. Joseph's College, Geelong....
.
Indigenous music
Indigenous Australian music refers to the music of AboriginesIndigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
and Torres Strait Islanders
Torres Strait Islanders
Torres Strait Islanders are the indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands, part of Queensland, Australia. They are culturally and genetically linked to Melanesian peoples and those of Papua New Guinea....
. Music forms an integral part of the social
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
, cultural
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
and ceremonial observances of these peoples, and has been so for over 60,000 years. Traditional Indigenous music is best characterised by the didgeridoo
Didgeridoo
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia around 1,500 years ago and still in widespread usage today both in Australia and around the world. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe"...
, the best-known instrument, which is considered by some to be the world's oldest. Archaeological studies of rock art
Rock art
Rock art is a term used in archaeology for any human-made markings made on natural stone. They can be divided into:*Petroglyphs - carvings into stone surfaces*Pictographs - rock and cave paintings...
in the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
suggest people of the Kakadu
Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin.Kakadu National Park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It covers an area of , extending nearly 200 kilometres from north to south and over 100 kilometres...
region were playing the instrument 15,000 years ago.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian music has covered numerous styles, including rock and roll
Australian rock
Australian rock, sometimes called OZ Rock is used to describe the various rock and many pop bands and solo artists from Australia. Australia has a rich history of rock music and an appreciation of the roots of various rock genres, usually originating in the United States but also Britain, Ireland,...
, country
Australian country music
Australian country music is a part of the music of Australia. There is a broad range of styles, from bluegrass, to yodelling to folk to the more popular. The genre has been influenced by Celtic and English folk music, by the traditions of Australian bush balladeers, as well as by popular American...
, hip hop
Australian hip hop
Australian hip hop music began in the early 1980s; originally it was primarily influenced by hip hop music and culture imported via radio and television from the United States of America. However, since the 1990s, a distinctive local style has developed. Australian hip hop is an underground music...
, and reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
. Jimmy Little
Jimmy Little
Jimmy Little AO , is an Australian Aboriginal musician, singer, songwriter and guitarist, whose career has spanned six decades. For many years he was the only Aboriginal star on the Australian music scene...
is regarded as the first Aboriginal performer to achieve mainstream success, with his debut 1964 song "The Royal Telephone" highly popular and successful. In 2005, Little was presented with an honorary doctorate in music by the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
. Despite the popularity of some of his work, Little failed to launch Indigenous music in the country—from the 1970s onwards, groups such as Coloured Stone
Coloured Stone
Coloured Stone is a band from the Koonibba Mission, west of Ceduna, South Australia. Their sound has been described as having a unique feel and Aboriginal qualities...
, Warumpi Band
Warumpi Band
The Warumpi Band is an Australian band from the bush, coming from Papunya, Northern Territory, Australia.The band was formed in 1980 by Neil Murray, a Victorian "whitefella" working in the region as a schoolteacher and labourer, George Burarrwanga, from Elcho Island, and local boys Gordon and...
, and No Fixed Address
No Fixed Address
No Fixed Address is an Australian Aboriginal reggae group formed in 1978. Led by Bart Willoughby, the band supported Peter Tosh on his 1982 Australian tour...
would help improve the image of the genre. It would be Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi are an Australian band with Aboriginal and balanda members formed in 1986. Aboriginal members come from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land...
that would bring Indigenous music to the mainstream, with their 1991 song "Treaty", from the album Tribal Voice
Tribal Voice
-Reception:The album reached a peak of #4 on the ARIA album charts.-Track listing:#"Gapu" #"Treaty" #"Djäpana" #"My Kind of Life" #"Maralitja" -Reception:The album reached a peak of #4 on the ARIA album charts.-Track listing:#"Gapu" (Traditional song, arranged by Galarrwuy Yunupingu)#"Treaty"...
, becoming a hit. would go on to reach #11 on the ARIA Singles Chart. The band's performances were based on the traditional Yolngu
Yolngu
The Yolngu or Yolŋu are an Indigenous Australian people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. Yolngu means “person” in the Yolŋu languages.-Yolŋu law:...
dance, and embodied a sharing of culture. The success of Yothu Yindi—winners of eight ARIA Awards—was followed in by Kev Carmody
Kev Carmody
Kevin Daniel "Kev" Carmody is an Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter. His song "From Little Things Big Things Grow" was recorded with co-writer Paul Kelly for their 1993 single; it was covered by the Get Up Mob in 2008 and peaked at #4 on the Australian Recording Industry Association singles...
, Tiddas
Tiddas
Tiddas are a three piece all-girl folk band from Victoria, Australia.-Biography:Originally the three women, Amy Saunders , Lou Bennett and Sally Dastey combined their vocal talents as backing singers for Aboriginal band Djaambi, led by Saunder's brother Richard Frankland in 1990...
, Christine Anu
Christine Anu
-Early life:Anu was born in Cairns, Queensland to a Torres Strait Islander mother from Saibai and Mabuiag Islands.-Career:Anu began performing as a dancer and later went on to sing back-up vocals for The Rainmakers, which included Neil Murray of the Warumpi Band. Her first recording was in 1993...
, and numerous other Indigenous Australian musicians.
Indigenous Australian music
Indigenous Australian music
Australian indigenous music includes the music of Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are collectively called Indigenous Australians; it incorporates a variety of distinctive traditional music styles practiced by Indigenous Australian peoples, as well as a range of contemporary...
, is unique, as it dates back more than 60,000 years to the prehistory of Australia
Prehistory of Australia
The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the first definitive sighting of Australia by Europeans in 1606, which may be taken as the beginning of the recent history of Australia...
and continues the ancient songlines through contemporary artists as diverse as: Jimmy Little
Jimmy Little
Jimmy Little AO , is an Australian Aboriginal musician, singer, songwriter and guitarist, whose career has spanned six decades. For many years he was the only Aboriginal star on the Australian music scene...
, Warumpi Band
Warumpi Band
The Warumpi Band is an Australian band from the bush, coming from Papunya, Northern Territory, Australia.The band was formed in 1980 by Neil Murray, a Victorian "whitefella" working in the region as a schoolteacher and labourer, George Burarrwanga, from Elcho Island, and local boys Gordon and...
, Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi are an Australian band with Aboriginal and balanda members formed in 1986. Aboriginal members come from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land...
, Tiddas
Tiddas
Tiddas are a three piece all-girl folk band from Victoria, Australia.-Biography:Originally the three women, Amy Saunders , Lou Bennett and Sally Dastey combined their vocal talents as backing singers for Aboriginal band Djaambi, led by Saunder's brother Richard Frankland in 1990...
, Wild Water, Christine Anu
Christine Anu
-Early life:Anu was born in Cairns, Queensland to a Torres Strait Islander mother from Saibai and Mabuiag Islands.-Career:Anu began performing as a dancer and later went on to sing back-up vocals for The Rainmakers, which included Neil Murray of the Warumpi Band. Her first recording was in 1993...
, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu is an Indigenous Australian musician, who sings in the Yolngu language.He was born in Galiwin'ku , off the coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Australia about 350 miles from Darwin. He is from the Gumatj clan of the Yolngu and his mother from the Galpu nation...
, Saltwater Band
Saltwater Band
Saltwater Band are an Indigenous Roots band from Galiwin'ku on Elcho Island, around 560 kilometres from Darwin. The members are Yolngu and they sing mostly in language. Their songs are a mixture of traditional songs and reggae/ska influenced pop...
, Nabarlek
Nabarlek (band)
Nabarlek are an Indigenous Roots band from Manmoyi, a tiny community in Arnhem Land, 215 kilometres from the remote community of Gunbalanya . The band formed in 1985 as a group of singers and dancers with a couple of busted guitars and flour tins for drums...
, Nokturnl
NoKTuRNL
Nokturnl is a band formed in 1996 in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia. Sometimes called rap metal their music is hard to categorise, but their lyrics are influenced by their experience as Indigenous Australians. Nokturnl won "Band of the Year" at The Deadlys in 1998, 2000 and 2003.They...
, the Pigram Brothers
The Pigram Brothers
The Pigram Brothers are a 7 piece Indigenous Australian band from the pearling town of Broome, Western Australia formed in 1996.They were heavily involved in Broome's musical and theatrical exports - forming the original backing band for Jimmy Chi's Bran Nue Dae in 1990 – a musical that received...
, Coloured Stone
Coloured Stone
Coloured Stone is a band from the Koonibba Mission, west of Ceduna, South Australia. Their sound has been described as having a unique feel and Aboriginal qualities...
, Blekbala Mujik
Blekbala Mujik
Blekbala Mujik is a musical group based in from Arnhem Land, Australia. They have a unique pop/rock/dance/reggae sound and have a huge support base for their live shows and recordings. They are cited in the World Music: The Rough Guide as next best known to Yothu Yindi-History:Blekbala Mujik was...
, Kev Carmody
Kev Carmody
Kevin Daniel "Kev" Carmody is an Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter. His song "From Little Things Big Things Grow" was recorded with co-writer Paul Kelly for their 1993 single; it was covered by the Get Up Mob in 2008 and peaked at #4 on the Australian Recording Industry Association singles...
, Archie Roach
Archie Roach
Archie Roach is an Australian musician. A singer, songwriter and guitarist, he survived a turbulent upbringing to develop into a powerful voice for Indigenous Australians, a storyteller in the tradition of his ancestors, and a nationally popular and respected artist.- Biography :In his own words,...
and Ruby Hunter
Ruby Hunter
Ruby Charlotte Margaret Hunter was an Australian singer and songwriter. She was a member of the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal nationality, and often performed with her partner, Archie Roach, whom she met at the age of 16, while both were homeless teenagers...
.
Folk music
Banjo Paterson
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...
's Old Bush Songs, in the 1890s. The distinctive themes and origins of Australia's "bush music" or "bush band
Bush band
A bush band is a group of musicians that play traditional Australian folk music or contemporary folk music played in a traditional Australian style...
music" can be traced to the songs sung by the convicts who were sent to Australia during the early period of the British colonisation, beginning in 1788. Early Australian ballads sing of the harsh ways of life of the epoch and of such people and events as bushrangers, swagmen, drovers
Drover (Australian)
A drover in Australia is a person, typically an experienced stockman, who moves livestock, usually sheep or cattle, "on the hoof" over long distances. Reasons for droving may include: delivering animals to a new owner's property, taking animals to market, or moving animals during a drought in...
, stockmen and shearer
Shearer
A shearer is someone who shears, such as a cloth shearer, or a sheep shearer.Additionally, Shearer is the surname of people:-In sports:*Alan Shearer , English footballer*Bobby Shearer , Scottish footballer...
s. Convict and bushranger verses often railed against government tyranny. Classic bush songs on such themes include: The Wild Colonial Boy
The Wild Colonial Boy
"The Wild Colonial Boy" is a traditional Irish–Australian ballad of which there are many different versions, the most prominent being the Irish and Australian versions. The original version was about Jack Donahue, an Irish rebel who became a convict, then a bushranger , who was eventually shot down...
, Click Go The Shears
Click Go the Shears
"Click Go the Shears" is a traditional Australian folk song. The song details a day's work for a sheep shearer in the days before machine shears. The enduring popularity of this song reflects the traditional role that the wool industry has played in Australian life...
, The Eumeralla Shore, The Drover's Dream, The Queensland Drover, The Dying Stockman and Moreton Bay.
Later themes which endure to the present include the experiences of war, of droughts and flooding rains, of Aboriginality
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
and of the railways and trucking routes which link Australia's vast distances. Isolation and loneliness of life in the Australian bush has been another theme.
Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
, often regarded as Australia's unofficial National anthem
National anthem
A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
, is a quintessential Australian folk song, influenced by Celtic folk ballads. Country and folk artists such as Tex Morton
Tex Morton
Tex Morton was a pioneer of Australian country music.-Early life:At age 14 he left home to launch himself into show business...
, Slim Dusty
Slim Dusty
David Gordon "Slim Dusty " Kirkpatrick AO, MBE was an Australian country music singer-songwriter and producer, with a career spanning nearly eight decades. He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson that represented the Australian Bush...
, Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris, CBE, AM is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, painter and television personality.Born in Perth, Western Australia, Harris was a champion swimmer before studying art. He moved to England in 1952, where he started to appear on television programmes on which he drew the...
, The Bushwackers, John Williamson
John Williamson (singer)
John Robert Williamson AM is an Australian country music singer-songwriter. Williamson has released over thirty-two albums, ten videos, five DVDs, and two lyric books...
, and John Schumann
John Schumann
John Lewis Schumann is an Australian singer, songwriter and guitarist from Adelaide. He is best known as the lead singer for the folk group Redgum, with their chart-topping hit "I Was Only 19 ", a song exploring the psychological and medical side-effects of serving in the Australian forces during...
of the band Redgum
Redgum
Redgum were an Australian folk and political music group formed in Adelaide in 1975 by singer-songwriter John Schumann, Michael Atkinson on guitars/vocals and Verity Truman on flute/vocals; they were soon joined by Chris Timms on violin. All four had been students at Flinders University and...
have continued to record and popularise the old bush ballads of Australia through the 20th and into the 21st century – and contemporary artists including Sara Storer
Sara Storer
Sara Storer is an Australian country music singer. She won seven Golden Guitars in the Tamworth Country Music Festival 2004 awards in Tamworth, the most awards ever won in one year in the 32-year history of the awards. As of the 2010 Golden Guitar awards, Storer has won a total of eleven...
and Lee Kernaghan
Lee Kernaghan
Lee Kernaghan OAM is an Australian country music singer and songwriter. He was the 2008 Australian of the Year.-Honours:Kernaghan received the Order of Australia Medal in 2004....
draw heavily on this heritage.
A number of British singers have spent periods in Australia and have included Australian material in their repertoires, e.g. A. L. Lloyd
A. L. Lloyd
Albert Lancaster Lloyd , usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s....
, Martin Wyndham-Read and Eric Bogle
Eric Bogle
Eric Bogle is a folk singer-songwriter. He emigrated to Australia in 1969 and currently resides near Adelaide, South Australia.-Career:...
.
Folk rock
Australia has a unique tradition of folk music, with origins in both the indigenous music traditions of the original Australian inhabitants, as well as the introduced folk music (including sea shantiesSea Shanties
Sea Shanties is the debut album of Progressive Rock band High Tide. The cover artwork was drawn by Paul Whitehead.-Production:Denny Gerrard produced Sea Shanties in return for High Tide acting as the backing band on his solo album Sinister Morning...
) of 18th and 19th century Europe. Celtic, English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
, German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
and Scandinavian
Scandinavian folklore
Scandinavian folklore is the folklore of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the Swedish speaking parts of Finland.Collecting folklore began when Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden sent out instructions to all of the priests in all of the parishes to collect the folklore of their area...
folk traditions predominated in this first wave of European immigrant music. The Australian tradition is, in this sense, related to the traditions of other countries with similar ethnic, historical and political origins, such as New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The Australian indigenous tradition brought to this mix novel elements, including new instruments, some of which are now internationally familiar, such as the didgeridoo
Didgeridoo
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia around 1,500 years ago and still in widespread usage today both in Australia and around the world. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe"...
of Northern Australia.
Notable Australian exponents of the folk revival movement included both European immigrants such as Eric Bogle
Eric Bogle
Eric Bogle is a folk singer-songwriter. He emigrated to Australia in 1969 and currently resides near Adelaide, South Australia.-Career:...
, noted for his sad lament to the battle of Gallipoli
Battle of Gallipoli
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
"And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
"And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" is a song written by Scottish-born Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle in 1971. The song describes war as futile and gruesome, while criticising those who seek to glorify it...
", and indigenous Australians like Archie Roach
Archie Roach
Archie Roach is an Australian musician. A singer, songwriter and guitarist, he survived a turbulent upbringing to develop into a powerful voice for Indigenous Australians, a storyteller in the tradition of his ancestors, and a nationally popular and respected artist.- Biography :In his own words,...
and Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly (musician)
Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...
. Kelly's lyrics capture the vastness of the culture and landscape of Australia by chronicling life about him for over 30 years. David Fricke from Rolling Stone calls Kelly "one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard, Australian or otherwise.". In the 1970s, Australian Folk Rock brought both familiar and less familiar traditional songs, as well as new compositions, to live venues and the airwaves. Notable artists include The Bushwacker Band
The Bushwackers (band)
The Bushwackers Band, often simply The Bushwackers, is an Australian folk and country music band or Bush band founded at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 1971....
and Redgum
Redgum
Redgum were an Australian folk and political music group formed in Adelaide in 1975 by singer-songwriter John Schumann, Michael Atkinson on guitars/vocals and Verity Truman on flute/vocals; they were soon joined by Chris Timms on violin. All four had been students at Flinders University and...
. Redgum are known for their 1983 anti-war protest song "I Was Only Nineteen
I Was Only Nineteen
"Only Nineteen", "I Was Only Nineteen" or "A Walk in the Light Green" is the most widely recognised song by Australian folk group Redgum. The song was released in March 1983 as a single, which hit number one on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart for two weeks...
", which peaked at #1 on the National singles charts. The 1990s brought Australian Indigenous Folk Rock to the world, led by bands including Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi are an Australian band with Aboriginal and balanda members formed in 1986. Aboriginal members come from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land...
. Australia's long and continuous folk tradition continues strongly to this day, with elements of folk music still present in many contemporary artists including those generally thought of as Rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, Heavy Metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
and Alternative Music.
Country music
Australia has a long tradition of country music, which has developed a style quite distinct from its US counterpart. The early roots of Australian country are related to folk traditions of Ireland, England, Scotland and many diverse nations. "Botany BayBotany Bay (song)
"Botany Bay" is a song from the musical burlesque, Little Jack Sheppard, a comedy staged in London, England, in 1885 and Melbourne, Australia, in 1886. The show was written by Henry Pottinger Stephens and William Yardley, though the music for "Botany Bay" was written by Florian Pascal, a pseudonym...
" from the late 19th century is one example. Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
, often regarded by foreigners as Australia's unofficial national anthem
National anthem
A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
, is a quintessential Australian country song, influenced more by Celtic folk ballads than by American Country and Western music. This strain of Australian country music, with lyrics focusing on strictly Australian subjects, is generally known as "bush music" or "bush band
Bush band
A bush band is a group of musicians that play traditional Australian folk music or contemporary folk music played in a traditional Australian style...
music." The most successful Australian bush band is Melbourne's The Bushwackers, active since the early 1970s.
Another, more Americanized form of Australian country music was pioneered in the 1930s by such recording artists as Tex Morton
Tex Morton
Tex Morton was a pioneer of Australian country music.-Early life:At age 14 he left home to launch himself into show business...
, and later popularized by Slim Dusty
Slim Dusty
David Gordon "Slim Dusty " Kirkpatrick AO, MBE was an Australian country music singer-songwriter and producer, with a career spanning nearly eight decades. He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson that represented the Australian Bush...
, best remembered for his 1957 song "A Pub With No Beer". Dusty married singer-songwriter Joy McKean
Joy McKean
Joy McKean OAM, born 1930, is an Australian country music singer-songwriter and wife of the late Slim Dusty. Known as the "grand lady" of Australian country music, McKean is recognised as one of Australia's leading song writers and bush balladeers and wrote several of Dusty's most popular...
in 1951 and went on to become Australia's biggest selling domestic music artist with more than 7 million record sales. Australian country artists including Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...
and Keith Urban
Keith Urban
Keith Lionel Urban is a New Zealand-born Australian, country music singer, songwriter and guitarist whose commercial success has been mainly in the United States and Australia. Urban was born in New Zealand and began his career in Australia at an early age...
have achieved considerable success in the USA. In recent years local contemporary country music, featuring much crossover
Crossover (music)
Crossover is a term applied to musical works or performers appearing on two or more of the record charts which track differing musical tastes, or genres...
with popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
, has enjoyed considerable popularity in Australia; notable musicians of this genre include John Williamson
John Williamson (singer)
John Robert Williamson AM is an Australian country music singer-songwriter. Williamson has released over thirty-two albums, ten videos, five DVDs, and two lyric books...
, Gina Jeffreys
Gina Jeffreys
Gina Jeffreys is an Australian country singer. She was born on 1 April 1968 at Toowoomba, Queensland. She has often been called Australia's "Queen of Country" and has won numerous Australian country music awards....
, Lee Kernaghan
Lee Kernaghan
Lee Kernaghan OAM is an Australian country music singer and songwriter. He was the 2008 Australian of the Year.-Honours:Kernaghan received the Order of Australia Medal in 2004....
, Troy Cassar-Daley
Troy Cassar-Daley
Troy Cassar-Daley is a multi-award-winning country musician from New South Wales, Australia.He released his first EP, "Dream Out Loud", in 1994 and was nominated for his first Golden Guitar for Best Male Vocalist the same year...
, Sara Storer
Sara Storer
Sara Storer is an Australian country music singer. She won seven Golden Guitars in the Tamworth Country Music Festival 2004 awards in Tamworth, the most awards ever won in one year in the 32-year history of the awards. As of the 2010 Golden Guitar awards, Storer has won a total of eleven...
, Felicity Urquhart
Felicity Urquhart
Felicity Ann Urquhart is an Australian country music singer-songwriter, sometimes seen as Felicity . Her single "Big Black Cloud", co-written with Randy Scruggs, reached No. 1 on Country Tracks National Top 30 Singles Chart in 2007. She has won numerous awards including a Centenary Medal...
and Kasey Chambers
Kasey Chambers
Kasey Chambers is an Australian country singer-songwriter. She is the daughter of steel guitar player Bill Chambers, and the sister of musician and producer Nash Chambers.-Solo success:...
. Others influenced by the genre include Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
, Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly (musician)
Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...
, The John Butler Trio and The Waifs
The Waifs
The Waifs are an Australian folk rock band formed in 1992 by Josh Cunningham , and sisters Vikki Thorn and Donna Simpson...
.
Popular Australian country songs include Click Go the Shears
Click Go the Shears
"Click Go the Shears" is a traditional Australian folk song. The song details a day's work for a sheep shearer in the days before machine shears. The enduring popularity of this song reflects the traditional role that the wool industry has played in Australian life...
