Us Mob were an early Aboriginal reggae rock band [1] from South Australia. The band was formed with the help of the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music in Adelaide. [2]
Us Mob appeared in the film Wrong Side of the Road with fellow CASM band No Fixed Address [3] The recording of the soundtrack made the two bands the first contemporary aboriginal bands to be recorded. [4] Along with No Fixed Address they were nominated for the 1981 AFI Award for Best Original Music for the music from the film. They relocated to Sydney and broke up after their equipment was destroyed by a fire. [4] The band were the subject of an ABC Message Stick documentary in February 2000. [5]
Title | Album details | Peak chart positions |
---|---|---|
AUS [6] | ||
Wrong Side of the Road (with No Fixed Address) |
| 67 |
Yothu Yindi are an Australian musical group with Aboriginal and balanda (non-Aboriginal) members, formed in 1986 as a merger of two bands formed in 1985 – a white rock group called the Swamp Jockeys and an unnamed Aboriginal folk group. The Aboriginal members came from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land. Founding members included Stuart Kellaway on bass guitar, Cal Williams