(Traditional), Lights on the Hill
Lights on the Hill
Lights on the Hill is an Australian country music hit song written by Joy McKean and made famous by Slim Dusty and which won the first Golden Guitar Award in 1973...
(1973), I Honestly Love You
I Honestly Love You
"I Honestly Love You" was a worldwide pop hit single for Olivia Newton-John in 1974. The song was Newton-John's first number-one single in the United States and Canada, thus cementing her as a household name in North America....
(1974), True Blue (1981), and Not Pretty Enough
Not Pretty Enough
-Charts:-End of year chart:...
(2002).
Children's music
Children's music in Australia developed gradually over the latter half of the 20th century. The most recognised performers in that period were those associated with the long-running Australian Broadacsting CorporationABC Television
ABC Television is a service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched in 1956. As a public broadcasting broadcaster, the ABC provides four non-commercial channels within Australia, and a partially advertising-funded satellite channel overseas....
series Playschool
Play School (Australian TV series)
Play School is an Australian educational television show for children produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It is the longest-running children's show in Australia, and the second longest running childrens show in the world. An estimated 80% of pre-school children under six watch the...
, including veteran actor-musician Don Spencer
Don Spencer
Donald Richard Spencer OAM is an Australian children's television presenter and musician, best known for his long-running role as a presenter on Play School in both Australia and the United Kingdom. He had his first song the theme tune to Fireball XL5 in 1962, reaching #32 on the UK Singles...
and actor and singer Noni Hazlehurst.
Children's music remained a relatively small segment of the Australian music industry until the emergence of groundbreaking children's group The Wiggles
The Wiggles
The Wiggles are a children's group formed in Sydney, Australia in 1991. Their original members were Anthony Field, Phillip Wilcher, Murray Cook, Greg Page, and Jeff Fatt. Wilcher left the group after their first album...
in the late 1990s. The multi-award-winning four-piece group rapidly gained international popularity in the early 2000s and by the end of the decade they had become one of the most popular children's groups in the world. The Wiggles now boasts a huge fanbase in many regions including Australasia, Britain, Asia, and the Americas.
In 2008 The Wiggles were named Business Review Weekly's
Business Review Weekly
BRW is an Australian weekly business magazine published by the Fairfax Media group. It regularly compiles lists which rank corporations and individuals according to various criteria, similar to Fortune magazine in the United States.BRW provides news and commentary on the economy, business and...
top-earning Australian entertainers for the fourth year in a row having earned A$
Australian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
45 million in 2007. They have been called "the world's biggest preschool band" and "your child's first rock band". The group has achieved worldwide success with their children's albums, videos, television series, and concert appearances. They have earned seventeen gold
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...
, twelve platinum
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...
, three double-platinum, and ten multi-platinum awards for sales of over 17 million DVDs and four million CDs.
By 2002, The Wiggles had become the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
's (ABC) most successful pre-school television program. They have performed for over 1.5 million children in the US between 2005 and 2008. They have won APRA
Australasian Performing Right Association
The Australasian Performing Right Association is a copyright collective representing New Zealand and Australian composers, lyricists and music publishers. The association's head offices located in Sydney Australia, and it has branch offices in Auckland, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth...
song writing awards for Best Children's Song three times and earned ADSDA's award for Highest Selling Children's Album four times. They have been nominated for ARIA's
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...
Best Children's Album award fourteen times, and won the award eight times. In 2003, they received ARIA's Outstanding Achievement Award for their success in the U.S.
R&B and soul music
As a result, many local soul/R&B hits of this period were cover versions recorded by Australian acts. Despite radio's relucatance to play American soul/R&B originals, these styles were avidly adopted by local performers however and covers of soul/R&B standards were staples in the setlists of many acts including Max Merritt and the Meteors, Doug Parksinon, Jeff St John, The Groop
The Groop
The Groop were an Australian folk, R&B and rock band formed in 1964 in Melbourne, Australia and had their greatest chart success with their second line-up of Max Ross on bass, Richard Wright on drums and vocals, Don Mudie on lead guitar, Brian Cadd on keyboards and vocals, and Ronnie Charles on...
, The Groove
The Groove (band)
Formed in mid 1967, The Groove are considered to be Australia's first "supergroup" in that all members had considerable experience behind them in a number of successful bands...
, The Twilights, Renee Geyer
Renée Geyer
Renée Rebecca Geyer is an Australian singer who has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of jazz, soul and R&B idioms. She had commercial success as a solo artist in Australia, with "It's a Man's Man's World", "Heading in the Right Direction" and "Stares and Whispers" in the 1970s and...
and many others.
Renee Geyer
Renée Geyer
Renée Rebecca Geyer is an Australian singer who has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of jazz, soul and R&B idioms. She had commercial success as a solo artist in Australia, with "It's a Man's Man's World", "Heading in the Right Direction" and "Stares and Whispers" in the 1970s and...
is an Australian singer who came to prominence in the mid-1970s, has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of jazz, soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
and R&B
Contemporary R&B
Contemporary R&B is a music genre that combines elements of hip hop, soul, R&B and funk.Although the abbreviation “R&B” originates from traditional rhythm and blues music, today the term R&B is most often used to describe a style of African American music originating after the demise of disco in...
idioms. She had commercial success as a solo artist in Australia, with "It's a Man's Man's World
It's a Man's Man's World
It's a Man's Man's World is the second solo album by Australian soul/R & B singer Renée Geyer, and the one that set her on the road to major success over the next 30+ years...
"Rock historian, Ian McFarlane described her as having a "rich, soulful, passionate and husky vocal delivery". Geyer's iconic status in the Australian music industry was recognised when she was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame
ARIA Hall of Fame
Since 1988 the Australian Recording Industry Association has inducted artists into its ARIA Hall of Fame. While most have been recognised at the annual ARIA Music Awards, in 2005 ARIA sought to create a separate standalone "ARIA Icons: Hall of Fame" event as only one or two acts could be inducted...
on 14 July 2005.
Parallel with Geyer's success, American born vocalist Marcia Hines
Marcia Hines
Marcia Elaine Hines, AM is a vocalist, actress and TV personality who achieved success in her adopted homeland of Australia. Hines made her debut, at the age of sixteen, in the Australian version of the stage musical Hair and followed with the role of Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar...
emerged as one of Australia's most successful solo singers. She first came to prominence in the early 1970s with critically acclaimed roles in the local stage productions of Hair
Hair
Hair is a filamentous biomaterial, that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Found exclusively in mammals, hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class....
' and Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Tim Rice. The musical started off as a rock opera concept recording before its first staging on Broadway in 1971...
(in which she was the first African-American to play the role of Mary Magdalene) before launching a solo career. By the late 1970s she was one of Australia's top singing stars, winning several Queen of Pop awards and hosting her own national TV variety series.
Following their initial dissolution in 1982 Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel is a rock band that originated in Adelaide, Australia. It is one of the most acclaimed Australian rock bands of all time, with a string of hits throughout the 1970s and 1980s and huge sales that continue to this day, although its success and acclaim was almost completely restricted to...
lead vocalist Jimmy Barnes
Jimmy Barnes
James Dixon Swan , better known as Jimmy Barnes, is a Scottish-born Australian rock singer-songwriter. His father Jim Swan was a prizefighter and his older brother John Swan is also a rock singer. It was actually John who had encouraged and taught Jim how to sing as he wasn't really interested at...
embarked on a successful solo career that has continued from the 1980s to the present. Many of Barnes' albums have featured versions of songs from these genres and his chart-topping album Soul Deep
Soul Deep (Jimmy Barnes album)
Soul Deep is the fifth album by Australian rock singer Jimmy Barnes. It was his sixth consecutive Australian No. 1 album. The album was a collection of soul covers and featured duets with Johnny Farnham and Diesel...
(1991) consisted entirely of covers of classic 1960s soul/R&B covers.
Australian soul singer/songwriters like Daniel Merriweather
Daniel Merriweather
Daniel Paul Merriweather is an Australian R&B singer-songwriter who has worked as a featured vocalist for other artists and has a solo career. His guest vocals are included on album tracks by Disco Montego, Mark Ronson and Phrase...
, has after several successful collaborations with artists such as Mark Ronson
Mark Ronson
Mark Daniel Ronson is an English DJ, guitarist, music producer, artist and co-founder of Allido Records. He currently works with his band under the music alias of Mark Ronson & The Business Intl....
, released his official debut album, Love & War, in June 2009. It entered the UK Albums Chart at number two. After launching his career as the winner of an early series of Australian Idol
Australian Idol
Australian Idol is a Logie Award-winning Australian singing competition, which began its first season on July 2003 and ended its run in November 2009. As part of the Idol franchise, Australian Idol originated from the reality program Pop Idol, which was created by British entertainment executive...
, soul singer/songwriter Guy Sebastian
Guy Sebastian
Guy Theodore Sebastian is an Australian pop, R&B, and soul singer-songwriter who was the first winner of Australian Idol in 2003. He is currently a judge on the Australian version of The X Factor. Sebastian has released six top ten platinum/multi platinum albums, including a number-one and...
has also made an impact on this genre in Australia winning awards at the Urban Music Awards Australia and New Zealand
Urban Music Awards Australia and New Zealand
The Urban Music Awards Australia and New Zealand were established in 2006 as a means of celebrating hip hop, soul and R&B acts throughout the two countries. Two awards ceremonies were held, in 2006 and 2007....
for Best Male Artist and Best R&B Album. Sebastian's recent release "Like it Like That", was the highest selling Australian artist single in 2009 and charted at #1 for two consecutive weeks
R&B singer, Jessica Mauboy
Jessica Mauboy
Jessica Hilda Mauboy , is an Indigenous Australian R&B singer-songwriter and actress. In 2006, Mauboy was the runner-up on the fourth season of Australian Idol, she had auditioned for the talent show in Alice Springs to pursue a recording career...
made her musical debut in 2008 with the R&B hit, "Running Back
Running Back (Jessica Mauboy song)
"Running Back" is the debut single by Australian R&B recording artist Jessica Mauboy, which features American rapper Flo Rida. It was written by Mauboy, Audius Mtawarira, and Sean Ray Mullins, and was produced by Audius. "Running Back" was released for digital download on 19 September 2008, as the...
" which featured American rapper, Flo Rida
Flo Rida
Tramar Dillard , better known by his stage name Flo Rida , is an American rapper and singer-songwriter. He released his debut album, Mail on Sunday, in March 2008. His debut single "Low", featuring T-Pain, was a #1 hit for ten weeks in United States in early 2008. Two other singles resulted from...
and peaked at #3 on the ARIA Singles Chart
ARIA Charts
The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June...
Her debut album, Been Waiting
Been Waiting
Been Waiting is the debut studio album by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy. It was released in Australia on 22 November 2008 via Sony Music. While Mauboy was still a member of the girl group Young Divas, she began to work on what became Been Waiting...
earned her seven nominations at the 2009 ARIA Music Awards
ARIA Music Awards
The Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards is an annual series of awards nights celebrating the Australian music industry, put on by the Australian Recording Industry Association...
, winning the award of "Highest Selling Single" for "Running Back"
R&B and Pop singer Cody Simpson
Cody Simpson
Cody Robert Simpson is an Australian pop singer from Gold Coast, Queensland, who is currently signed to US record label Atlantic Records.-Early life:...
has achieved international acclaim and has been compared to the likes of Justin Bieber
Justin Bieber
Justin Drew Bieber is a Canadian pop/R&B singer, songwriter and actor. Bieber was discovered in 2008 by Scooter Braun, who came across Bieber's videos on YouTube and later became his manager...
and Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus
Miley Ray Cyrus is an American actress and pop singer-songwriter. She achieved wide fame for her role as Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel sitcom Hannah Montana....
, and Simpson's music has charted all over the world.
Rock and pop
Australia has produced a wide variety of rockAustralian rock
Australian rock, sometimes called OZ Rock is used to describe the various rock and many pop bands and solo artists from Australia. Australia has a rich history of rock music and an appreciation of the roots of various rock genres, usually originating in the United States but also Britain, Ireland,...
and popular music, from the internationally renowned work of the Bee Gees
Bee Gees
The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...
, AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, INXS
INXS
INXS are an Australian rock band, formed as The Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney, New South Wales. Mainstays are Garry Gary Beers on bass guitar, Andrew Farriss on guitar/keyboards, Jon Farriss on drums, Tim Farriss on lead guitar and Kirk Pengilly on guitar/sax...
, Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
, Savage Garden
Savage Garden
Savage Garden were an Australian pop rock performance and songwriting duo. Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones formed the group in Brisbane, Queensland in 1994...
, the Seekers
The Seekers
The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...
, or pop diva Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE - often known simply as Kylie - is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing...
to the popular local content of John Farnham
John Farnham
John Peter Farnham, AO, formerly billed as Johnny Farnham , is an English-born Australian pop singer. He was a teen pop idol from 1964 to 1979, and has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist although he briefly replaced Glenn Shorrock as...
, Jimmy Barnes
Jimmy Barnes
James Dixon Swan , better known as Jimmy Barnes, is a Scottish-born Australian rock singer-songwriter. His father Jim Swan was a prizefighter and his older brother John Swan is also a rock singer. It was actually John who had encouraged and taught Jim how to sing as he wasn't really interested at...
or Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly (musician)
Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...
. Indigenous Australian music
Indigenous Australian music
Australian indigenous music includes the music of Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are collectively called Indigenous Australians; it incorporates a variety of distinctive traditional music styles practiced by Indigenous Australian peoples, as well as a range of contemporary...
and Australian jazz
Australian jazz
Jazz music has a long history in Australia. Over the years jazz has held a high profile at local clubs, festivals and other music venues and a vast number of recordings have been produced by Australian jazz musicians, many of whom have gone on to gain a high profile in the international jazz...
have also had cross-over influence on this genre.
Among the brightest stars of early Australian rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
were Col Joye
Col Joye
Colin Frederick Jacobsen AM , better known by his stage name Col Joye, is an Australian popular entertainer and entrepreneur...
and Johnny O'Keefe
Johnny O'Keefe
John Michael O'Keefe, known as Johnny O'Keefe was an Australian rock and roll singer whose career began in the 1950s. Some of his hits include "Wild One" , "Shout!" and "She's My Baby"...
. O'Keefe formed a band in 1956; his hit Wild One made him the first Australian rock'n'roller to reach the national charts. While US and British content dominated airwaves and record sales into the 1960s, local successes began to emerge – notably The Easybeats
The Easybeats
The Easybeats were an Australian rock and roll band. They formed in Sydney in late 1964 and broke up at the end of 1969. They are regarded as the greatest Australian pop band of the 1960s, and were the first Australian rock and roll act to score an international pop hit with their 1966 single...
and the folk-pop group The Seekers
The Seekers
The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...
had significant local success and some international recognition, while the bands the Bee Gees
Bee Gees
The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...
and AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
had their first hits in Australia before going on to international success.
Pub rock
Pub rock (Australia)
Pub rock is a style of Australian rock and roll popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and still influencing contemporary Australian music today....
was immensely popular in the 1980s, and the era was typified by AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, Divinyls
Divinyls
Divinyls were an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1980 and featuring vocalist Christina Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee. As the focal point, Amphlett performed on stage wearing a school uniform and fishnet stockings, often using an illuminated neon tube as a prop and displaying...
, Mental As Anything
Mental As Anything
Mental As Anything are an Australian New Wave–rock music band formed at an art school in Sydney in 1976. Their most popular line-up was Martin Plaza on vocals and guitar; Reg Mombassa on lead guitar and vocals; his brother Peter "Yoga Dog" O'Doherty on bass guitar and vocals; Wayne "Bird"...
, Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
, The Choirboys
The Choirboys (band)
The Choirboys are an Australian hard rock band from Sydney formed in 1979 with mainstays Mark Gable on lead vocals and Ian Hulme on bass guitar and were later joined by drummer Paul Wheeler. Their hit "Run to Paradise" reached No. 3 on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart in late 1987. The...
, The Angels
The Angels (Australian band)
The Angels are a hard rock band that formed in Adelaide, Australia in 1970. The band later relocated from Adelaide to Sydney and enjoyed huge local success until well into the 1990s. For the purposes of international release, their records were released under the names Angel City and later The...
, Noiseworks
Noiseworks
Noiseworks is an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1986 with bass guitarist Steve Balbi, guitarist Stuart Fraser, drummer Kevin Nicol, keyboardist Justin Stanley and lead vocalist Jon Stevens...
, Air Supply
Air Supply
Air Supply is an Australian soft rock duo, consisting of Graham Russell as guitarist and singer-songwriter and Russell Hitchcock as lead vocalist. They had a succession of hits worldwide, including eight Top Ten hits in the United States, in the early 1980s...
, Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel is a rock band that originated in Adelaide, Australia. It is one of the most acclaimed Australian rock bands of all time, with a string of hits throughout the 1970s and 1980s and huge sales that continue to this day, although its success and acclaim was almost completely restricted to...
and Icehouse
Icehouse (band)
Icehouse is an Australian rock band, formed as Flowers in 1977 in Sydney. Initially known in Australia for their pub rock style, they later achieved mainstream success playing new wave and synthpop style music and attained Top Ten singles chart success in both Europe and the U.S...
. INXS
INXS
INXS are an Australian rock band, formed as The Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney, New South Wales. Mainstays are Garry Gary Beers on bass guitar, Andrew Farriss on guitar/keyboards, Jon Farriss on drums, Tim Farriss on lead guitar and Kirk Pengilly on guitar/sax...
and Men at Work
Men at Work
Men at Work are an Australian rock band who achieved international success in the 1980s. They are the only Australian artists to have a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United States . They achieved the same distinction of a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United Kingdom...
also achieved fame worldwide, and the song "Down Under
Down Under (song)
"Down Under" is a pop song recorded by Men at Work for their debut album Business as Usual . The song went to #1 on American, British, Canadian and Australian charts....
" became an unofficial anthem for Australia. Australian hip hop
Australian hip hop
Australian hip hop music began in the early 1980s; originally it was primarily influenced by hip hop music and culture imported via radio and television from the United States of America. However, since the 1990s, a distinctive local style has developed. Australian hip hop is an underground music...
began in the early 1980s, primarily influenced by overseas works, but by the 1990s a distinctive local style had emerged, with groups such as the Hilltop Hoods
Hilltop Hoods
The Hilltop Hoods are an ARIA Award winning Australian hip hop group, from Adelaide, South Australia. Their members are MCs Suffa , MC Pressure , DJ Debris and formerly DJ Next. They have been at the centre of the Australian hip hop scene for the better part of two decades, originally forming back...
achieving international acclaim for their work.
The 90s saw an increase in the popularity of indie rock
Australian indie rock
Australian indie rock is part of the overall flow of Australian rock history but has a distinct history somewhat separate from mainstream rock in Australia, largely from the end of the punk rock era onwards.-Beginnings:...
in Australia. AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
and INXS
INXS
INXS are an Australian rock band, formed as The Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney, New South Wales. Mainstays are Garry Gary Beers on bass guitar, Andrew Farriss on guitar/keyboards, Jon Farriss on drums, Tim Farriss on lead guitar and Kirk Pengilly on guitar/sax...
continued to achieve commercial success in the United States, whilst a multitude of local bands, including Jebediah
Jebediah
Jebediah is an Australian alternative rock band formed in 1994 in Perth, Western Australia. The group consists of vocalist and guitarist Kevin Mitchell, guitarist Chris Daymond, bassist Vanessa Thornton, and Kevin's brother Brett Mitchell on drums...
, Magic Dirt
Magic Dirt
Magic Dirt are an Australian rock band, which formed in 1991 in Geelong, Victoria, with Daniel Herring on guitar, Adam Robertson on drums, Adalita Srsen on vocals and guitar, and Dean Turner on bass guitar. Initially known as Deer Bubbles and then The Jim Jims, they were renamed as Magic Dirt in...
, Spiderbait
Spiderbait
Spiderbait are an Australian alternative rock band formed in Finley in 1989 by bass guitarist Janet English, singer-drummer Mark Maher , and guitarist Damian Whitty. In 2004 the group's cover version of the 1930s Lead Belly song "Black Betty" reached number one on the ARIA Singles Chart...
, The Superjesus
The Superjesus
The Superjesus were an ARIA award–winning rock band from Adelaide, Australia. They are best known for their singles "Shut My Eyes", "Down Again" and "Gravity".-History:...
, Regurgitator
Regurgitator
Regurgitator are an Australian rock band from Brisbane, currently consisting of Quan Yeomans , Ben Ely and Peter Kostic . The band formed in 1994, its original line-up consisting of Yeomans, Ely and drummer Martin Lee...
, You Am I
You Am I
You Am I are an Australian alternative rock band, fronted by vocalist/guitarist and main songwriter Tim Rogers. They were the first Australian band to have three albums successively debut at #1 on the ARIA Charts, and are renowned for their live performances.-History:Tim Rogers formed the first...
, Icecream Hands
Icecream Hands
Icecream Hands were a power pop band formed in Melbourne, Victoria in 1992 as Chuck Skatt and His Icecream Hands with Charles "Chuck Skatt" Jenkins as lead singer-songwriter and rhythm guitarist, Arturo "Arch" Larizza on bass guitar, his brother Dom "Benedictine III" Larizza on lead guitar and...
, Powderfinger
Powderfinger
Powderfinger was an Australian rock band that formed in Brisbane in 1989. From 1992 until their breakup the band lineup consisted of vocalist Bernard Fanning, guitarists Darren Middleton and Ian Haug, bassist John Collins, and drummer Jon Coghill....
, Silverchair
Silverchair
Silverchair were an Australian rock band, which formed in 1992 as Innocent Criminals in Merewether, Newcastle with the line-up of Ben Gillies on drums, Chris Joannou on bass guitar and Daniel Johns on vocals and guitars. The group got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo...
and Something for Kate
Something for Kate
Something for Kate are a rock band from Melbourne, Australia. Members include songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Paul Dempsey, drummer Clint Hyndman and bassist Stephanie Ashworth...
, were popular throughout the country. A small electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
scene emerged around Sydney and Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, with Severed Heads
Severed Heads
Severed Heads is an Australian electronic music group based and founded in Sydney in 1979 as Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. The original members were Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright, and were soon joined by Tom Ellard. Fielding and Wright eventually left the group, leaving Ellard as a singular...
, Ollie Olsen
Ollie Olsen
Ollie Olsen 1958, Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian composer, synthesist and sound designer who has been producing and performing rock, electronic and experimental music for the past thirty years...
's No
No (band)
No were an Australian band, active during the late 1980s. They blended electronic music with nihilistic punk rock, in a similar fashion to New York's Suicide. The band included Ollie Olsen, Marie Hoy, Michael Sheridan, and others...
, and Foil all peaking in the 90s.
Australian music experienced somewhat of a rock renaissance in the 2000s with groups such as The Vines
The Vines
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:LandingCheck?landing_page=L11_1121_WMUK_Jimmy_DDOptimised&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=C11_1121_WMUK_DDvOneOff&utm_source=B11_1121_WMUK_Jimmy&language=en&country=GB...
, Corey Russell, Jet
Jet (band)
Jet are an Australian rock band formed in 2001 while attending St Bede's College Mentone in Melbourne, . The band consists of lead guitarist Cameron Muncey, bassist Mark Wilson, and brothers Nic and Chris Cester on vocals/rhythm guitar and drums respectively...
, Airbourne
Airbourne (band)
Airbourne are an Australian hard rock band formed in Warrnambool in 2001. Mainstay members are Joel O'Keeffe on lead vocals and lead guitar, his brother, Ryan O'Keeffe on drums, and David Roads on rhythm guitar and backing vocals. They were later joined by Justin Street on bass guitar and backing...
and Wolfmother
Wolfmother
Wolfmother is an Australian rock band from Erskineville, Sydney. Formed in 2000, the group was originally a trio composed of vocalist and guitarist Andrew Stockdale, bassist and keyboardist Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett. Wolfmother released their self-titled debut album in October 2005,...
charting internationally. Hilltop Hoods
Hilltop Hoods
The Hilltop Hoods are an ARIA Award winning Australian hip hop group, from Adelaide, South Australia. Their members are MCs Suffa , MC Pressure , DJ Debris and formerly DJ Next. They have been at the centre of the Australian hip hop scene for the better part of two decades, originally forming back...
were the first Australian hip-hop group to reach the top of the ARIA chart. Channel 10
Network Ten
Network Ten , is one of Australia's three major commercial television networks. Owned-and-operated stations can be found in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, while affiliates extend the network to cover most of the country...
's Australian Idol
Australian Idol
Australian Idol is a Logie Award-winning Australian singing competition, which began its first season on July 2003 and ended its run in November 2009. As part of the Idol franchise, Australian Idol originated from the reality program Pop Idol, which was created by British entertainment executive...
program was highly popular locally, as were the many "idols" produced.
First wave of Australian rock
In the mid-1950s, American rock and rollRock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
spread across the world. Sydney's independent record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
Festival Records
Festival Records (Australia)
Festival Records was an Australian music recording and publishing company which was founded in Sydney in 1952 and operated until 2005....
was the first to get on the bandwagon in Australia, releasing Bill Haley & His Comets
Bill Haley & His Comets
Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band that was founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981. The band, also known by the names Bill Haley and The Comets and Bill Haley's Comets , was the earliest group of white musicians to bring rock and roll to the attention of...
' "Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock
"Rock Around the Clock" is a 12-bar-blues-based song written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers in 1952. The best-known and most successful rendition was recorded by Bill Haley and His Comets in 1954...
" in 1956. It became the biggest-selling Australian single ever released up to that time.
American-born entrepreneur Lee Gordon
Lee Gordon (promoter)
Lee Gordon was an American entrepreneur and rock and roll promoter who worked extensively in Australia in the late 1950s and early 1960s...
, who arrived in Australia in 1953, played a key role in establishing the popularity of rock & roll with his famous "Big Show" tours, which brought to Australia many leading American rock'n'roll acts including Bill Haley & His Comets, Little Richard, Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...
, Eddie Cochran
Eddie Cochran
Eddie Cochran , was an American rock and roll pioneer who in his brief career had a small but lasting influence on rock music through his guitar playing. Cochran's rockabilly songs, such as "C'mon Everybody", "Somethin' Else", and "Summertime Blues", captured teenage frustration and desire in the...
, Gene Vincent
Gene Vincent
Vincent Eugene Craddock , known as Gene Vincent, was an American musician who pioneered the styles of rock and roll and rockabilly. His 1956 top ten hit with his Blue Caps, "Be-Bop-A-Lula", is considered a significant early example of rockabilly...
, Buddy Holly
Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...
& The Crickets
The Crickets
The Crickets are a rock & roll band from Lubbock, Texas, formed by singer/songwriter Buddy Holly in the 1950s. Their first hit record was "That'll Be the Day", released in 1957....
and Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...
.
Gordon was also instrumental in launching the career of Johnny O'Keefe
Johnny O'Keefe
John Michael O'Keefe, known as Johnny O'Keefe was an Australian rock and roll singer whose career began in the 1950s. Some of his hits include "Wild One" , "Shout!" and "She's My Baby"...
, the first Australian rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
star, who rose to fame by imitating Americans like Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
and Little Richard
Little Richard
Richard Wayne Penniman , known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, recording artist, and actor, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s. He was also the first artist to put the funk in the rock and roll beat and...
. O'Keefe and other "first wave" bands were popular until about 1961, when a wave of clean-cut family bands took their place.
Though mainstream audiences in the early sixties preferred a clean-cut style – epitomised by the acts that appeared on the Nine Network
Nine Network
The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...
pop show Bandstand – there were a number of 'grungier' guitar-oriented bands in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne, who were inspired by American and British instrumental and surf
Surf music
Surf music is a genre of popular music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Orange County and other areas of Southern California. It was particularly popular between 1961 and 1965, has subsequently been revived and was highly influential on subsequent rock music...
acts like Britain's The Shadows
The Shadows
The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...
– who exerted an enormous influence on Australian and New Zealand music prior to the emergence of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
– and American acts like guitar legend Dick Dale
Dick Dale
Dick Dale is an American surf rock guitarist, known as The King of the Surf Guitar. He experimented with reverberation and made use of custom made Fender amplifiers, including the first-ever 100-watt guitar amplifier.-Early life:Dale was born in South Boston, Massachusetts and lived in nearby...
and The Surfaris
The Surfaris
The Surfaris were an American surf rock band formed in Glendora, California in 1962. They are best known for two songs that hit the charts in the Los Angeles, California area, and nationally by May 1963: "Surfer Joe" on the A-side and "Wipe Out" on the B-side of a 45 RPM single.-Career:The original...
. Notable Australian instrumental groups of this period included The Atlantics
The Atlantics
This article refers to the Australian Surf rock band. See paragraph at the end of this page for information on other bands called The Atlantics....
, The Denvermen The Thunderbirds, The Planets, The Dee Jays, The Joy Boys, The Fabulous Blue Jays and The Whispers.
Rockabilly
Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, dating to the early 1950s.The term rockabilly is a portmanteau of rock and hillbilly, the latter a reference to the country music that contributed strongly to the style's development...
or country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
backgrounds, many musicians in Australian rock'n'roll bands – such as Johnny O'Keefe's famous backing group The Dee Jays – had a solid background in jazz.
Second wave of Australian rock
The "second wave" of Australian rock is said to have begun in about 1964, and followed directly on the impact of The BeatlesThe Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
. In the immediate wake of The Beatles' momentous Australian tour, many local groups that had formerly played guitar-based instrumental music recruited singers and took up the new 'beat' style. Some of the best-known and most popular acts in this period were Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs
Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs
Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs were an Australian pop and rock group dating from the mid-sixties. The group enjoyed huge success in the mid-1960s, but split in 1967. They re-emerged in the early seventies to become one of the most popular Australian hard-rock bands of the period...
and Ray Brown & The Whispers
Ray Brown & The Whispers
. For other uses of Whispers, see Whispers page.Ray Brown & The Whispers were a highly successful Australian rock band from 1964 to 1967...
, The Easybeats
The Easybeats
The Easybeats were an Australian rock and roll band. They formed in Sydney in late 1964 and broke up at the end of 1969. They are regarded as the greatest Australian pop band of the 1960s, and were the first Australian rock and roll act to score an international pop hit with their 1966 single...
, The Bee Gees
Bee Gees
The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...
, The Masters Apprentices
The Masters Apprentices
The Masters Apprentices were an Australian rock band fronted by mainstay Jim Keays on lead vocals, which formed in 1965 in Adelaide, South Australia, relocated to Melbourne in February 1967 and attempted to break into the United Kingdom market from 1970, before disbanding in 1972...
, The Twilights, The Groop
The Groop
The Groop were an Australian folk, R&B and rock band formed in 1964 in Melbourne, Australia and had their greatest chart success with their second line-up of Max Ross on bass, Richard Wright on drums and vocals, Don Mudie on lead guitar, Brian Cadd on keyboards and vocals, and Ronnie Charles on...
, The Groove
The Groove (band)
Formed in mid 1967, The Groove are considered to be Australia's first "supergroup" in that all members had considerable experience behind them in a number of successful bands...
, The Loved Ones
The Loved Ones
The Loved Ones were an Australian rock band formed in 1965 in Melbourne following the British Invasion. The line-up of Gavin Anderson on drums, Ian Clyne on organ and piano, Gerry Humphrys on vocals and harmonica, Rob Lovett on guitar, and Kim Lynch on bass guitar recorded their early hits...
and cult acts like The Throb and solo star Normie Rowe
Normie Rowe
Norman John "Normie" Rowe AM was a major male solo performer of Australian pop music in the 1960s. Known for his bright and edgy tenor voice and dynamic stage presence, many of Rowe's most successful recordings were produced by Pat Aulton, house producer for the Sunshine Records, Spin Records and...
, who quickly became Australia's most popular male pop vocalist. During this period a wave of acts also came from New Zealand, including Ray Columbus & the Invaders
Ray Columbus & the Invaders
Ray Columbus & the Invaders were a rock group from New Zealand active from 1964 to 1966.The group was influenced by the early 1960s work of Cliff Richard and The Beatles. They scored a #1 hit in Australia and New Zealand with "She's a Mod" in 1964, a cover version of a song by The Senators. They...
, Max Merritt & The Meteors
Max Merritt
Max Merritt is a New Zealand-born singer-songwriter and guitarist who is renowned as an interpreter of soul music and R&B...
, Dinah Lee
Dinah Lee
Dinah Lee is the stage name of New Zealand-born singer, Diane Marie Jacobs , who performed 1960s pop and then adult contemporary music. Her debut single from early 1964, "Don't You Know Yockomo?", achieved No. 1 chart success in New Zealand and, across the Tasman Sea, in Brisbane and Melbourne...
, Larry's Rebels and The La De Das
The La De Das
The La De Das were a leading New Zealand rock band of the 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in New Zealand in 1963 , they enjoyed considerable success in both New Zealand and Australia until their split in 1975....
.
Many Australian bands and singers tried to enhance their careers by moving overseas, in particular to England, then seen as the mecca of popular music but few bands were successful and of those who relocated to the UK only The Seekers
The Seekers
The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...
and The Bee Gees (who were actually born and raised in the UK) enjoyed any lasting success. Others that made the journey were The Easybeats (the first rock band to crack the UK market), The Twilights, The Groove, Lloyds World and the La De Das.
Third wave of Australian rock
Normie Rowe
Norman John "Normie" Rowe AM was a major male solo performer of Australian pop music in the 1960s. Known for his bright and edgy tenor voice and dynamic stage presence, many of Rowe's most successful recordings were produced by Pat Aulton, house producer for the Sunshine Records, Spin Records and...
had faded from view. Few acts from this era attained major international success, and it was even difficult to achieve success across Australia, due to low radio airplay and the increasing dominance of overseas performers on the charts. A pivotal event was the 1970 radio ban
1970 radio ban
The Australian 1970 Radio Ban or 1970 Record Ban was a "pay for play" dispute in the local music industry that lasted from May till October...
, which lasted from May to October that year. The Ban was the climax of a simmering "pay for play" dispute between major record companies and commercial radio stations, who refused to pay a proposed new copyright fee for playing pop records on air. The dispute erupted into open conflict in May 1970—many commercial stations boycotted records by the labels involved and refused to list their releases on their Top 40 charts, while the record companies in turn refused to supply radio with free promotional copies of new releases.
An unexpected side-effect of the ban was that several emerging Australian acts signed to independent label (who were not part of the dispute) scored hits with covers of overseas hits; these included The Mixtures
The Mixtures
-Biography:Australian musicians Terry Dean and Rod De Clerk met in Tasmania in 1965. They then met Laurie Arthur, a member of The Strangers, and the three decided to form a band together after a jam session. They quickly signed to EMI that same year and released three singles. They went through...
' cover of Mungo Jerry
Mungo Jerry
Mungo Jerry is an English rock group whose greatest success was in the early 1970s, though they have continued throughout the years with an ever-changing line-up, always fronted by Ray Dorset. They are remembered above all for their hit "In the Summertime". It remains their most successful and most...
's "In the Summertime" and Liv Maessen's cover of Mary Hopkin's Eurovision song "Knock, Knock, Who's There".
Despite commercial radio resistance to the more progressive music being produced by bands like Spectrum
Spectrum (band)
Spectrum is an Australian progressive rock band that formed in Melbourne in 1969 and, in its original period, remained in existence until 1973. Its members also performed under the alter-ego Indelible Murtceps...
and Tully
Tully (band)
Tully was an Australian progressive rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s which had a close association with the Sydney-based film/lightshow collective Ubu.-Formation:...
, acts as diverse as AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, Sherbet
Sherbet (band)
Sherbet was one of the most prominent and successful Australian rock bands of the 1970s. Their biggest singles were "Summer Love" and "Howzat" , both reaching number one in Australia. "Howzat" was also a top 5 hit in the UK. Though the band's success in the U.S...
and John Paul Young
John Paul Young
John Paul Young is an Australian pop singer who had a 1978 worldwide hit with "Love Is in the Air"...
were able to achieve major success and develop a unique sound for Australian rock. From 1975, key agents for the increased exposure of local music were the nationally broadcast ABC-TV television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
pop show Countdown, which premiered in late 1974, and Australia's first non-commercial all-rock radio station Double Jay
Triple J
triple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
, which opened in January 1975. Hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
band AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
and harmony rock group Little River Band
Little River Band
Little River Band is an Australian rock band, formed in Melbourne in early 1975.The group chose the name after passing a road sign leading to the Victorian township of Little River, near Geelong, on the way to a performance. Little River Band enjoyed sustained commercial success in not only...
also found major overseas success in the late 70s and early 80s, touring all over the world. Meanwhile, a score of Australian expatriate solo performers like Helen Reddy
Helen Reddy
Helen Reddy , often referred to as "The Queen of 70s Pop", is an Australian-American singer and actress. In the 1970s, she enjoyed international success, especially in the United States, where she placed fifteen singles in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Six of those 15 songs made the Top 10...
, Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...
and Peter Allen
Peter Allen
Peter Allen was an Australian songwriter and entertainer. His songs were made popular by many recording artists, including Elkie Brooks, Melissa Manchester and Olivia Newton-John, with one, Arthur's Theme, winning an Academy Award in 1981...
became major stars in the USA and internationally. Icehouse
Icehouse (band)
Icehouse is an Australian rock band, formed as Flowers in 1977 in Sydney. Initially known in Australia for their pub rock style, they later achieved mainstream success playing new wave and synthpop style music and attained Top Ten singles chart success in both Europe and the U.S...
also formed in the late 1970s.
This period also saw bands like Skyhooks moving towards New Wave music
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, and the late 1970s saw the emergence of pioneering punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
bands like The Saints
The Saints (band)
The Saints are an Australian rock band, which formed in Brisbane in 1974 as punk rockers. Founders were Chris Bailey , Ivor Hay , and Ed Kuepper . Alongside mainstay Bailey, the group has had numerous line-ups...
and Radio Birdman
Radio Birdman
Radio Birdman was one of the first punk bands in Australia along with The Saints. Deniz Tek and Rob Younger formed the group in Sydney, Australia in 1974...
, as well as electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
al groups, such as Cybotron, Severed Heads
Severed Heads
Severed Heads is an Australian electronic music group based and founded in Sydney in 1979 as Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. The original members were Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright, and were soon joined by Tom Ellard. Fielding and Wright eventually left the group, leaving Ellard as a singular...
and Essendon Airport
Essendon Airport (band)
Essendon Airport was an Australian post-punk group from 1978-83 who explored experimental minimalist, electronic and funk music. They reformed in the original duo lineup for occasional performances in 2003 following the re issue of Sonic Investigations of the Trivial...
. Perhaps most influential of the 'underground' scenes, however, was the burgeoning Australian pub rock
Pub rock (Australia)
Pub rock is a style of Australian rock and roll popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and still influencing contemporary Australian music today....
circuit, which developed in the early 1970s and played a key role in the emergence of major bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel is a rock band that originated in Adelaide, Australia. It is one of the most acclaimed Australian rock bands of all time, with a string of hits throughout the 1970s and 1980s and huge sales that continue to this day, although its success and acclaim was almost completely restricted to...
and The Angels
The Angels (Australian band)
The Angels are a hard rock band that formed in Adelaide, Australia in 1970. The band later relocated from Adelaide to Sydney and enjoyed huge local success until well into the 1990s. For the purposes of international release, their records were released under the names Angel City and later The...
, and in Sydney Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
.
From the post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
music scene which had sprung up in Melbourne came The Boys Next Door
The Birthday Party (band)
The Birthday Party were an Australian rock band, active from 1973 to 1983.Despite being championed by John Peel, The Birthday Party found little commercial success during their career...
featuring Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
. The Boys Next Door would eventually become The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (band)
The Birthday Party were an Australian rock band, active from 1973 to 1983.Despite being championed by John Peel, The Birthday Party found little commercial success during their career...
.
The Australian Music Industry as a business began to formalise during the late 1960s and the 1970s. Although not taken seriously by the mainstream business community in those early years, none could discount the pioneering spirit and business acumen of the likes of Michael Gudinski
Michael Gudinski
Michael Solomon Gudinski, AM is an Australian entrepreneur and businessman currently based in Melbourne who is a leading figure in the Australian music industry...
, Michael Chugg, Ray Evans
Ray Evans
Raymond Bernard Evans was an American songwriter. He was a partner in a composing and songwriting duo with Jay Livingston, known for the songs they composed for films...
, Dennis Charter
Dennis Charter
Dennis Charter is an Australian born entrepreneur. He embarked on an early career in the music and entertainment industry in Australia from the late 1960s through to the early 1980s....
, Glenn Wheatley
Glenn Wheatley
Glenn Dawson Wheatley is an Australian artist manager and entertainment industry executive.Wheatley began his career as a musician in Brisbane in the mid-1960s and in the late 1960s became nationally famous as a member of leading pop-rock band The Masters Apprentices...
, Harry M. Miller
Harry M. Miller
-Early career:Born in New Zealand, Miller grew up in Grey Lynn, Auckland, and moved to Australia in 1963, where he established a company called Pan Pacific Productions with Keith and Dennis Wong, owners of the noted Sydney nightclub "Chequers"...
, Harley Medcalf, Michael Browning, Peter Rix, Ron Tudor, Roger Davies
Roger Davies (manager)
Roger Davies is an Australian born business manager and music producer with a long career in the music industry. His career has taken him from working as a roadie in Australia in the early 1970s to managing some of the most successful female pop/rock performers in the world including Olivia...
, Fred Bestall, Lance Reynolds, Alan Hely, Frank Stivala, Sebastian Chase, Philip Jacobsen, Peter Karpin, Roger Savage
Roger Savage
Roger Savage is an Australian sound engineer. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Sound for the film Moulin Rouge! He has worked on over 80 films since 1971.-External links:...
, John Sayers, Ernie Rose, Bill Armstrong, Kevin Jacobsen
Kevin Jacobsen
Kevin George Jacobsen OAM is a well-known Australian entertainment entrepreneur.Along with his brothers Colin and Keith, he was a member of prominent Australian 1960s band, The Joy Boys....
, Phil Dwyer
Phil Dwyer (musician)
Phil Dwyer is a jazz saxophonist, pianist, composer, producer and teacher who, after 15 years in Toronto, now resides on Vancouver Island. Dwyer has been nominated for Juno Awards 4 times and won Best Mainstream Jazz Album in 1994....
, Ken Brodziak, Denis Handlin, Stan Rofe
Stan Rofe
Stan 'The Man' Rofe was Melbourne's first and most influential rock'n'roll disc jockey. He is remembered as playing the first rock and roll music on Melbourne radio 3KZ in 1956 and as a champion of Australian music, a pioneer who played songs other DJs were too scared to play.-Career:Stan Rofe...
, Jade Johnson
Jade Johnson
Jade Linsey Johnson is an English athlete, specialising in long jump.She is allergic to sand.Johnson came second in the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Later she won the silver medal at the 2002 European Championships and finished fourth at the 2003 World Championships...
, Terry Blamey and Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum
Ian Meldrum
Ian Alexander "Molly" Meldrum AM is an Australian popular music critic, journalist, record producer , and musical entrepreneur...
. These were the people largely responsible for promoting and developing the Australian music ‘business’ during those formative years.
Clubs and venues catering for the demand of live band entertainment flourished in capital cities all over the country, however, the central development of the Australian Music Industry during these years was in Sydney and Melbourne. Clubs such as Chequers
Chequers
Chequers, or Chequers Court, is a country house near Ellesborough, to the south of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, England, at the foot of the Chiltern Hills...
, the Bondi Lifesaver and the Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney, and the Thumpin Tum, Catcher
Catcher
Catcher is a position for a baseball or softball player. When a batter takes his turn to hit, the catcher crouches behind home plate, in front of the umpire, and receives the ball from the pitcher. This is a catcher's primary duty, but he is also called upon to master many other skills in order to...
, Berties, Sebastian’s, the Hard Rock Cafe
Hard Rock Cafe
Hard Rock Cafe is a chain of theme restaurants founded in 1971 by Americans Peter Morton & Isaac Tigrett. In 1979, the cafe began covering its walls with rock and roll memorabilia, a tradition which expanded to others in the chain. In 2006, Hard Rock was sold to the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and...
and the Q Club in Melbourne were synonymous with the biggest names in Australian Rock & Roll.
In 1970 the first ever outdoor music festival, modelled on Woodstock, was held at Ourimbah
Ourimbah, New South Wales
Ourimbah is a small township and a suburb of the Central Coast region of New South Wales, Australia, located about north of the Sydney CBD. The township today consists of small scattered local shops and businesses along the Pacific Highway, as well as the Central Coast campus of the University of...
near Sydney, and several other followed over the next two years, but most were a financial failure. In 1972 the first festival that proved successful enough to be repeated was the 1972 ‘Festival’ which attracted some 35,000 music fans from across the country to Sunbury
Sunbury, Victoria
Sunbury is a regional city, located north-west of Melbourne's central business district, in the state of Victoria, Australia. Its Local Government Area is the City of Hume. At the 2006 Census, Sunbury had a population of 31,000...
, Melbourne.
‘Pop’ magazines such as Go-Set
Go-Set
Go-Set was the first Australian pop music newspaper, published weekly from 2 February 1966 to 24 August 1974, and was founded in Melbourne by Phillip Frazer, Peter Raphael and Tony Schauble...
(which began in 1966), the Daily Planet
Daily Planet
The Daily Planet is a fictional broadsheet newspaper in the , appearing mostly in the stories of Superman. The building's original features were based upon the AT&T Huron Road Building in Cleveland, Ohio...
, RAM, and Juke, and television programs such as Countdown, Uptight, Sounds Unlimited and Happening 70 promoted Australian popular music to a youth market who had never before experienced such media exposure of their idols and stars. ‘Pop Stars’ were now being created by direct marketing to a targeted teenage audience. Recording studios such as 301, Alberts’ and Trafalgar in Sydney and Armstrong Studios and TCS in Melbourne became legendary. Independent label Mushroom Records
Mushroom Records
Mushroom Records is an Australian recoJrd company formed by Michael Gudinski and Ray Evans in Melbourne in 1972. After its sale in 1998, it merged into Festival Mushroom Records. From 2005 to 2009, it is one of the record labels operated by Warner Bros...
was founded in 1973 and although it struggled to survive for its first two years of existence, it was saved in early 1975 by the nationawide commercial breakthrough of Skyhooks, whose debut LP became the biggest-selling Australian rock album ever released up to that time; this success enabled Mushroom to become a significant player in the Australian music industry and compete with established companies like EMI, CBS and Festival.
The bands and solo artists who shaped Australian Music during these seminal years were: – The Choirboys
The Choirboys (band)
The Choirboys are an Australian hard rock band from Sydney formed in 1979 with mainstays Mark Gable on lead vocals and Ian Hulme on bass guitar and were later joined by drummer Paul Wheeler. Their hit "Run to Paradise" reached No. 3 on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart in late 1987. The...
, INXS
INXS
INXS are an Australian rock band, formed as The Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney, New South Wales. Mainstays are Garry Gary Beers on bass guitar, Andrew Farriss on guitar/keyboards, Jon Farriss on drums, Tim Farriss on lead guitar and Kirk Pengilly on guitar/sax...
, Noiseworks
Noiseworks
Noiseworks is an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1986 with bass guitarist Steve Balbi, guitarist Stuart Fraser, drummer Kevin Nicol, keyboardist Justin Stanley and lead vocalist Jon Stevens...
, Skyhooks, AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, Renée Geyer
Renée Geyer
Renée Rebecca Geyer is an Australian singer who has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of jazz, soul and R&B idioms. She had commercial success as a solo artist in Australia, with "It's a Man's Man's World", "Heading in the Right Direction" and "Stares and Whispers" in the 1970s and...
, Spectrum
Spectrum (band)
Spectrum is an Australian progressive rock band that formed in Melbourne in 1969 and, in its original period, remained in existence until 1973. Its members also performed under the alter-ego Indelible Murtceps...
, Chain
Chain (band)
Chain are an Australian blues band formed in Melbourne as The Chain in late 1968 with a lineup including guitarist, vocalist Phil Manning; they are sometimes known as Matt Taylor's Chain after lead singer-songwriter and harmonica player, Matt Taylor...
, Daddy Cool
Daddy Cool (band)
Daddy Cool is an Australian rock band formed in Melbourne in 1970 with the original line-up of Wayne Duncan , Ross Hannaford , Ross Wilson and Gary Young . Their debut single "Eagle Rock" was released in May 1971 and stayed at number 1 on the Australian singles chart for ten weeks...
, Marcia Hines
Marcia Hines
Marcia Elaine Hines, AM is a vocalist, actress and TV personality who achieved success in her adopted homeland of Australia. Hines made her debut, at the age of sixteen, in the Australian version of the stage musical Hair and followed with the role of Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar...
, Zoot
Zoot (band)
Zoot are a pop/rock band formed in Adelaide, South Australia in 1965 as Down the Line. They changed their name to Zoot in 1967 and by 1968 had relocated to Melbourne...
, The Masters Apprentices
The Masters Apprentices
The Masters Apprentices were an Australian rock band fronted by mainstay Jim Keays on lead vocals, which formed in 1965 in Adelaide, South Australia, relocated to Melbourne in February 1967 and attempted to break into the United Kingdom market from 1970, before disbanding in 1972...
, Dragon
Dragon (band)
Dragon is a popular New Zealand rock band, they were formed in Auckland, New Zealand in January 1972 and relocated to Sydney, Australia in May 1975. They were previously led by singer Marc Hunter and are currently led by his brother bass player Todd Hunter...
, Air Supply
Air Supply
Air Supply is an Australian soft rock duo, consisting of Graham Russell as guitarist and singer-songwriter and Russell Hitchcock as lead vocalist. They had a succession of hits worldwide, including eight Top Ten hits in the United States, in the early 1980s...
, The Radiators, The Angels
The Angels (Australian band)
The Angels are a hard rock band that formed in Adelaide, Australia in 1970. The band later relocated from Adelaide to Sydney and enjoyed huge local success until well into the 1990s. For the purposes of international release, their records were released under the names Angel City and later The...
, Axiom
Axiom (Australian band)
Axiom were a rock band formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1969 and included musicians Glenn Shorrock and Brian Cadd.-Biography:Axiom's formation was a by-product of the annual Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds in which the top Australian bands of the day performed in front of judges for the prize of a...
, Kevin Borich Express, Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, Carson, Cheetah
Cheetah (band)
Cheetah were an Australian rock band active between 1977 and 1982. The main members and vocalists were sisters Chrissie Hammond and Lyndsay Hammond . They had been session vocalists for many Australian artists including Jo Jo Zep, Jon English, Marc Hunter, Flash and the Pan and as a vocal duo...
, Richard Clapton
Richard Clapton
Richard Clapton is an Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist from Sydney, New South Wales. His solo top 20 hits on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart are "Girls on the Avenue" and "I Am an Island"...
, Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel is a rock band that originated in Adelaide, Australia. It is one of the most acclaimed Australian rock bands of all time, with a string of hits throughout the 1970s and 1980s and huge sales that continue to this day, although its success and acclaim was almost completely restricted to...
, John Farnham
John Farnham
John Peter Farnham, AO, formerly billed as Johnny Farnham , is an English-born Australian pop singer. He was a teen pop idol from 1964 to 1979, and has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist although he briefly replaced Glenn Shorrock as...
, Healing Force, Lobby Loyde
Lobby Loyde
Lobby Loyde , also known as John Barrie Lyde or Barry Lyde, was an Australian rock music guitarist, songwriter and producer....
and the Coloured Balls, Hawking Bros, Flake, Buffalo
Buffalo (band)
Buffalo was an early heavy metal band formed in Sydney, Australia in 1971. The band left a legacy with Australia's heavy metal, pub rock and alternative rock movements. The band had evolved from the Brisbane blues-rock outfit Head, which was originally formed in 1968 by Dave Tice and Peter Wells...
, Bjerre, Wendy Saddington
Wendy Saddington
Wendy June Saddington is an Australian blues / soul / jazz singer and was in the bands Chain, Copperwine and the Wendy Saddington Band. She wrote for teen pop newspaper Go-Set from September 1969 – September 1970 as an agony aunt in her weekly "Takes Care of Business" column and as a...
, The Seekers
The Seekers
The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...
, Ronnie Charles, Company Caine
Company Caine
Company Caine, also known as Co. Caine and Company Kane, is an Australian progressive rock band of the 1970s. The band was formed in Melbourne in 1970 with member as follows:* Gulliver Smith * Russell Smith * Jeremy Noone 1970-71, 1975...
, Trevor Spry, Radio Birdman
Radio Birdman
Radio Birdman was one of the first punk bands in Australia along with The Saints. Deniz Tek and Rob Younger formed the group in Sydney, Australia in 1974...
, Buster Brown
Buster Brown
Buster Brown was a comic strip character created in 1902 by Richard Felton Outcault who was known for his association with the Brown Shoe Company. This mischievous young boy was loosely based on a boy near Outcault's home in Flushing, New York...
, Little River Band
Little River Band
Little River Band is an Australian rock band, formed in Melbourne in early 1975.The group chose the name after passing a road sign leading to the Victorian township of Little River, near Geelong, on the way to a performance. Little River Band enjoyed sustained commercial success in not only...
, Ray Burgess, Mental As Anything
Mental As Anything
Mental As Anything are an Australian New Wave–rock music band formed at an art school in Sydney in 1976. Their most popular line-up was Martin Plaza on vocals and guitar; Reg Mombassa on lead guitar and vocals; his brother Peter "Yoga Dog" O'Doherty on bass guitar and vocals; Wayne "Bird"...
, Marty Rhone, Ariel
Ariel (band)
Ariel was an Australian progressive rock band based around the duo Mike Rudd and Bill Putt, who formed the band in 1973 after the breakup of their previous group Spectrum . The original Ariel line-up was Rudd , Putt , Tim Gaze , Nigel Macara and John Mills...
, The La De Das
The La De Das
The La De Das were a leading New Zealand rock band of the 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in New Zealand in 1963 , they enjoyed considerable success in both New Zealand and Australia until their split in 1975....
, Peter Allen
Peter Allen
Peter Allen was an Australian songwriter and entertainer. His songs were made popular by many recording artists, including Elkie Brooks, Melissa Manchester and Olivia Newton-John, with one, Arthur's Theme, winning an Academy Award in 1981...
, The Dingoes
The Dingoes
The Dingoes are an Australian country rock band initially active from 1973 to 1979, formed in Melbourne they relocated to the United States from 1976. Most stable line-up was John Bois on bass guitar, John Lee on drums, Broderick Smith on vocals and harmonica, Chris Stockley on guitar and Kerryn...
, Babeez, Mondo Rock
Mondo Rock
Mondo Rock is a rock band from Melbourne, Australia, most prominent in the early 1980s. The band was formed in late 1976 by singer-songwriter-guitarist Ross Wilson.-Early years: 1976–1979:...
, Icehouse
Icehouse (band)
Icehouse is an Australian rock band, formed as Flowers in 1977 in Sydney. Initially known in Australia for their pub rock style, they later achieved mainstream success playing new wave and synthpop style music and attained Top Ten singles chart success in both Europe and the U.S...
, Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
, Doug Parkinson, Jon English
Jon English
Jonathan James "Jon" English is an Australian rock singer, musician, actor and writer. English emigrated to Australia with his parents in 1961...
, Blackfeather
Blackfeather
Blackfeather was an Australian rock group in the 1970s. The group had many members and went through two major incarnations - the earlier heavy rock version of the group, which recorded the album At The Mountains of Madness and the hit single "Seasons of Change", and the later piano-based lineup...
, Ronnie Burns, The Ferrets, Mike Brady
Mike Brady (musician)
Mike Brady is an Australian musician most commonly associated with the Australian rules football anthems "Up There Cazaly", referring to 1920s and 30s St Kilda player Roy Cazaly and "One Day in September". "Up There Cazaly" topped the Australian singles charts in September 1979 and briefly held...
, Martin Gellatley, Hush
Hush (band)
Hush was a 1970s Australian glam rock pop group and became famous during frequent appearances on the ABC show Countdown for live concerts and teenagers, and they would not have come into existence without the superb John Koutts on drums....
, Tully
Tully (band)
Tully was an Australian progressive rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s which had a close association with the Sydney-based film/lightshow collective Ubu.-Formation:...
, Madder Lake, Supernaut
Supernaut (band)
Supernaut were an Australian glam/punk rock band from Perth, Australia formed in 1974 and disbanded in 1980.-History:Formed in 1974 in Perth, Western Australia, Supernaut had a short but successful career which yielded two straight top twenty singles and gold album status for their self titled...
, Russell Morris
Russell Morris
Russell Norman Morris is an Australian singer-songwriter who had five Australian Top 10 singles during the late 1960s and early 1970s...
, Allison Durbin
Allison Durbin
Allison Durbin is a New Zealand-born Australian former pop singer. In the early 1970s Durbin's visual 'trademark' was her lustrous waist-length auburn hair....
, Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...
, Ross D. Wylie, The News, Max Merritt and the Meteors, Debra Byrne
Debra Byrne
-Career:Byrne made her television debut on Brian and the Juniors, an early predecessor of Young Talent Time, which was hosted by a young Brian Naylor. She stayed with the show for 12 months. In 1971 she was cast as one of the original six Young Talent Time cast members...
, Rose Tattoo
Rose Tattoo
Rose Tattoo is an Australian rock and roll band, now led by Angry Anderson, that was formed in Sydney in 1976. Their sound is hard rock mixed with blues rock influences, with songs including "Bad Boy for Love", "Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw", "Nice Boys", "We Can't Be Beaten" and "Scarred for Life"...
, The Reels
The Reels
The Reels is an Australian rock/indie pop group which formed in Dubbo, New South Wales in 1976 and initially disbanded in 1991, they eventually reformed in 2007. Their 1981 song, "Quasimodo's Dream", was voted one of the Top 10 Australian songs of all time by a 100-member panel from Australasian...
, The Saints
The Saints (band)
The Saints are an Australian rock band, which formed in Brisbane in 1974 as punk rockers. Founders were Chris Bailey , Ivor Hay , and Ed Kuepper . Alongside mainstay Bailey, the group has had numerous line-ups...
, Sebastian Hardie
Sebastian Hardie
Sebastian Hardie were Australia's first symphonic rock band. They formed in Sydney in 1967 as Sebastian Hardie Blues Band but dropped the 'Blues Band' reference when they became pop-oriented. By 1973 they developed a more progressive rock style, and later performed as Windchase, but disbanded in 1977...
, Lash, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (singer)
William Shakespeare was the stage name of Australian Glam rock singer John Stanley Cave, also known as John Cabe or Billy Shake. He had two Australian hit singles, "Can't Stop Myself from Loving You" which peaked at #2 on the Kent Music Report in 1974 and "My Little Angel" which peaked at #1 in 1975...
, Sherbet
Sherbet (band)
Sherbet was one of the most prominent and successful Australian rock bands of the 1970s. Their biggest singles were "Summer Love" and "Howzat" , both reaching number one in Australia. "Howzat" was also a top 5 hit in the UK. Though the band's success in the U.S...
, Silver Studs, John St Peters, Jeff St John, Stylus
Stylus
A stylus is a writing utensil, or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example in pottery. The word is also used for a computer accessory . It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen. Many styli are heavily curved to be held more easily...
, Jim Keays
Jim Keays
James "Jim" Keays is an Australian musician who fronted rock band The Masters Apprentices as singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonica-player during 1965–1972, and subsequently had a solo career including leading Jim Keays' Southern Cross...
, Tamam Shud
Tamam Shud
Tamam Shud were an Australian psychedelic and progressive rock band, formed in Sydney in 1967, which released two albums, Evolution and Goolutionites and the Real People before disbanding in 1972...
, Ted Mulry
Ted Mulry
Ted Mulry was a singer, songwriter, bass player and guitarist. He was born in Oldham, Lancashire, England but achieved his success in Australia, firstly as a solo performer, and then leading his own band Ted Mulry Gang, sometimes officially credited as just TMG.-Solo:Ted Mulry first came to the...
Gang, Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs
Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs
Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs were an Australian pop and rock group dating from the mid-sixties. The group enjoyed huge success in the mid-1960s, but split in 1967. They re-emerged in the early seventies to become one of the most popular Australian hard-rock bands of the period...
, Ol' 55
Ol' 55
Ol' 55 was an Australian band specialising in retro, 1950s-era Rock 'n' Roll. They formed as Fanis in 1972 in Sutherland, Sydney, New South Wales . Drummer Geoff Plummer was working with Glenn A. Baker at the NSW Department of Media and invited Baker to hear his part-time band, including Pat...
, Mark Holden
Mark Holden
Mark Holden is an Australian singer, television personality and barrister. He was one of a panel of three judges on the television series Australian Idol.-Acting career:...
, Lyndon Hart, Stevie Wright, John Paul Young
John Paul Young
John Paul Young is an Australian pop singer who had a 1978 worldwide hit with "Love Is in the Air"...
, Helen Reddy
Helen Reddy
Helen Reddy , often referred to as "The Queen of 70s Pop", is an Australian-American singer and actress. In the 1970s, she enjoyed international success, especially in the United States, where she placed fifteen singles in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Six of those 15 songs made the Top 10...
, Redgum
Redgum
Redgum were an Australian folk and political music group formed in Adelaide in 1975 by singer-songwriter John Schumann, Michael Atkinson on guitars/vocals and Verity Truman on flute/vocals; they were soon joined by Chris Timms on violin. All four had been students at Flinders University and...
, Hot City Bump Band, Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons
Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons
Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons were an Australian blues and rock music band which featured singer, songwriter and saxophonist, Joe Camilleri . The band was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and had several Australian chart hits, including "Hit and Run", "Shape I'm In" and "All I Wanna Do"...
, Colleen Hewett
Colleen Hewett
Colleen Hewett is an Australian actress and popular singer. She is perhaps best known to international audiences for her 1984 guest role in the television series Prisoner as Sheila Brady.-Pop singer:...
, Linda George
Linda George (Australian singer)
Linda George is an English-born Australian pop, jazz fusion and soul singer from the 1970s. In 1973, George performed the role of Acid Queen for the Australian stage performance of The Who's rock opera, Tommy. She won the TV Week King of Pop award for "Best New Female Artist"...
, Ayers Rock
Ayers Rock (band)
Ayers Rock was a jazz fusion/progressive rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group formed in 1973, and included many well-travelled rock performers; drummer Mark Kennedy had previously played in Spectrum, and played on sessions for King Harvest and Friends...
and Brian Cadd
Brian Cadd
Brian George Cadd is an Australian singer-songwriter, keyboardist and producer who has performed as a member of The Groop, Axiom, Flying Burrito Brothers and solo...
.
1980s
The 1980s saw a breakthrough in the independence of Australian rock—Nick CaveNick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
said that before the 80s, "Australia still needed America or England to tell them what was good". An example of Australians breaking free from convention came in TISM
TISM
TISM was a seven piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group was formed in 1982 and enjoyed a large underground/independent following. Their third album Machiavelli and the Four Seasons reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995...
. Formed in 1982, the band is known for its anonymous members, outrageous stage antics, and humorous lyrics. In the words of the band, "There's only one factor left that makes us work. And that factor, I think, we've burned away, with the crucible of time, into something that's actually genuine."
Men at Work
Men at Work
Men at Work are an Australian rock band who achieved international success in the 1980s. They are the only Australian artists to have a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United States . They achieved the same distinction of a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United Kingdom...
, Divinyls
Divinyls
Divinyls were an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1980 and featuring vocalist Christina Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee. As the focal point, Amphlett performed on stage wearing a school uniform and fishnet stockings, often using an illuminated neon tube as a prop and displaying...
, and Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus are an Australian rock band, formed in Sydney in 1981, by the mainstay Dave Faulkner and later joined by Richard Grossman , Mark Kingsmill , and Brad Shepherd...
, all formed between 1979 and 1981, would go on to be hugely successful worldwide. Men at Work's "Down Under
Down Under (song)
"Down Under" is a pop song recorded by Men at Work for their debut album Business as Usual . The song went to #1 on American, British, Canadian and Australian charts....
" hit number one in Australia, Europe, the UK, and the United States, and was considered the theme song of Australia's successful showing at the 1983 America's Cup
1983 America's Cup
The 1983 America's Cup was the occasion of the first winning challenge to the New York Yacht Club who had successfully defended the cup over a period of 132 years...
. Hoodoo Gurus, meanwhile, hit it big on the US college circuit—all of their 80s albums topped the chart.
In the 1980s, numerous innovative Australian rock bands arose. These included Hunters & Collectors
Hunters & Collectors
Hunters & Collectors were an Australian rock music band formed in Melbourne in 1981, fronted by singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Seymour, they developed a blend of pub rock and art-funk...
, The Church
The Church (band)
The Church is an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1980. Initially associated with new wave and the neo-psychedelic sound of the mid 1980s, their music later became more reminiscent of progressive rock, featuring long instrumental jams and complex guitar interplay...
, TISM
TISM
TISM was a seven piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group was formed in 1982 and enjoyed a large underground/independent following. Their third album Machiavelli and the Four Seasons reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995...
, Divinyls
Divinyls
Divinyls were an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1980 and featuring vocalist Christina Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee. As the focal point, Amphlett performed on stage wearing a school uniform and fishnet stockings, often using an illuminated neon tube as a prop and displaying...
, Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus are an Australian rock band, formed in Sydney in 1981, by the mainstay Dave Faulkner and later joined by Richard Grossman , Mark Kingsmill , and Brad Shepherd...
, Mondo Rock
Mondo Rock
Mondo Rock is a rock band from Melbourne, Australia, most prominent in the early 1980s. The band was formed in late 1976 by singer-songwriter-guitarist Ross Wilson.-Early years: 1976–1979:...
, The Sunnyboys
The Sunnyboys
Sunnyboys was an Australian post-punk, power pop band formed in Sydney in 1980. Fronted by singer-songwriter, guitarist Jeremy Oxley, the band "breathed some freshness and vitality into the divergent Sydney scene"...
, Men at Work
Men at Work
Men at Work are an Australian rock band who achieved international success in the 1980s. They are the only Australian artists to have a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United States . They achieved the same distinction of a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United Kingdom...
, The Go-Betweens
The Go-Betweens
The Go-Betweens were an indie rock band formed in Brisbane, Australia in 1977 by singer-songwriters and guitarists, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. They were later joined by Lindy Morrison on drums, Robert Vickers on bass guitar and Amanda Brown on violin, oboe, guitar, and backing vocals,...
, The Triffids
The Triffids
The Triffids were a seminal Australian alternative rock and pop band formed in Perth, Western Australia, in May 1978 with charismatic, David McComb as singer-songwriter, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboardist. They achieved negligible success in Australia, but greater success in the U.K...
, The Celibate Rifles
The Celibate Rifles
The Celibate Rifles are a punk rock band from Sydney, Australia.The band was formed in 1979 and released their first album Sideroxylon in April 1983 on the Hot Records label...
, the Cosmic Psychos
Cosmic Psychos
The Cosmic Psychos are a punk rock band based in Melbourne and rural Victoria in Australia. An underground band that has only ever achieved limited recognition.-Description:...
and the Hard-Ons
Hard-Ons
The Hard-Ons are a punk rock band from Sydney, Australia that originally formed in 1981. They have been called Australia's most commercially successful independent band, with over 250,000 total record sales. -1980s: Early days:...
. During this period a number of Australian bands began to reflect their urban environment in songs dealing with day to day experiences of inner-city life e.g. Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly (musician)
Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...
& the Coloured Girls perhaps best exemplified in his songs "From St. Kilda to Kings Cross" and "Leaps & Bounds", John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong
John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong
John Kennedy is an Australian musician, a singer-songwriter with a penchant for strong melodies and "heart on your sleeve" pop songs often with country and western influences.-Early life:...
in songs such us "King Street" and The Mexican Spitfires
The Mexican Spitfires
The Mexican Spitfires were a Sydney, Australia-based indie rock–indie pop band formed in suburban Strathfield in the Strathfield Municipality in the mid 1980s...
in tracks like "Sydney Town" and "Town Hall Steps." This decade also saw the rise of world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
groups like Dead Can Dance
Dead Can Dance
Dead Can Dance are an ethereal neoclassical duo formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981, by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry. The band relocated to London in May 1982 and disbanded in 1998. Their 1996 album Spiritchaser reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top World Music Albums Chart...
; of special importance is Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi are an Australian band with Aboriginal and balanda members formed in 1986. Aboriginal members come from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land...
, who helped found the field of Aboriginal rock
Aboriginal rock
Aboriginal rock refers to a style of music which mixes rock music with the instrumentation and singing styles of Aboriginal people. Two countries with prominent Aboriginal rock scenes are Australia and Canada.-Australia:...
. In 1985, the Newsboys
Newsboys
Newsboys are a Christian pop rock band founded in 1985 in Mooloolaba, Australia. They have released 15 studio albums, six of which have been certified gold...
emerged and produced the hit albums Not Ashamed
Not Ashamed
Not Ashamed is the fourth studio album by Australian CCM band Newsboys, released in 1992. The album was the Newsboys' first commercially successful album, with the title track "I'm Not Ashamed" becoming a hit on Christian radio...
, Step Up to the Microphone
Step Up to the Microphone
Step Up to the Microphone is the seventh studio album by Christian pop rock band Newsboys, released in 1998. It was the Newsboys first album following the departure of lead singer John James in 1997, as well as their first release on a major label, the EMI-owned Sparrow Records.-Track listing:#...
, Devotion, and more. Then soap star Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE - often known simply as Kylie - is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing...
began her music career in the late 1980s and released The Loco-Motion
The Loco-Motion
"The Loco-Motion" is a 1962 pop song written by American songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The song is notable for appearing in the American Top 5 three times – each time in a different decade: for Little Eva in 1962 ; for Grand Funk Railroad in 1974 ; and for Kylie Minogue in 1988 "The...
which became the biggest selling single in Australia for the decade and quickly catapulted her to worldwide stardom.
The first annual ARIA Music Awards
ARIA Music Awards
The Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards is an annual series of awards nights celebrating the Australian music industry, put on by the Australian Recording Industry Association...
were held in 1987. John Farnham
John Farnham
John Peter Farnham, AO, formerly billed as Johnny Farnham , is an English-born Australian pop singer. He was a teen pop idol from 1964 to 1979, and has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist although he briefly replaced Glenn Shorrock as...
and Crowded House
Crowded House
Crowded House are a rock band, formed in Melbourne, Australia and led by New Zealand singer-songwriter Neil Finn. Finn is the primary songwriter and creative director of the band, having led it through several incarnations, drawing members from New Zealand , Australia and the United States...
were the most successful artists at the event.
1990s: indie rock
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, INXS
INXS
INXS are an Australian rock band, formed as The Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney, New South Wales. Mainstays are Garry Gary Beers on bass guitar, Andrew Farriss on guitar/keyboards, Jon Farriss on drums, Tim Farriss on lead guitar and Kirk Pengilly on guitar/sax...
, Men at Work
Men at Work
Men at Work are an Australian rock band who achieved international success in the 1980s. They are the only Australian artists to have a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United States . They achieved the same distinction of a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United Kingdom...
, Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
, The Bad Seeds, and a new indie rock
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
scene started to develop locally
Australian indie rock
Australian indie rock is part of the overall flow of Australian rock history but has a distinct history somewhat separate from mainstream rock in Australia, largely from the end of the punk rock era onwards.-Beginnings:...
. Sydney-based Ratcat
Ratcat
Ratcat were an Australian indie rock band of the late 1980s and early 1990s fronted by vocalist Simon Day. Their combination of indie pop songwriting and energetic punk-style guitar won them fans from both the indie and skate-punk communities.-Waterfront:...
were the first new band to achieve a mainstream following, while bands such as the Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus are an Australian rock band, formed in Sydney in 1981, by the mainstay Dave Faulkner and later joined by Richard Grossman , Mark Kingsmill , and Brad Shepherd...
got off to a slower start; their debut album Stoneage Romeos
Stoneage Romeos
Stoneage Romeos was iconic Australian rock group Hoodoo Gurus' first album and saw them receive record sales to complement their already strong reputation for live performances. The album name is from a Three Stooges short film...
earned a small following but failed to captivate a mainstream that at the time "didn't get it". Later reviews would describe the band as "integral to the story of Aussie indie music", influencing bands including Frenzal Rhomb
Frenzal Rhomb
Frenzal Rhomb are an Australian punk rock band which formed in 1992 with mainstay Jason Whalley on lead vocals and rhythm guitar. In 1996, Lindsay McDougall joined the line-up on lead guitar and backing vocals. Two of the group's albums have peaked into the top 20 on the ARIA Albums Chart, A...
and Jet
Jet (band)
Jet are an Australian rock band formed in 2001 while attending St Bede's College Mentone in Melbourne, . The band consists of lead guitarist Cameron Muncey, bassist Mark Wilson, and brothers Nic and Chris Cester on vocals/rhythm guitar and drums respectively...
. The band would go on to become an ARIA Hall of Fame
ARIA Hall of Fame
Since 1988 the Australian Recording Industry Association has inducted artists into its ARIA Hall of Fame. While most have been recognised at the annual ARIA Music Awards, in 2005 ARIA sought to create a separate standalone "ARIA Icons: Hall of Fame" event as only one or two acts could be inducted...
inductee. The Church
The Church (band)
The Church is an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1980. Initially associated with new wave and the neo-psychedelic sound of the mid 1980s, their music later became more reminiscent of progressive rock, featuring long instrumental jams and complex guitar interplay...
, meanwhile, was highly successful in the 1980s, only to see their careers diminish in the next decade; 1994's Sometime Anywhere
Sometime Anywhere
Sometime Anywhere is an album by The Church released in May 1994 via Arista Records. After 1992's Priest=Aura, Peter Koppes departed the band and replacement drummer Jay Dee Daugherty found other work, leaving The Church down to its two remaining founders, Steve Kilbey and Marty...
saw the band recede from a mainstream audience.
Alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
began to gain popularity midway through the 90s, with grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
and Britpop
Britpop
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
styles especially popular, resulting in a new wave of Australian bands. Some, such as Savage Garden
Savage Garden
Savage Garden were an Australian pop rock performance and songwriting duo. Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones formed the group in Brisbane, Queensland in 1994...
and Silverchair
Silverchair
Silverchair were an Australian rock band, which formed in 1992 as Innocent Criminals in Merewether, Newcastle with the line-up of Ben Gillies on drums, Chris Joannou on bass guitar and Daniel Johns on vocals and guitars. The group got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo...
, also gained quick success in the United States, while You Am I
You Am I
You Am I are an Australian alternative rock band, fronted by vocalist/guitarist and main songwriter Tim Rogers. They were the first Australian band to have three albums successively debut at #1 on the ARIA Charts, and are renowned for their live performances.-History:Tim Rogers formed the first...
, Jebediah
Jebediah
Jebediah is an Australian alternative rock band formed in 1994 in Perth, Western Australia. The group consists of vocalist and guitarist Kevin Mitchell, guitarist Chris Daymond, bassist Vanessa Thornton, and Kevin's brother Brett Mitchell on drums...
, Magic Dirt
Magic Dirt
Magic Dirt are an Australian rock band, which formed in 1991 in Geelong, Victoria, with Daniel Herring on guitar, Adam Robertson on drums, Adalita Srsen on vocals and guitar, and Dean Turner on bass guitar. Initially known as Deer Bubbles and then The Jim Jims, they were renamed as Magic Dirt in...
, Something for Kate
Something for Kate
Something for Kate are a rock band from Melbourne, Australia. Members include songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Paul Dempsey, drummer Clint Hyndman and bassist Stephanie Ashworth...
, Icecream Hands
Icecream Hands
Icecream Hands were a power pop band formed in Melbourne, Victoria in 1992 as Chuck Skatt and His Icecream Hands with Charles "Chuck Skatt" Jenkins as lead singer-songwriter and rhythm guitarist, Arturo "Arch" Larizza on bass guitar, his brother Dom "Benedictine III" Larizza on lead guitar and...
and Powderfinger
Powderfinger
Powderfinger was an Australian rock band that formed in Brisbane in 1989. From 1992 until their breakup the band lineup consisted of vocalist Bernard Fanning, guitarists Darren Middleton and Ian Haug, bassist John Collins, and drummer Jon Coghill....
gained more success locally. Bands such as Regurgitator
Regurgitator
Regurgitator are an Australian rock band from Brisbane, currently consisting of Quan Yeomans , Ben Ely and Peter Kostic . The band formed in 1994, its original line-up consisting of Yeomans, Ely and drummer Martin Lee...
and Spiderbait
Spiderbait
Spiderbait are an Australian alternative rock band formed in Finley in 1989 by bass guitarist Janet English, singer-drummer Mark Maher , and guitarist Damian Whitty. In 2004 the group's cover version of the 1930s Lead Belly song "Black Betty" reached number one on the ARIA Singles Chart...
were hit heavily by the post-grunge
Post-grunge
Post-grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged in the mid-1990s as a derivative of grunge, using the sounds and aesthetic of grunge, but with a more commercially acceptable tone...
backlash, losing in sales and critical acclaim.
Much of the success of rock in Australia is attributed to the non-commercial Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
's radio station Triple J
Triple J
triple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
, which focuses heavily on Australian alternative music, and has done so since its formation as 2JJ in 1975. Throughout the station's history, they have helped jump start the careers of numerous bands, through programs such as Unearthed, the Australian Music program Home & Hosed and the Hottest 100
Triple J Hottest 100
The Triple J Hottest 100 is an annual music poll, based on the votes of national Australian radio station Triple J listeners, in order to determine their favourite song of the year. Voting is conducted by the internet and begins roughly two weeks prior to the new year for the previous year's songs...
. The Big Day Out
Big Day Out
The Big Day Out is an annual music festival held in several cities in Australia and New Zealand in late January. It started in Sydney in 1992, spread to Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth by 1993, with the Gold Coast and Auckland joining in 1994...
festival has showcased Australian and international acts, with line-ups
Big Day Out lineups by year
This is a comprehensive listing of artists and bands who have performed at Big Day Out listed by year. Big Day Out is an Australian music festival which began in 1992 in Sydney and has expanded since to include several Australian venues and also Auckland, New Zealand...
spanning multiple genres, with an alternative focus. It has become highly popular amongst musicians; Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters is an American alternative rock band originally formed in 1994 by Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl as a one-man project following the dissolution of his previous band. The band got its name from the UFOs and various aerial phenomena that were reported by Allied aircraft pilots in World War...
lead singer Dave Grohl
Dave Grohl
David Eric "Dave" Grohl is an American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter who is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter for Foo Fighters; the former drummer for Nirvana and Scream; and the current drummer for Them Crooked Vultures...
said "We play the Big Day Out because it's the best tour in the world. You ask any band in the world – they all want to play the Big Day Out, every single one of them." Other festivals, such as Homebake
Homebake
Homebake is an annual Australian rock festival, featuring an all-Australian lineup . The festival was first held on 4 January 1996 at Belongil Fields in Byron Bay, on the far north coast of New South Wales...
, Livid
Livid
Livid was an Australian alternative rock music festival held annually from 1989 to 2003. Masterminded by Peter Walsh and Natalie Jeremijenko, the original idea of showcasing both the arts and music in the one event was standardised as late as October/early November from 1991 until 2003...
, and Splendour in the Grass
Splendour in the Grass
Splendour in the Grass is an annual Australian music festival held in July at Woodford, Queensland, and previously held at Belongil Fields, outside Byron Bay...
, are also rock focused, and together with Big Day Out are "united by the dominant presence of
the indie-guitar scene".
Electronic and dance music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
in Australia emerged in the 1990s, but takes elements from funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, house
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
, techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
, and numerous other genres. Early innovators of the genre in Australia include Severed Heads
Severed Heads
Severed Heads is an Australian electronic music group based and founded in Sydney in 1979 as Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. The original members were Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright, and were soon joined by Tom Ellard. Fielding and Wright eventually left the group, leaving Ellard as a singular...
, who formed in 1979 and were the first electronic group to play the Big Day Out
Big Day Out
The Big Day Out is an annual music festival held in several cities in Australia and New Zealand in late January. It started in Sydney in 1992, spread to Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth by 1993, with the Gold Coast and Auckland joining in 1994...
. The band achieved long term success, winning an ARIA Award in 2005
ARIA Music Awards of 2005
The 19th Annual Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards were held on 23 October 2005 at the Sydney Superdome at the Sydney Olympic Park complex, thus continuing the previous year's innovation of televising the awards on Sunday evening...
for "Best Original Soundtrack" for The Illustrated Family Doctor, where lead singer Tom Ellard
Tom Ellard
Thomas Ellard , is an Australian electronic musician best known as the founding member of the electronic and industrial music group Severed Heads.-Early life:...
said the band would never fit into mainstream music. However, not all contemporary Australian music is electronic; bands such as Yves Klein Blue
Yves Klein Blue
Yves Klein Blue was an Australian indie/rock band from Brisbane. The band are signed to Brisbane record label Dew Process, under which they re-released their debut EP Yves Klein Blue Draw Attention to Themselves...
continue to expand the indie rock genre with their innovative punk-style tunes such as "Polka", "Soldier", and "About the Future".
The Avalanches
The Avalanches
The Avalanches are an Australian electronic music group formed in 1997 with mainstays Robbie Chater on keyboards, Tony Diblasi on keyboards, bass and backing vocals, and Darren Seltmann on vocals and keyboards. They are known for their live DJ sets and their debut album Since I Left You , which was...
received widespread acclaim across the globe for their debut album Since I Left You
Since I Left You
Since I Left You is the debut studio album by Australian music group The Avalanches released on 27 November 2000. Produced by Avalanches members Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann, it was released on Modular Recordings. The album was created in two separate near-identical studios by Chater and...
and it has been considered one of the greatest Australian albums ever made.
The genre has developed a wide following, to the point the University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...
offers an Electronic Music Unit, teaching studio
Studio
A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...
production and music technology
Music technology
Music technology is a term that refers to all forms of technology involved with the musical arts, particularly the use of electronic devices and computer software to facilitate playback, recording, composition, storage and performance. This subject is taught at many different educational levels,...
. Traditional rock bands such as Regurgitator
Regurgitator
Regurgitator are an Australian rock band from Brisbane, currently consisting of Quan Yeomans , Ben Ely and Peter Kostic . The band formed in 1994, its original line-up consisting of Yeomans, Ely and drummer Martin Lee...
have developed an original sound by combining heavy guitars and electronic influences, and rock-electro groups, most notably Rogue Traders
Rogue Traders
Rogue Traders are an Australian electronic pop rock band fronted by Melinda "Mindi" Jackson with James Ash on keyboards, Tim Henwood on guitars and Peter Marin on drums. The group's original members met in London in 1989. Before forming Rogue Traders, Ash and Davis worked together on many...
, have become popular with mainstream audiences. The genre is considered to be most popular in Melbourne, with multiple music festival
Music festival
A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are often inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending machines,...
s held nationally in the city. However, Cyclic Defrost
Cyclic Defrost
Cyclic Defrost is Australia's only specialist electronic music magazine. It is edited by Sebastian Chan, Shaun Prescott and Alexandra Savvides, and covers independent electronic music, avant-rock, experimental sound art and left field hip hop....
, the only specialist electronic music magazine in Australia, was started in Sydney (in 1998) and is still based there. Radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
still lags somewhat behind the success of the genre—producer and artist manager Andrew Penhallow told Australian Music Online
Australian Music Online
Australian Music Online is a website that indexes information related to Australian music. Launched in March 2003 as an Australian Federal Government initiative, and originally proposed in 1998, the website was actively updated until 31 March 2007, at which point its role transferred to that of an...
that "the local music media have often overlooked the fact that this genre has been flying the flag for Australian music overseas".
Recently, bands such as Angelspit
Angelspit
Angelspit is a cyberpunk band from Sydney, Australia. The band was formed in 2004 by vocalists/synthesists Destroyx and ZooG...
, Cut Copy
Cut Copy
Cut Copy are an Australian electronic band formed in 2001 by Dan Whitford on vocals, keyboard and guitar. Other members are Tim Hoey on guitar and sampler, Ben Browning on bass guitar and Mitchell Scott on drums. Their second album, In Ghost Colours peaked at number-one on the ARIA Albums Chart in...
, The Presets
The Presets
The Presets are an Australian electronic duo formed in 2003, consisting of Julian Hamilton on vocals and keyboards, and Kim Moyes on drums and keyboards. They released their debut album Beams in 2005 to positive critical response. Their 2008 release Apocalypso debuted at number-one on the ARIA...
, The Potbelleez
The Potbelleez
The Potbelleez are a four piece Australian House/Electro music group.-Career history:Both DJs/Producers David Greene and Jonny Murphy were born in Dublin, Ireland...
, Art vs. Science
Art vs. Science
Art vs. Science are a three-piece dance band from Sydney, Australia formed early in 2008. The group consists of Jim Finn on vocals and keyboards; Dan McNamee on vocals, guitars and keyboards; and Dan Williams on drums and vocals.In 2010, the group toured the United Kingdom in support of La Roux...
, Polo Club
Polo Club
Australian hip hop group, Polo Club, comprises vocalist Dyl Thomas and producer Cameron Chapman. Polo Club is notable for innovating a fresh approach to Hiphop/Beat Making/Ideas/Flows...
, Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun (band)
Empire of the Sun is an Australian electronic music duo that formed in 2008. The duo is composed of Luke Steele of The Sleepy Jackson and Nick Littlemore of Pnau. The two met in 2000 after both being signed to the same record label. Luke and Nick knew that they instantly had a chemistry like no other...
and Pnau
Pnau
Pnau is an Australian dance music duo originating from Sydney, Australia. The duo consists of musicians Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes...
have made a name for themselves in the genre. The success of The Presets at the ARIA Music Awards of 2008
ARIA Music Awards of 2008
The 22nd Annual Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards took place on 19 October 2008...
and the Potbelleez in the mainstream media was indicative of the rapidly growing popularity of electro house in Australia. Cut Copy frontman Dan Whitford has attributed the band's success to a change in public attitude as much as the band's quality, explaining "It's a case partly of timing and a growing awareness of electronic music in Australia". Pnau's first album, Sambanova, was released in 1999, at a time when many in Australia considered electronic music to be a dying breed. Nonetheless, the band travelled around the US and Europe, and slowly made a name for themselves, and for a rebirth of electronic music in the country.
Hardcore
In recent years, Australia has become known for Hardcore bands such as:- Parkway Drive
- I Killed the Prom QueenI Killed the Prom QueenI Killed the Prom Queen is an Australian metalcore band which formed in 2000 with mainstays JJ Peters on drums and Jona Weinhofen on guitar. The band featured prominently on the Australian live music scene and toured the USA, Japan and parts of Europe several times...
- The Amity AfflictionThe Amity AfflictionThe Amity Affliction is an Australian post-hardcore band from Gympie, Queensland formed in 2002.The band's current line-up is Joel Birch , Ahren Stringer , Ryan Burt and Troy Brady...
- MindsnareMindsnareMindsnare are an Australian hardcore band from Melbourne, Victoria. Formed in 1993 under the name Mad Circle, their music is a blend of traditional "old school" hardcore punk and crossover metal, and as such has seen them play alongside metal bands like Kreator and Ringworm, as well as more...
- CarpathianCarpathian (band)Carpathian was a hardcore punk band based in Australia. The band was formed in 2003, in Melbourne, Australia, and their final line-up comprised lead vocalist Martin Kirby, guitarists Josh Manitta and Lloyd Carroll, bass guitarist Ed Redclift and drummer David Bichard...
- xCHUCK NORRISx
- 50 Lions50 Lions50 Lions are an Australian band from Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia. The band is named after a poker machine called '50 Lions'.-History:...
- KrakatoaKrakatoaKrakatoa is a volcanic island made of a'a lava in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. The name is used for the island group, the main island , and the volcano as a whole. The island exploded in 1883, killing approximately 40,000 people, although some estimates...
- Toe to ToeToe To ToeToe to Toe are an Australian hardcore band from Sydney, New South Wales. The band was most prominent in the Australian hardcore scene during the 1990s, touring and recording less frequently by the 2000s...
- AgainstAgainst (band)Against is an Australian hardcore punk band from Brisbane, Australia. Vocalist Greg first formed the group in September 2001, with the intention of having fun with some friends and playing hardcore music with heart and a message....
- ConfessionConfessionThis article is for the religious practice of confessing one's sins.Confession is the acknowledgment of sin or wrongs...
- The Red ShoreThe Red ShoreThe Red Shore were an Australian death metal band from Melbourne, Victoria, formed in 2004. The band claims their style is a combination of death metal and technical death metal, though they are often referred to as a deathcore band....
- Shot Point Blank
- Deez NutsDeez NutsDeez Nuts is an Australian hardcore band that formed in Melbourne, Australia in 2007. Currently comprising vocalist J. J. Peters, Guitarist Matt Rogers, Drummer Ty Alexander and various live Bassists, the band has released one EP and Two Studio Albums....
- When Giants Sleep
- Dream On, DreamerDream On, DreamerDream On, Dreamer is an Australian six piece post-hardcore band from Melbourne. Formed in 2009 they released their début EP through Boomtown Records on 4 June 2010 titled Hope. The release of the EP was followed by many national tours with bands such as Pierce the Veil, Attack Attack! and Deez Nuts...
Metal
Further to this, the Australian Metal scene has gained prominence in the past number of years with bands such as:- Aeon of Horus
- AlarumAlarumAlarum are a 4-piece progressive technical metal jazz-fusion band from Melbourne, Australia. They are stylistically quite similar to early-90's pioneers Atheist and Cynic. They are also known to play Death covers in live shows—another band which influences them greatly...
- AlchemistAlchemist (band)Alchemist is an Australian progressive metal band from Canberra whose style combines death metal, progressive rock, psychedelic, Eastern, Aboriginal and electronic influences. The band formed in 1987 and has so far released six studios albums, an EP and a compilation album. Work began on a new EP...
- Black MajestyBlack MajestyBlack Majesty is a power metal band from Melbourne, Australia. The band was formed in 2001 by ex-members of prominent bands on the Australian metal scene and after the release of a three track sampler album they were signed to a 5-album contract with German-based label LMP Records...
- Blood DusterBlood DusterBlood Duster is a extreme metal/stoner rock band from Melbourne, Australia. Their name comes from the song "Blood Duster" by John Zorn, from the 1989 album Naked City.-History:...
- DamagedDamaged (band)Damaged was an Australian deathgrind band from Ballarat in Victoria, Australia, active from 1989 to 2004.-History:The band was formed by drummer Matt "Skitz" Sanders...
- Deströyer 666Destroyer 666Deströyer 666 is a black/death/thrash metal band formed in 1994 by guitarist K.K. Warslut. The group originated in Melbourne, Australia however moved to Europe.- History :...
- DevolvedDevolved (band)Devolved is a technical death metal band originally from the Gold Coast, Australia but based in Los Angeles, California since 2005. Led by founding member John Sankey the band has so far released three full-length albums with a fourth studio album scheduled for 2012, and toured throughout...
- Fuck...I'm DeadFuck...I'm DeadFuck...I'm Dead is a grindcore band from Melbourne, Australia.Fuck...I'm Dead started in May 2000, with Tom Raetz on bass, Dave Hill on guitar and drum programming and Jay Jones on vocals...
- LordLord (band)Lord is a heavy metal band from Wollongong, Australia. The group began as a solo project for "Lord Tim" Grose of Dungeon in 2003 and expanded into a complete band when Dungeon broke up in 2005. They have released three albums and an EP to date. Lord has appeared with major acts that include...
- Mortal Sin
- NazxulNazxulNazxul is a black metal band from Sydney, Australia. At one time featuring members of other prominent local metal bands including Mortal Sin and Sadistik Exekution, Nazxul has released two albums, an EP and several split releases with other bands....
- PaindivisionPaindivisionPaindivision is an Australian heavy metal band, formed in late 2005 by guitarist Stu Marshall while he was concurrently a member of the Sydney band Dungeon. Paindivision has released two albums and toured extensively in Australia and Japan and opened for a range of touring acts including Armored...
- Parkway Drive
- Portal
- PsycropticPsycroptic-External links:**...
- SegressionSegressionSegression is a heavy metal band from Wollongong, Australia. Originally known as Eezee and playing sleaze metal, the group decided to change its name after moving into in a thrash direction in mid-1994.-Early years:...
- The AmentaThe Amenta-History:The band originally formed in Baulkham Hills, New South Wales in 1997 as Crucible of Agony. They initially played black metal and released two demos in 1999 under the name...
- The BerzerkerThe BerzerkerThe Berzerker was an extreme metal band from Melbourne, Australia and was formed in 1995. The band's music, heavily influenced by older death metal and grindcore, can be characterized as a fusion of these with speedcore, and gabber...
- The Red ShoreThe Red ShoreThe Red Shore were an Australian death metal band from Melbourne, Victoria, formed in 2004. The band claims their style is a combination of death metal and technical death metal, though they are often referred to as a deathcore band....
- UniversumUniversum (band)UNIVERSUM are a melodic death metal band hailing from Adelaide South Australia. The band completed formation in early 2007 and describe their sound a fusion of Scandinavian melodic death metal, new wave American metal, old school thrash metal and progressive metal...
- Vanishing PointVanishing Point (band)Vanishing Point are an Australian power/progressive metal band from Melbourne. The band incorporates symphonic elements into their sound through a prominent keyboard role in their music...
- Virgin BlackVirgin BlackVirgin Black is an Australian band that combines gothic-doom and symphonic metal influences. Signed to The End Records and Germany's Massacre Records , the band has released 4 albums and 1 EP...
- Voyager
Alternative rock
Australia has also witnessed the creation of many alternative rock bands in recent times such as:- Dead Letter CircusDead Letter CircusDead Letter Circus are an alternative rock band from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, who have been compared to The Mars Volta and Karnivool and have become one of the more popular bands in Australian rock...
- Birds of TokyoBirds of TokyoBirds of Tokyo is a four-piece alternative rock band from Perth, Western Australia. Their debut album Day One, gained them domestic success with it reaching No. 3 on the AIR Independent Album charts, spending a total of 36 consecutive weeks in the top 10.In 2008, the band released Universes,...
- Mammal (band)Mammal (band)Mammal were an Australian band that formed in March 2006. Mammal rose up the ranks of the Australian music scene very quickly. Their first self titled EP was recorded soon after the band came together. Their debut live album "Vol:1 The Aural Underground" was recorded just 4 months after the band...
- KarnivoolKarnivoolKarnivool are an Australian progressive rock band formed in Perth in 1997. The group currently consists of Ian Kenny on vocals, Drew Goddard and Mark Hosking on guitar, Jon Stockman on bass guitar, and Steve Judd on drums. Karnivool emerged from a band Kenny and Goddard formed during high school...
- PVT (band)
- Cog (band)Cog (band)Cog are an Australian progressive rock band that formed in 1998. Their debut album The New Normal was nominated for Triple J's 2005 J Award. The band's music draws influences from Tool, Isis, Nina Simone, Bob Marley, Leftfield, Deftones and Helmet...
- The Butterfly Effect (band)The Butterfly Effect (band)The Butterfly Effect are an alternative metal band from Brisbane, Australia, formed in 1999. The band consists of Clint Boge , Ben Hall , Glenn Esmond and Kurt "Puddles" Goedhart . Their debut album received high rotation play on influential radio station Triple J.-The Butterfly Effect EP:The band...
- BulletHead (band)
- Eskimo JoeEskimo JoeEskimo Joe is an Australian alternative rock band formed by Stuart MacLeod on guitars, Joel Quartermain on drums and guitar and Kavyen Temperley on bass guitar and vocals, in East Fremantle, Western Australia in 1997....
- We Rob Banks
- Jet (band)Jet (band)Jet are an Australian rock band formed in 2001 while attending St Bede's College Mentone in Melbourne, . The band consists of lead guitarist Cameron Muncey, bassist Mark Wilson, and brothers Nic and Chris Cester on vocals/rhythm guitar and drums respectively...
- Tonight AliveTonight AliveTonight Alive is a five-piece pop punk band from Sydney, Australia. Formed in 2008, and having played along side artists such as Lostprophets, The Blackout, 3OH!3, Valenica, and The Wonder Years, they have sold in excess of 20,000 copies of their debut and self-funded EP, All Shapes and Disguises ...
- Heroes For HireHeroes For HireHeroes for Hire is a fictional superhero team published by Marvel Comics. The team first appeared in Power Man and Iron Fist #54 , and was created by Ed Hannigan and Lee Elias.-Publication history and original concept:...
Hip-hop
Most recently the Australian hip-hop scene has begun to gain national momentum through bands such as:- Hilltop HoodsHilltop HoodsThe Hilltop Hoods are an ARIA Award winning Australian hip hop group, from Adelaide, South Australia. Their members are MCs Suffa , MC Pressure , DJ Debris and formerly DJ Next. They have been at the centre of the Australian hip hop scene for the better part of two decades, originally forming back...
, - Bliss N EsoBliss n EsoBliss n Eso are an ARIA Award-winning Australian hip hop band based in Sydney, and were originally known as Bliss N' Esoterikizm for their debut EP The Arrival...
- Urthboy
- DraphtDraphtDrapht is an Australian hip hop singer from Perth, Western Australia. Drapht is a member of the Syllaboliks crew, which comprises fellow Australian hip hop artists from Perth.-Biography:...
- 360360Year 360 was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Constantius and Iulianus...
- Horrorshow
Classical music
Hobart
Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
and Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
that date back to the early 19th century.
The establishment of choral societies
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
(c. 1850) and symphony orchestras
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
(c. 1890) led to increase compositional activity, although most Australian classical composers of this period worked entirely within European models and many undertook their training in composition in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
or the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. One of the earliest known composers was George Tolhurst
George Tolhurst
George Tolhurst was an English composer, resident from 1852 to 1866 in Australia.Born in Maidstone, Kent, George emigrated to Melbourne with his father, where he practised as a teacher of music. He returned to England in 1866, and died in Barnstaple in 1877...
, whose oratorio Ruth was the first composed in the then colony of Victoria in 1864. Some works leading up to the first part of the 20th century were heavily influenced by folk music (Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
's "English Country Gardens" of 1908 being a good example of this).
From the time of Australia's Federation
Federation of Australia
The Federation of Australia was the process by which the six separate British self-governing colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia formed one nation...
in 1901, a growing sense of national identity began to emerge in the arts, although a patriotic attachment with the "mother country", that is Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
continued to dominate musical taste. In the war and post-war eras, as the Australian national identity continued to build, composers looked to their surroundings for inspiration. John Antill
John Antill
John Henry Antill, CMG, OBE was an Australian composer best known for his ballet Corroboree.-Biography:Antill was born in Sydney in 1904, and was educated and trained in music at Trinity Grammar School, Sydney and St Andrew's Cathedral School. Upon leaving school in 1920 he became apprenticed to...
in his famous ballet Corroboree
Corroboree (ballet)
Corroboree is a ballet written by Australian composer John Antill in the 1940s. It was first performed as a concert suite in 1946. In July 1950 it was performed as a ballet, at the Empire Theatre in Sydney, choreographed by Rex Reid, with dancers of the Melbourne-based National Theatre...
, Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Joshua Sculthorpe AO OBE is an Australian composer. Much of his music has resulted from an interest in the music of Australia's neighbours as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of native Australian music with that of the heritage of the West...
and others began to incorporate elements of Aboriginal music, Richard Meale
Richard Meale
Richard Graham Meale, AM, MBE was an Australian composer of instrumental works and operas.-Biography:Meale was born in Sydney and studied piano with Winifred Burston at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, as well as clarinet, harp, music history and theory, before studying at the University of...
drew influence from south-east Asia (notably using the harmonic properties of the Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
nese gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
), while Nigel Butterley
Nigel Butterley
Nigel Henry Cockburn Butterley AM is an Australian composer and pianist.-Life and career:Butterley learnt to play the piano at the age of five. He attended Sydney Grammar School, but as music wasn't taught at the school at that time, he also sought training from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music....
combined his penchant for International modernism with an own individual voice.
By the beginning of the 1960s other strong influences emerged in Australian classical music, with composers incorporating disparate elements into their work, ranging from Aboriginal and south-east Asian music and instruments, American jazz and blues, to the belated discovery of European atonality and the avante-garde. Composers like Don Banks
Don Banks
Donald Oscar Banks was an Australian composer of concert, jazz, and commercial music.He initially studied at the University of Melbourne, then moved to London where he studied with Mátyás Seiber...
, Don Kay
Don Kay (composer)
Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.Don Kay attained a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Melbourne after which he taught music at Colac High School, Victoria, 1957-59. He then went on to teach music at Peckham Manor Comprehensive School for Boys, London, UK 1959-64...
, Malcolm Williamson
Malcolm Williamson
Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson AO , CBE was an Australian composer. He was the Master of the Queen's Music from 1975 until his death.-Biography:...
and Colin Brumby
Colin Brumby
Colin Brumby is an Australian composer and conductor.He was born in Melbourne and studied at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, from which he graduated in 1957. He went to Spain to study advanced composition with Philipp Jarnach, and to London to study with Alexander Goehr...
epitomise this period. Others who adhered to more traditional idioms include Arthur Benjamin
Arthur Benjamin
Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rhumba, composed in 1938.-Biography:...
, George Dreyfus
George Dreyfus
George Dreyfus AM is an Australian contemporary classical, film and television composer.-Life:The Dreyfus family moved in 1935 to Berlin to enable a better education for their two sons...
, Peggy Glanville-Hicks
Peggy Glanville-Hicks
Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer.- Biography :Peggy Glanville-Hicks was born Melbourne in 1912. At age 15 she began studying composition with Fritz Hart in Melbourne...
and Robert Hughes
Robert Hughes (composer)
Robert Watson Hughes AO MBE was a Scottish-born Australian composer. His music was characterised as muscular, assertive, pugnacious, with a dark, troubled, even driven quality; but it was also deeply sensitive, lyrical and tender. His capacity to view a complex landscape of diverse musical...
. In recent times composers including Julian Cochran
Julian Cochran
thumb|200px|Julian Cochran in 1998Julian Cochran is an English-born Australian composer.Cochran's earlier works show stylistic influences from Impressionist music and his later works are more noticeably influenced by Classical music and folk music of Eastern Europe...
, Gordon Hamilton
Gordon Hamilton (composer)
Gordon Hamilton is an Australian composer and conductor. Since 2009, he has been the Artistic Director of The Australian Voices. He was born in Newcastle, lived and worked in Bremen, Germany for five years as a conductor and composer and he now lives in Brisbane.He studied in Australia at the...
, Liza Lim
Liza Lim
Liza Lim is an Australian composer.Lim writes concert music as well as music theatre and has collaborated with artists on a number of installation and video projects...
, Nigel Westlake
Nigel Westlake
-Biography:Nigel Westlake's career in music has spanned more than 3 decades.He studied the clarinet with his father, Donald Westlake and subsequently left school early to pursue a performance career in music.Nigel toured Australia and the world playing with ballet companies, a circus troupe,...
, David Worrall
David Worrall (composer)
David Worrall is an Australian composer and sound artist working in sound sculpture and immersive polymedia as well as traditional instrumental music composition. He performs and exhibits internationally...
, Graeme Koehne
Graeme Koehne
Graeme Koehne is an Australian composer and music educator. He is best known for his orchestral and ballet scores, which are characterised by direct communicative style and embrace of triadic tonality...
, Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Kats-Chernin is an Australian composer.Elena Kats-Chernin was born in Tashkent , and migrated to Australia in 1975.-Europe:...
, Carl Vine
Carl Vine
Carl Vine is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music.-Career:Vine was born in Perth, Western Australia. When he was ten years old, he took up the piano. An adolescent encounter with Karlheinz Stockhausen inspired a period as a teenage modernist, a direction which he abandoned in 1985...
, Brett Dean
Brett Dean
Brett Dean is a contemporary Australian composer, violist and conductor.-Career:Dean studied at the Queensland Conservatorium where he received a Medal of Excellence. From 1985 to 1999, Dean was a violist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2000, he decided to pursue a career as a freelance...
, Martin Wesley-Smith
Martin Wesley-Smith
Martin Wesley-Smith is an Australian composer with an eclectic output ranging from children's songs to environmental events. He works in a range of musical styles, including choral music, operas, computer music, music theatre, chamber and orchestral music, and audiovisual pieces which bring words,...
, Georges Lentz
Georges Lentz
Georges Lentz is a contemporary composer and sound artist, born in Luxembourg in 1965, and is that country's internationally best known composer. Since 1990, he has been living in Sydney, Australia...
, Richard Mills
Richard Mills
Richard John Mills AM, DMus BA Qld, is an Australian conductor and composer. He currently works as Artistic Director of the West Australian Opera and Artistic Consultant with Orchestra Victoria...
, Ross Edwards
Ross Edwards (composer)
Ross Edwards is an Australian composer of a wide variety of music including orchestral and chamber music, choral music, children's music, opera and film music. He is not to be confused with a British up and coming singer-songwriter of the same name.-Life:Ross Edwards was born in Sydney...
, Stephen Leek
Stephen Leek
Stephen Leek is an Australian composer, conductor, educator, and publisher.-Early life:Leek was born in Sydney, Australia in 1959, lived in Brisbane from 1964 through 1969, and then spent the rest of his childhood in Canberra...
, Matthew Hindson
Matthew Hindson
Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.-Biography:Matthew Hindson was born in Wollongong in 1968. He studied composition at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne with composers including Peter Sculthorpe, Eric Gross, Brenton Broadstock and Ross Edwards.Hindson's works have been...
and Constantine Koukias
Constantine Koukias
Constantine Koukias is a Greek-Australian composer and flautist.He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of IHOS Music Theatre and Opera, based in Hobart, Tasmania. He is well known for his innovative work in contemporary opera and other forms...
have embodied the pinnacle of established Australian composers.
Well-known Australian classical performers of the past and the present day include:
- conductors Joseph PostJoseph PostJoseph Mozart Post OBE was an Australian conductor and music administrator. He made an unrivalled contribution to the development of opera-conducting in Australia and was, in Roger Covell's words, the 'first Australian-born musician to excel in this genre'...
, Sir Bernard HeinzeBernard HeinzeSir Bernard Thomas Heinze, AC was an Australian Professor of Music, conductor, and Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music....
, Sir Charles MackerrasCharles MackerrasSir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan...
, Richard BonyngeRichard BonyngeRichard Alan Bonynge, AO, CBE is an Australian conductor and pianist.Bonynge was born in Sydney and educated at Sydney Boys High School before studying piano at the Royal College of Music in London. He gave up his music scholarship, continuing his private piano studies, and became a coach for...
, Patrick ThomasPatrick Thomas (conductor)Patrick Thomas MBE is an Australian conductor.For a period of almost 35 years he conducted hundreds of performances across Australia in just about every centre where the various state symphony orchestras ventured, and introduced music to virtually a whole generation of young Australians through...
, Stuart ChallenderStuart ChallenderStuart David Challender, AO was an Australian conductor, known particularly for his work with Opera Australia and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.-Early life:...
, Simone YoungSimone YoungSimone Margaret Young AM is an Australian conductor. She is music director of the Hamburg Philharmonic and general manager of the Hamburg State Opera...
, Geoffrey SimonGeoffrey SimonGeoffrey Simon is an Australian conductor resident in London.-Recordings:Geoffrey Simon was born on 3 July 1946 in Adelaide. He was a student of Herbert von Karajan, Rudolf Kempe, Hans Swarowsky and Igor Markevitch, and a major prize-winner at the first John Player International Conductors' Award...
and Richard GillRichard Gill (conductor)Richard James Gill OAM is an Australian conductor who has earned awards for his work. He conducts choral, orchestral and operatic works, and has been involved in music training and education...
; - sopranos Dame Nellie MelbaNellie MelbaDame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
, Dame Joan SutherlandJoan SutherlandDame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....
, Dame Joan HammondJoan HammondDame Joan Hilda Hood Hammond, DBE, CMG was an Australian operatic soprano, singing coach and champion golfer.- Early life :...
, Marie CollierMarie CollierMarie Collier was an Australian operatic soprano.Marie Collier was born in Ballarat, Victoria. She first came to prominence in 1952 singing the role of Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana for the National Theatre Opera company in Melbourne...
, Florence AustralFlorence AustralFlorence Austral was an Australian operatic soprano renowned for her interpretation of the most demanding Wagnerian female roles, although she never gained the opportunity to appear at the Bayreuth Festival or the New York Metropolitan Opera.She was born Florence Mary Wilson, but adopted the...
, Marjorie LawrenceMarjorie LawrenceMarjorie Florence Lawrence CBE was an Australian soprano, particularly noted as an interpreter of Richard Wagner's operas. She was the first soprano to perform the immolation scene in Götterdämmerung by riding her horse into the flames as Wagner had intended. She was afflicted by polio from 1941...
, June BronhillJune BronhillJune Bronhill OBE was an internationally acclaimed Australian soprano opera singer.-Biography:She was born June Mary Gough in the inland Australian city of Broken Hill, New South Wales...
, Joan CardenJoan CardenJoan Carden AO OBE is an Australian operatic soprano. She has been described as "a worthy successor to Dame Nellie Melba and Dame Joan Sutherland" and was sometimes known as "the other Joan" or "The People's Diva"...
, Lauris ElmsLauris ElmsLauris Margaret Elms AM OBE is an Australian contralto, renowned in opera and lieder.She was born in Springvale, Victoria, the daughter of Harry Britton and Jean Elms and trained with Katherine Wielaert in Melbourne. She first sang with the National Theatre Opera Company in 1952 in The Consul. ...
, Yvonne KennyYvonne KennyYvonne Kenny AM is an Australian soprano, particularly associated with Handel and Mozart roles.Born in Sydney, she first studied at the University of Sydney in science, hoping to become a biochemist, but decided to pursue a career in music instead...
, Lisa GasteenLisa GasteenLisa Kinkead Gasteen AO , is an internationally acclaimed Australian operatic soprano, renowned for her performances of the works of Wagner. She won the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1991...
, Sara MacliverSara MacliverSara Macliver is an Australian soprano singer, born and raised in Perth, Western Australia.Sara is one of Australia’s most popular and versatile artists, appearing in operas, concert and recital performances and on numerous recordings...
, Cheryl BarkerCheryl BarkerCheryl Barker is an Australian operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the late 1980s. She has sung on several complete opera recordings with Chandos Records, including Dvořák's Rusalka , Janáček's The Makropulos Case , Janáček's Káťa Kabanová , and Puccini's Madama...
, Deborah RiedelDeborah RiedelDeborah Riedel was an Australian operatic soprano. Hers is generally regarded as one of the greatest voices ever produced in Australia. She died of cancer at the height of her career, at the age of 50....
and Emma MatthewsEmma MatthewsEmma Matthews is an Australian lyric soprano, noted for operatic roles, but also popular on the concert stage. She is currently a Principal Artist with Opera Australia....
; - mezzo-sopranos Yvonne MintonYvonne MintonYvonne Fay Minton CBE is an Australian opera singer. She is variously billed as a soprano, mezzo-soprano or contralto.Yvonne Minton was born in Sydney, New South Wales. She studied voice on a scholarship at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. She won the National Eisteddfod in Canberra,...
, Margreta ElkinsMargreta ElkinsMargreta Elkins AM was an Australian mezzo-soprano of great renown. She sang at Covent Garden and with Opera Australia and other companies, but turned down offers to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, Bayreuth and Glyndebourne...
and Fiona Campbell; - tenors Donald Smith, Ronald Dowd, David Hobson, Steve Davislim, Andrew Sutherland and Rosario La SpinaRosario La SpinaRosario La Spina is an Australian operatic tenor who has had an active international career since the early 2000s. He has worked with many leading opera houses and orchestras, singing under such conductors as Renato Palumbo, Bruno Bartoletti, Gary Bertini, Daniele Callegari and Richard Hickox...
; - baritones John BrownleeJohn Brownlee (baritone)John Donald Mackenzie Brownlee was an Australian operatic baritone.-Biography:John Brownlee was born in Geelong, Victoria. As a boy, he became a junior naval cadet in the Royal Australian Navy, serving during World War I. Following service, he studied accounting...
, John PringleJohn Pringle (baritone)John Pringle AM is a retired Australian operatic baritone. He sang leading and supporting roles with Opera Australia and its predecessors for 41 years , and with some overseas companies...
, Robert AllmanRobert AllmanRobert Edward Joseph Allman AM OBE is a retired Australian operatic bass-baritone.-Biography:Robert Allman was born in Melbourne in 1927. He studied in Paris and sang at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden for three seasons from 1955. He then moved to Germany, where he sang in over a dozen opera houses...
, Jeffrey BlackJeffrey BlackJeffrey Black , is an internationally acclaimed opera singer. He studied singing at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, and appeared in many of the operas staged by the Conservatorium students and post-graduate students, including appearing in the role of "Figaro", as a First year Opera...
and Peter Coleman-Wright; - bass-baritones Peter Dawson, Donald ShanksDonald Shanks (bass-baritone)Donald Robert Shanks AO OBE was an Australian bass-baritone singer who sang over 65 principal roles with Opera Australia and other companies in Australia and overseas....
and Neil Warren-Smith; - bass Malcolm McEachernMalcolm McEachernWalter Malcom Neil McEachern was a noted Australian bass singer who enjoyed a successful career in the United Kingdom, both as a concert soloist and as one half of the comic musical duo Flotsam and Jetsam....
; - pianists Percy GraingerPercy GraingerGeorge Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
, Eileen JoyceEileen JoyceEileen Alannah Joyce CMG was an Australian pianist whose career spanned more than 30 years. She lived in England in her adult years....
, Noel Mewton-WoodNoel Mewton-WoodNoel Mewton-Wood was an Australian-born concert pianist who achieved some fame during his short life.-Life and career:...
, Geoffrey ParsonsGeoffrey Parsons (pianist)Geoffrey Penwill Parsons AO OBE was an Australian pianist, most particularly notable as an accompanist to singers and instrumentalists...
, Piers LanePiers LanePiers Lane is an Australian classical pianist. His performance career has taken him to more than 40 countries. His concerto repertoire exceeds 75 works.- Early life :...
, Leslie HowardLeslie Howard (musician)Leslie Howard AM is an Australian pianist and composer. He is best known for being the only pianist to have recorded the complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt, a project which included more than 300 premiere recordings...
, Ian MunroIan Munro (pianist)Ian Munro is an Australian pianist, composer, writer and music educator. His career has taken him to over 30 countries in Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.-Biography:...
, Gerard WillemsGerard WillemsGerard Willems is a Dutch-born Australian classical pianist and teacher. He was the first Dutch and first Australian pianist to record the complete series of 32 piano sonatas, 5 piano concertos and the Diabelli Variations by Ludwig van Beethoven, and is the only pianist to do so using a...
, Kathryn SelbyKathryn SelbyKathryn Selby is an Australian classical pianist. She is often known as Kathy Selby.She grew up in Sydney. She entered the Sydney Conservatorium of Music at the age of seven. She followed this with study with Béla Síki at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1976 she was awarded a...
, Simon TedeschiSimon TedeschiSimon Tedeschi is a Boston-based classical pianist from Australia.-Life and career:Simon Tedeschi was born in Sydney to Mark Tedeschi QC, the New South Wales Crown Prosecutor and a prominent photographer and Vivienne Tedeschi, who is the daughter of a Polish Holocaust survivor, Lucy Gershwin,...
, Lisa MooreLisa Moore (musician)Lisa Moore is an internationally renowned pianist with a diverse and eclectic mix of musical influences. She has been crowned "New York's queen of avant-garde piano" and a "visionary" by The New Yorker magazine; the New York Times claims "her energy is illuminating" and The American Record Guide...
, Geoffrey TozerGeoffrey TozerGeoffrey Tozer was an Australian classical pianist and composer. As a child prodigy, he composed an opera at the age of eight, and became the youngest recipient of a Churchill Fellowship award at 13...
, Roger WoodwardRoger WoodwardRoger Woodward AC OBE is an Australian classical concert pianist.-Biography:Roger Woodward was born in 1942 in Chatswood, a suburb of Sydney, the youngest of four children to Gladys and Frank Woodward...
, Robert Weatherburn, Rhondda Gillespie Stephanie McCallumStephanie McCallumStephanie McCallum is a classical pianist. She has recorded works of Erik Satie, Ludwig van Beethoven, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Carl Maria von Weber, Albéric Magnard, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis among others.-Life:Stephanie McCallum studied with Alexander...
and Michael Kieran HarveyMichael Kieran HarveyMichael Kieran Harvey is an Australian pianist whose career has been notable for its diversity and wide repertoire. He is renowned for commissioning and performing new music. He has especially promoted the works of Australian composers, such as Carl Vine, all of whose piano music he has recorded...
; - harpsichordists and fortepianists Geoffrey LancasterGeoffrey LancasterGeoffrey Lancaster AM is an Australian classical pianist and conductor. Born in Sydney, he was raised in Dubbo, New South Wales before moving to Canberra. He attended the Canberra School of Music where he studied piano with Larry Sitsky...
and Paul DyerPaul DyerPaul David Dyer is a former English professional footballer who played as a midfielder for football league clubs Notts County and Colchester United, where he made over 100 appearances. Dyer also played non-league football for Gravesend & Northfleet and Chelmsford City-External links:**...
; - organist, fortepianist and harpsichordist Neal Peres Da CostaNeal Peres Da CostaNeal Peres Da Costa is an Australian harpsichordist, fortepianist and organist. He specialises in performance on historical keyboard instruments of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, for which he has gained international renown...
; - violinists Elizabeth WallfischElizabeth WallfischElizabeth Wallfisch is an Australian Baroque violinist.Wallfisch debuted as a concert soloist at the age of 12 and took part in such competitions as the ABC Concerto Competition. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Frederick Grinke and was awarded, among other prizes, the President's...
, Richard TognettiRichard TognettiRichard Leo Tognetti, AO is an Australian violinist, composer and conductor. He is currently Artistic Director and Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Maribor Festival in Maribor, Slovenia....
and Dene OldingDene OldingDene Olding is an Australian violinist. He has had a distinguished career as a soloist in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, performing over forty concertos in recent years, including many world premieres...
; - organists Robert Ampt, David Drury, Christopher WrenchChristopher WrenchChristopher Wrench is a renowned organist and lecturer.- Education :Wrench attended Brisbane Grammar School, the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and undertook postgraduate studies in Vienna at the Vienna Conservatorium and then at the Hochschule für Musik .- Awards :Wrench has gained...
, Calvin Bowman and Thomas Heywood; - cellists David PereiraDavid Pereiraright|250pxDavid Pereira is an Australian classical cellist, considered one of the finest working today. He was Senior Lecturer in Cello at the Canberra School of Music from 1990-2008....
and John AddisonJohn Addison (cellist)John Addison is an Australian cellist with an international reputation as a soloist and performer of chamber music, and especially as an interpreter of contemporary music.-Early life and education:...
; - harpists Marshall McGuireMarshall McGuireMarshall McGuire is a renowned Australian harpist, teacher, conductor and musical administrator. He has been described as the world's greatest champion of new music for the harp. Tristram Cary has written "A new school of harp music is emerging from the enterprise of this innovative master...
and Alice Giles; - guitarists John WilliamsJohn Williams (guitarist)John Christopher Williams is an Australian classical guitarist, and a long-term resident of the United Kingdom. In 1973, he shared a Grammy Award win in the 'Best Chamber Music Performance' category with Julian Bream for Julian and John .-Biography:John Williams was born on 24 April 1941 in...
, Slava GrigoryanSlava GrigoryanSlava Grigoryan is an Australian classical guitarist and recording artist of Armenian heritage.He was born in Kazakhstan to Eduard and Irina Grigoryan, both professional violinists. His family emigrated to Australia in 1981 and he was raised in Melbourne. Grigoryan began to study guitar with his...
, Timothy Kain, Craig Ogden and Karin SchauppKarin SchauppKarin Schaupp is a German-born Australian classical guitarist and actress.She was born in 1972 in Hofheim am Taunus, Germany, to a musical family. Her mother and principal teacher, Isolde Schaupp, was a teacher of guitar at the Conservatorium of Wiesbaden. Her father was an amateur pianist, and her...
; - horn players Barry TuckwellBarry TuckwellBarry Emmanuel Tuckwell AC, OBE , is an Australian horn player who has spent most of his professional life in the United Kingdom and the United States.- Early life and education :...
, Hector McDonald and Lin JiangLin JiangLin Jiang is an Australian French Horn player. He was born in Shanghai in 1986 and moved to Australia at the age of five. He began playing French horn when he was ten. He has played with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the West...
; - oboists David Nuttall and Diana DohertyDiana DohertyDiana Doherty is an Australian oboist, currently Principal Oboe with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.-Life:Diana Doherty was born in Brisbane, where she began her education. She attended Brisbane State High School...
; - bassoonist Matthew Wilkie;
- flautist Jane RutterJane RutterJane Rutter is an Australian musician - a classical flautist with the ability to cross over into jazz and pop. She has performed in the UK, Europe, US, South-East Asia, the South Pacific, South America and China...
; - clarinetist Paul DeanPaul Dean (clarinetist)-Career:A graduate of the Queensland Conservatorium where he reveived the Medal of Excellence, Dean won the Australian Clarinet Competition, the Mattara National Concerto Competition, the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in Los Angeles .He often performs together with his brother, the...
; - recorder player Genevieve Lacey;
- DidgeridooDidgeridooThe didgeridoo is a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia around 1,500 years ago and still in widespread usage today both in Australia and around the world. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe"...
player William BartonWilliam Barton (musician)William Barton is an Australian Aboriginal didgeridoo player. He was born in Mount Isa, Queensland on 4 June 1981. and learned to play from his uncle, an elder of the Wannyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga tribes of Western Queensland...
; - percussionists Claire Edwardes and Nick Parnell; and
- oudOudThe oud is a pear-shaped stringed instrument commonly used in North African and Middle Eastern music. The modern oud and the European lute both descend from a common ancestor via diverging paths...
player Joseph TawadrosJoseph TawadrosJoseph Tawadros is an oud virtuoso from Australia.Joseph never ceases to amaze and at 28 has established himself as one the world’s leading oud performers and composers...
.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
(ABC) but now operating as separate independent bodies, have played a major role in performing mainstream orchestral repertoire for the general public as well as commissioning new works from Australian composers and ensuring that works by contemporary international composers are introduced to their audiences. These include the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra , commonly known as the Sydney Symphony, is an Australian symphony orchestra based in Sydney...
, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Melbourne, Australia. It has 100 permanent musicians. Melbourne has the longest continuous history of orchestral music of any Australian city and the MSO is the oldest professional orchestra in Australia...
, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra
Queensland Symphony Orchestra
The Queensland Symphony Orchestra is an Australian orchestra, based principally in Brisbane in the state of Queensland.The QSO played its first concert on 26 March 1947, with the orchestra consisting of 45 musicians, conducted by Percy Code. John Farnsworth Hall was recruited from the Sydney...
, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra was founded as a 17 player radio ensemble in 1936, in Adelaide, South Australia. The orchestra reformed in 1949 as the 55 member South Australian Symphony Orchestra. It reverted to its original and present title, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in late 1974, and...
, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra
West Australian Symphony Orchestra
The West Australian Symphony Orchestra , often known as the "Orchestra of the West", is the premier professional orchestra of the state of Western Australia.-History:...
and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the smallest of the six orchestras established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation .-Activities:...
. There are also professional orchestras whose role is related specifically to opera and ballet performance, chiefly the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
The Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra is one of two full time, permanent orchestras employed jointly to provide music for Opera Australia and The Australian Ballet, the other is known as Orchestra Victoria...
based at the Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...
and Orchestra Victoria
Orchestra Victoria
Orchestra Victoria is an orchestra based in Victoria, Australia. In addition to its own concert and education events, it is the performance partner of the following major performing arts companies: The Australian Ballet, Opera Australia and Victorian Opera...
based in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
.
There are several chamber
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
orchestras which focus on works for smaller ensembles. These include the Australian Chamber Orchestra
Australian Chamber Orchestra
The Australian Chamber Orchestra was founded by cellist John Painter in 1975. Richard Tognetti was appointed Lead Violin in 1989 and subsequently appointed Artistic Director....
which tours regularly throughout Australia and has been well-received overseas, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra and the Camerata of St. John's. Orchestral ensembles which concentrate on historically informed performance
Historically informed performance
Historically informed performance is an approach in the performance of music and theater. Within this approach, the performance adheres to state-of-the-art knowledge of the aesthetic criteria of the period in which the music or theatre work was conceived...
include the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra is an Australian period instrument orchestra specialising in the performance of baroque and classical music.The musicians play from original edition scores on restored or reproduced instruments of the 18th century...
and the Orchestra of the Antipodes.
Leading chamber ensembles include the Australian String Quartet
Australian String Quartet
The Australian String Quartet is a prominent Australian string quartet, which presents an annual program of chamber music throughout Australia and internationally....
, the Goldner String Quartet
Goldner String Quartet
The Goldner String Quartet is an Australian string quartet formed in 1995 in honour of Richard Goldner, the founder of Musica Viva Australia.The Quartet consists of Dene Olding and Dimity Hall , Irina Morozova and Julian Smiles...
, the Australia Ensemble
Australia Ensemble
Australia Ensemble @UNSW is an Australian Chamber Group active since 1980.The group was founded after a proposal put to the University of New South Wales by musicologist Roger Covell and clarinettist Murray Khouri, then colleagues at the University. Since that time it has occupied a prominent...
, Synergy Percussion, Dean Emerson Dean, TRIOZ, the Sydney Soloists, the Southern Cross Soloists, Guitar Trek, Collusion, the Elandra String Quartet, the Zephyr Quartet
Zephyr Quartet
The Zephyr Quartet is a string quartet based in Adelaide, South Australia.Zephyr has received tuition from the Takacs Quartet, the Australian String Quartet and at the National Academy of Music, performed at festivals including the Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Fringe, Barossa Music Festival and the...
, and the Tinalley String Quartet.
Chamber ensembles involved in historically informed performance include Marais Project, Accademia Arcadia, La Compania
La Compañía
La Compañía is a Chilean town in the communes of Graneros and Codegua in Cachapoal Province, O'Higgins Region....
, Ironwood
Ironwood
Ironwood is a common name for a large number of woods that have a reputation for hardness. Usage of the name may include the tree that yields this wood...
and probably Australia's oldest group of this kind, The Renaissance Players.
Musica Viva Australia
Musica Viva Australia
Musica Viva Australia is the oldest independent performing arts organisation in Australia and the world's largest entrepreneur of chamber music. It was formed in 1945 in Sydney by violist Richard Goldner...
, now the largest entrepreneur of chamber music in the world, was founded in 1945 and has provided a major stimulus for public interest in chamber music by organising annual subscription programs of concerts by leading international and Australian ensembles. Further interest has been stimulated by events such as the Australian Festival of Chamber Music
Australian Festival of Chamber Music
The Australian Festival of Chamber Music is a ten-day international festival focused on chamber music but also featuring tours of regional and remote Australia, fine food, master classes for musicians and lecture series by international scientists themed on the Great Barrier Reef.20 to 30 chamber...
which was founded in 1991 and is held each year in Townsville, the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and the Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition, both of which are organised by Chamber Music Australia and held every four years in Melbourne.
Several Australian composers have written chamber works. Among the older composers, Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Joshua Sculthorpe AO OBE is an Australian composer. Much of his music has resulted from an interest in the music of Australia's neighbours as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of native Australian music with that of the heritage of the West...
stands out because he has written 17 string quartets up to 2010, with performances in Australia and overseas and recordings by leading groups such as the Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
. In the next generation, Brett Dean, himself a violist of note and a composer who has received world-wide recognition, has written several works for various ensembles including a string quartet called "Eclipse" which was commissioned by the Cologne Philharmonie for the Auryn Quartet, a string quintet entitled "Epitaphs" premiered in 2010 at the Cheltenham Music Festival
Cheltenham Music Festival
The Cheltenham Music Festival is one of the oldest music festivals in Britain, held annually in Cheltenham in June/July since 1945. The festival is renowned for premieres of contemporary music, hosting over 250 music premieres as of July 2004....
, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is a six week long summer Festival of chamber music held annually in July and August and located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was founded in 1972 and presented its first series of concerts in 1973. Well-known musicians and young performers appear each season in...
, La Jolla SummerFest and the Cologne Philharmonie, and a sonata for violin and piano commissioned by Midori
Midori Goto
is a Japanese American violinist. She made her debut at the age of 11 in a last-minute change of programming during a concert highlighting young performers by the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. When she was 21, she formed the philanthropic group Midori and Friends to help bring music to...
for performance in 2010 in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
and the Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Hall is a leading international recital venue that specialises in hosting performances of chamber music and is best known for classical recitals of piano, song and instrumental music. It is located at 36 Wigmore Street, London, UK and was built to provide London with a venue that was both...
, London. Dean's near-contemporary, Julian Yu has written over 30 works for various chamber ensembles including conventional trios and quartets, as well as unusual combinations such as a quintet for four percussions and piano, a septet for flute, percussion, harp, violin, viola, cello and double bass entitled "Pentatonicophilia", and an unconventional reworking of Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
's "Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite in ten movements composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.The suite is Mussorgsky's most famous piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists...
" for 16 instruments.
Other piano and chamber works of special merit include Peggy Glanville-Hicks' Concertino da camera for flute, clarinet, bassoon and piano, Richard Meale's "Las Alboradas" for flute, violin, horn, and piano, Riccardo Formosa's "Vertigo" for flute (piccolo), oboe, clarinet and piano, Nigel Westlake's "Refractions at Summer Cloud Bay" for flute, bass flute, clarinet, soprano saxophone, violin, cello and piano, the piano works of Julian Cochran
Julian Cochran
thumb|200px|Julian Cochran in 1998Julian Cochran is an English-born Australian composer.Cochran's earlier works show stylistic influences from Impressionist music and his later works are more noticeably influenced by Classical music and folk music of Eastern Europe...
, Ross Edwards' "Laikan" for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin and cello, Carl Vine's String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5, his Elegy for flute, cello, trombone, piano four-hands, organ and percussion, and "Inner World" for amplified cello and tape.
Frequency modulation
In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...
into the country, the ABC produced classical music programs which were broadcast through their local stations. Professor A.E. Floyd's program "Music Lover's Hour" was heard for over 25 years, beginning first on the local Melbourne ABC station in 1944 before being broadcast nationally. Pianist and academic Lindley Evans
Lindley Evans
Lindley Evans CMG was a South African-born Australian composer, pianist and teacher. He is best known for his collaboration with Frank Hutchens in a famous piano duet which lasted 41 years, and as the ABC's "Mr Melody Man" for 30 years.Harry Lindley Evans was born in Cape Town in 1895, to English...
broadcast a series of programs called "Adventures in Music" on the ABC, but was probably better known and more influential through his appearances each Thursday under the pseudonym "Mr Music" on the ABC's national "Argonauts Club
Argonauts Club
The Argonauts Club was an Australian children's radio program, first broadcast in 1933 on ABC Radio in Melbourne. Its format was devised by Nina Murdoch who had run the station's Children's Hour on 3LO and stayed on when that station was taken over by the Australian Broadcasting Commission...
" program. Ralph Collins, formerly a record librarian at the ABC with an acute knowledge of music, hosted his own national music program for over 30 years from the early 1960s, and he was eventually nicknamed "Mr Sunday Morning" by the general public. John Cargher
John Cargher
Pinchas Cargher AM, known professionally as John Cargher , was a British-born Australian music and ballet journalist and radio broadcaster....
, a record retailer, avid collector of records and author of many books, presented two programs. The most popular was "Singers of Renown
Singers of Renown
Singers of Renown was an Australian radio program broadcast on ABC Radio National for 42 years, and presented for every episode by John Cargher...
", which began on the local Melbourne ABC station in 1966 and was transferred by public demand to Radio National
Radio National
ABC Radio National is an Australia-wide non-commercial radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Radio National broadcasts national programming in areas that include news and current affairs, the arts, social issues, science, drama and comedy...
at the end of only 10 weeks and remained on air for 42 years. The other program, "Music for Pleasure", began on Radio National in 1967 and continued until 1996.
The national FM music network ABC Classic FM
ABC Classic FM
ABC Classic FM is a classical music radio station available in Australia, and internationally online. It is operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation . It was established in 1976 as "ABC-FM", and later for a short time was known as "ABC Fine Music" , before adopting its current name...
was established in 1976 to broadcast classical music, jazz, operas, recitals and live concerts from Australia and overseas, music analysis programs and news about music activities. Its audience is now estimated as being about one million people, not taking into account a growing number of international users who access its programs via its online service. At about the same time, community not-for-profit
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
FM stations were set up to enable volunteers to produce and present classical music and jazz programs. These included 2MBS FM
2MBS
2MBS FM is a Sydney music radio station operated by the Music Broadcasting Society of New South Wales Co-Operative Limited.Launched in 15 December 1974, it is Australia's first fully licensed FM radio station....
in Sydney, 3MBS FM
3MBS
3MBS was the first FM radio station in Victoria, Australia, and began transmitting to Melbourne and surrounding areas on the 1st of July 1975. Since then it has operated successfully as a non-profit community-based organisation broadcasting classical and jazz music...
in Melbourne and 4MBS Classic FM
4MBS
4MBS Classic FM is a Brisbane community radio station that broadcasts classical music, jazz and nostalgia throughout South East Queensland. It is broadcast at a frequency of 103.7 MHz....
in Brisbane. More recently a similar station, 5MBS FM, has been established in Adelaide.
Jazz
The history of jazz and related genres in Australia extends back into the 19th century. During the gold rush locally formed 'blackface' (white actor-musicians in blackface) minstrel troupes began to tour Australia, touring not only the capital cities but also many of the booming regional towns like BallaratBallarat, Victoria
Ballarat is a city in the state of Victoria, Australia, approximately west-north-west of the state capital Melbourne situated on the lower plains of the Great Dividing Range and the Yarrowee River catchment. It is the largest inland centre and third most populous city in the state and the fifth...
and Bendigo
Bendigo, Victoria
Bendigo is a major regional city in the state of Victoria, Australia, located very close to the geographical centre of the state and approximately north west of the state capital Melbourne. It is the second largest inland city and fourth most populous city in the state. The estimated urban...
. Minstrel orchestra music featurics including improvisatory embellishment and polyrhythm in the (pre-classic) banjo playing and clever percussion breaks. Some genuine African-American minstrel and jubilee singing troupes toured from the 1870s. A more jazz-like form of minstrelsy reached Australia in the late 1890s in the form of improvisatory and syncopated coon song
Coon song
Coon songs were a genre of music popular in the United States and around the English-speaking world from 1880 to 1920, that presented a racist and stereotyped image of blacks.-Rise and fall from popularity:...
and cake-walk music, two early forms of ragtime. The next two decades brought ensemble, piano and vocal ragtime and leading (mostly white) American ragtime artists, including Ben Harney, 'Emperor of Ragtime' Gene Greene and pianist Charlie Straight. Some of these visitors taught Australians how to 'rag' (improvise unsyncopated popular music into ragtime-style music).
By the mid 1920s, phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
machines, increased contact with American popular music
American popular music
American popular music had a profound effect on music across the world. The country has seen the rise of popular styles that have had a significant influence on global culture, including ragtime, blues, jazz, swing, rock, R&B, doo wop, gospel, soul, funk, heavy metal, punk, disco, house, techno,...
and visiting white American dance musicians had firmly established jazz (meaning jazz inflected modern dance and stage music) in Australia. The first recordings of jazz in Australia are Mastertouch piano rolls recorded in Sydney from around 1922 but jazz began to be recorded on disc by 1925, first in Melbourne and soon thereafter in Sydney.
Soon after World War II, jazz in Australia diverged into two strands. One was based on the earlier collectively improvised called "dixieland" or traditional jazz. The other so-called modernist stream was based on big band swing, small band progressive swing, boogie woogie, and after WWII, the emerging new style of bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
. By the 1950s American bop, itself, was dividing into so-called 'cool' and 'hard' bop schools, the latter being more polyrhythmic and aggressive. This division reached Australia on a small scale by the end of the 1950s. From the mid-1950s rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
began to draw young audiences and social dancers away from jazz. British-style dixieland, called Trad, became popular in the early 1960s. Most modern players stuck with the 'cool' (often called West Coast) style, but some experimented with free jazz, modal jazz, experiment with 'Eastern' influences, art music and visual art concept, electronic and jazz-rock fusions.
The 1970s brought tertiary jazz education courses and continuing innovation and diversification in jazz which, by the late 1980s, included world music fusion and contemporary classical and jazz crossovers. From this time, the trend towards eclectic style fusions has continued with ensembles like The Catholics, Australian Art Orchestra, Tongue and Groove, austraLYSIS
Roger Dean (musician)
Roger Thornton Dean is a British-Australian musician, academic, biochemist and cognitive scientist.He is married to poet, writer, musician and academic Hazel Anne Smith.-Music:...
, Wanderlust, The Necks and many others. It is questionable whether the label jazz is elastic enough to continue to embrace the ever-widening range of improvisatory musics that are associated with the term jazz in Australia. However, mainstream modern jazz and dixieland still have the strongest following and patron still flock to hear famous mainstream artists who have been around for decades, such as One Night Stand players Dugald Shaw and Blair Jordan, reeds player Don Burrows
Don Burrows
Donald Vernon Burrows, AO, MBE is an Australian jazz and swing musician, playing the clarinet, saxophone, and flute....
and trumpeter James Morrison
James Morrison (musician)
James Morrison AM is an Australian jazz musician who plays numerous instruments, but is best known for his trumpet playing...
and, sometimes, the famous pioneer of traditional jazz in Australia, Graeme Bell
Graeme Bell
Graeme Emerson Bell AO MBE is an Australian Dixieland and classical jazz pianist, composer and band leader...
.A non-academic genre of jazz has also evolved with a harder"street edge" style.The Conglomerate,The Bamboos,Damage,Cookin on Three Burners,John Mcalls Black Money are examples of this.
See:
Andrew Bisset
Andrew Bisset
Andrew Bisset was an Australian author, music educator and singer, based in Canberra.- Author :Andrew Bisset was particularly noted for his excellent book Black Roots White Flowers - A History of Jazz in Australia, which traces jazz influences and performances from the early days of visiting...
. Black Roots White Flowers, Golden Press, 1978
Bruce Johnson. The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz OUP, 1987
John Whiteoak. Playing Ad Lib: Improvisatory Music in Australia: 1836–1970, Currency Press, 1999
Organisations
Major organisations involved in funding or in receipt of funding are:Funding Agencies
- Arts Council of NSW
- Arts Council of South Australia
- Arts NSWArts NSWArts NSW, an agency of the Government of New South Wales, is responsibile for arts funding and policy development that is committed to building stronger communities through the arts...
- Arts NT
- Arts Queensland
- Arts SAArts SAArts SA is the South Australian Government Department responsible for the arts. The Minister for The Arts is the Premier Mike Rann, the Chief Executive is Greg Mackie.Statutory Authorities reporting to the Department include:...
- Arts Tasmania
- Arts Victoria
- Australia Council for the Arts
- Australian Music CentreAustralian Music CentreThe Australian Music Centre fosters the development of an Australian music community by providing specialist support to its membership of performers, composers, sound artists, educators, students, and music specialists across Australia and throughout the world.The AMC is the Australian national...
- Australian Music OfficeAustralian Music OfficeThe Australian Music Office is a division of the Australian Trade Commission , a government agency which helps Australian companies succeed in export and international business...
- Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
- Department of Culture and the Arts (formerly Arts WA)
- Music AustraliaMusic AustraliaMusic Australia is a free national online service hosted by the National Library of Australia in conjunction with over 50 cultural organisations across Australia. It was launched on 14 March 2005. It covers all types, styles and genres of Australian music, and showcases Australia’s musical culture...
- Music Council of AustraliaMusic Council of AustraliaThe Music Council of Australia is a national peak music organisation for Australia. It is the official Australian representative to the UNESCO world peak music organization, the International Music Council , Paris...
- Quensland Arts Council
- Regional Arts Victoria
- Symphony AustraliaSymphony Australia- Symphony Services International :Formerly Symphony Services Australia Limited , Symphony Services International has been orchestrating excellence for many years....
- Tasmanian Regional Arts
- Western Australian Arts Council
Music
- Australian Festival of Chamber MusicAustralian Festival of Chamber MusicThe Australian Festival of Chamber Music is a ten-day international festival focused on chamber music but also featuring tours of regional and remote Australia, fine food, master classes for musicians and lecture series by international scientists themed on the Great Barrier Reef.20 to 30 chamber...
- Chamber Music Australia
- Musica Viva AustraliaMusica Viva AustraliaMusica Viva Australia is the oldest independent performing arts organisation in Australia and the world's largest entrepreneur of chamber music. It was formed in 1945 in Sydney by violist Richard Goldner...
- Youth Orchestras Australia
Music
- Canberra Symphony OrchestraCanberra Symphony OrchestraCanberra Symphony Orchestra is the principal professional orchestra of the Australian Capital Territory based in Canberra, the national capital of Australia....
- Sydney Symphony
- The Queensland Orchestra
- Adelaide Symphony OrchestraAdelaide Symphony OrchestraThe Adelaide Symphony Orchestra was founded as a 17 player radio ensemble in 1936, in Adelaide, South Australia. The orchestra reformed in 1949 as the 55 member South Australian Symphony Orchestra. It reverted to its original and present title, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in late 1974, and...
- Tasmanian Symphony OrchestraTasmanian Symphony OrchestraThe Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the smallest of the six orchestras established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation .-Activities:...
- Melbourne Symphony OrchestraMelbourne Symphony OrchestraThe Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Melbourne, Australia. It has 100 permanent musicians. Melbourne has the longest continuous history of orchestral music of any Australian city and the MSO is the oldest professional orchestra in Australia...
- West Australian Symphony OrchestraWest Australian Symphony OrchestraThe West Australian Symphony Orchestra , often known as the "Orchestra of the West", is the premier professional orchestra of the state of Western Australia.-History:...
Music
- Australian Opera and Ballet OrchestraAustralian Opera and Ballet OrchestraThe Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra is one of two full time, permanent orchestras employed jointly to provide music for Opera Australia and The Australian Ballet, the other is known as Orchestra Victoria...
- Orchestra VictoriaOrchestra VictoriaOrchestra Victoria is an orchestra based in Victoria, Australia. In addition to its own concert and education events, it is the performance partner of the following major performing arts companies: The Australian Ballet, Opera Australia and Victorian Opera...
Music
- Adelaide Youth OrchestraAdelaide Youth OrchestraThe Adelaide Youth Orchestra is an 80 member symphony orchestra designed to showcase the best young instrumentalists in Adelaide, South Australia.The youth orchestra itself comprises members aged between 14 and 25 years...
- Australian Youth OrchestraAustralian Youth OrchestraThe Australian Youth Orchestra is an Australian organisation for young musicians. It operates the flagship Youth Orchestra as well as Camerata Australia, Young Australian Concert Artists and Young Symphonists. It also runs several other activities including master classes, outreach programmes and...
- Canberra Youth Music
- Darwin Youth Orchestra
- Melbourne Youth Music
- Northern Sydney Youth Orchestra
- Queensland Youth OrchestrasQueensland Youth OrchestrasThe Queensland Youth Orchestras is Australia's leading organisation for orchestral training and performance and is currently based at the Old Museum building in Gregory Terrace, Bowen Hills, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia...
- Sydney Youth OrchestraSydney Youth OrchestraThe Sydney Youth Orchestra , is one of Sydney's premier youth orchestras and is the flagship orchestra of the Sydney Youth Orchestras family. The SYO consists of around 100 skilled young musicians residing around Sydney....
s - Tasmanian Youth Orchestra
- Western Australian Youth Music Association
Music
- Adelaide Chamber Orchestra
- Australian Chamber OrchestraAustralian Chamber OrchestraThe Australian Chamber Orchestra was founded by cellist John Painter in 1975. Richard Tognetti was appointed Lead Violin in 1989 and subsequently appointed Artistic Director....
- Australian Brandenburg OrchestraAustralian Brandenburg OrchestraThe Australian Brandenburg Orchestra is an Australian period instrument orchestra specialising in the performance of baroque and classical music.The musicians play from original edition scores on restored or reproduced instruments of the 18th century...
- Camerata of St. John's
- Melbourne Chamber Orchestra
- Orchestra of the Antipodes
Music
- Australian Brass
- Australia EnsembleAustralia EnsembleAustralia Ensemble @UNSW is an Australian Chamber Group active since 1980.The group was founded after a proposal put to the University of New South Wales by musicologist Roger Covell and clarinettist Murray Khouri, then colleagues at the University. Since that time it has occupied a prominent...
- Australian String QuartetAustralian String QuartetThe Australian String Quartet is a prominent Australian string quartet, which presents an annual program of chamber music throughout Australia and internationally....
- Clarity
- Collusion
- Compass Quartet
- Dean Emerson Dean
- ELISION EnsembleELISION EnsembleThe ELISION Ensemble is a chamber ensemble specialising in contemporary classical music,concentrating on the creation and presentation of new works....
- Ensemble Liaison
- Flinders Quartet
- Freshwater Trio
- Goldner String QuartetGoldner String QuartetThe Goldner String Quartet is an Australian string quartet formed in 1995 in honour of Richard Goldner, the founder of Musica Viva Australia.The Quartet consists of Dene Olding and Dimity Hall , Irina Morozova and Julian Smiles...
- Guitar Trek
- JouissanceJouissanceThe term jouissance, in French, denotes "pleasure" or "enjoyment." The term has a sexual connotation lacking in the English word "enjoyment", and is therefore left untranslated in English editions of the works of Jacques Lacan. In his Seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" Lacan develops his...
- KammerKammerKammer translates to chamber. It is used as an affix in words such as Kammersänger and Schatzkammer.Kammer as a surname may refer to*August Kammer , American ice hockey player...
- Kingfisher Trio
- Kurrawong Ensemble
- New Sydney Wind Quintet
- Overlander
- Seraphim Trio
- Shrewd Brass
- Southern Cross Soloists
- Sydney Omega Ensemble
- Sydney Soloists
- SynergySynergySynergy may be defined as two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.The term synergy comes from the Greek word from , , meaning "working together".-Definitions and usages:...
- Tetrafide
- The Australian Trio
- Tinalley String Quartet
- TRIOZ
- Zephyr String Quartet
Music
- Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition
- Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition
- Sydney International Piano CompetitionSydney International Piano CompetitionThe Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia is a music competition, presented by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in association with the University of Sydney and broadcast live throughout Australia. It is held every four years, over a three-week period in July-August, and is...
Choral
- Australian Children's ChoirAustralian Children's ChoirThe Australian Children’s Choir , founded in 1976, is a mixed-voice children's choir based in Melbourne, Australia, and consisting of some 200 boys and girls aged 7–18 in six different training ensembles...
- Adelaide Chamber Singers
- The Australian Girls Choir
- The Australian VoicesThe Australian VoicesThe Australian Voices are a choral ensemble based in Brisbane, Australia.In 1993 Graeme Morton and Stephen Leek founded The Australian Voices, an ensemble of young adult singers who work to promote Australian composers. The Australian Voices has performed and promoted new Australian music...
- Voices of BirraleeBrisbane Birralee VoicesVoices of Birralee is a children’s community choir organization that has performed at many venues around the world. Voices of Birralee is one of the only community based choirs in Brisbane and Gold Coast, Australia and it gives young people from the age of 5-26+ the opportunity to participate in an...
- Brisbane Chamber Choir
- Brisbane Chorale
- Canticum Chamber Choir
- CantillationCantillationCantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible to complement the letters and vowel points...
- Exaudi Youth Choir
- Gondwana Voices
- The National Youth Choir of Australia
- Royal Melbourne PhilharmonicRoyal Melbourne PhilharmonicRoyal Melbourne Philharmonic is a 120-voice choir and orchestra in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was established in 1853, and is reportedly Australia's oldest surviving cultural organisation....
Chorale - Song Company
- Sydney Chamber ChoirSydney Chamber ChoirFollowing its formation in 1975, the Sydney Chamber Choir quickly established itself as a champion of Renaissance Music, especially the works of Josquin des Prez. Under the leadership of founding director Nicholas Routley, the choir was also a pioneer in revitalising Sydney performances of Bach and...
- Sydney Philharmonia ChoirsSydney Philharmonia ChoirsSydney Philharmonia Choirs is Australia’s largest choral organisation. It presents its own annual concert series in the Sydney Opera House and City Recital Hall, as well as acting as chorus for the Sydney Symphony....
- Victorian College of the Arts Secondary SchoolVictorian College of the Arts Secondary SchoolVictorian College of the Arts Secondary School , is a state government selective school in Victoria, Australia; a leading school and trainer of talented young dancers and musicians. Located in Southbank, within the Melbourne Arts Precinct, VCASS teaches students from Year 7 to 12...
Chamber Voices - University of MelbourneUniversity of MelbourneThe University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
Conservatorium of Music Vocal Ensemble - West Australian Youth Chorale
Opera
- IHOS Opera
- Opera AustraliaOpera AustraliaOpera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne...
- Opera QueenslandOpera QueenslandOpera Queensland is an opera company based in Brisbane, Queensland. The company was founded with funding from the Queensland State Government in 1981, then under the name Lyric Opera of Queensland, after the Queensland Opera Company was closed in December 1980.It is after Opera Australia the second...
- Pinchgut OperaPinchgut OperaPinchgut Opera is a chamber opera company in Sydney, Australia, presenting opera from the 17th and 18th centuries performed on period instruments. Founded in 2002, the company's goal is to present operas not widely known and worthy of a wider audience...
- State Opera Company of South Australia
- Victorian Opera
- West Australian OperaWest Australian OperaWest Australian Opera is the principal opera company of Western Australia and is based at His Majesty's Theatre in Perth.The company formed in 1967 and works in close association with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. As of 2008, the Chairman is Erich Fraunschiel and Artistic Director is...
See also
- Australian hip hopAustralian hip hopAustralian hip hop music began in the early 1980s; originally it was primarily influenced by hip hop music and culture imported via radio and television from the United States of America. However, since the 1990s, a distinctive local style has developed. Australian hip hop is an underground music...
- Culture of AustraliaCulture of AustraliaThe culture of Australia is essentially a Western culture influenced by the unique geography of the Australian continent and by the diverse input of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and various waves of multi-ethnic migration which followed the British colonisation of Australia...
- Australian Musician
- :Category:Australian musicians
- List of Australian composers
- List of Indigenous Australian musicians, Indigenous musicians and groups
- Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and PopEncyclopedia of Australian Rock and PopThe Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop or Rock and Pop by Australian music journalist Ian McFarlane is a guide to Australian popular music from the 1950s to the late 1990s...
- Australian music charts
- Culture of MelbourneCulture of MelbourneThe Culture of Melbourne reflects its diverse, multi-layered culture and society and the city is widely noted as the "cultural and sporting capital" of Australia....
(Music Section)
Further reading
- Susanna Agardy and Lawrence Zion (1997), 'The Australian Rock Music Scene,' in Alison J. Ewbank and Fouli T. Papageorgiou (eds.), Whose master's voice? the development of popular music in thirteen cultures, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, Ch. 1. ISBN 0313277729
- Susanna Agardy (1985), Young Australians and Music, Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, Melbourne. ISBN 0642098050
- Warren Bebbington, (ed.) (1998). The Oxford companion to Australian music. Oxford. ISBN 0-19-553432-8.
- Marcello Sorce Keller, “The Swiss-Germans in Melbourne. Some Considerations on Musical Traditions and Identity”, Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, Neue Folge, XXV(2005), pp. 131–154.
- Marcello Sorce Keller, “La Swiss-Italian Festa a Daylesford-Hepburn Springs in Australia. Osservazioni etnografiche e un po’ di cronaca”, Cenobio, LV(2006), pp. 329–341.
- Marcello Sorce Keller, “Transplanting multiculturalism: Swiss musical traditions reconfigured in multicultural Victoria”, in Joel Crotti and Kay Dreyfus (Guest Editors), Victorian Historical Journal, LXXVIII(2007), no. 2, pp. 187–205.
- Edited by Shane Homan and Tony Mitchell (2008). "Sounds of then, sounds of now: Popular music in Australia", ACYS Publishing. ISBN 1875236602.
External links
Audio clip: traditional Australian music. Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève. Accessed 25 November 2010.- MusicAustralia – an initiative of the National Library of Australia and National Film & Sound
- Australian Music Centre
- Milesago: Australasian music and popular culture 1964–75
- Australian top 40 singles and album charts 1966 – 1974
- National Film and Sound Archive homepage
Dancing with the Stars Australia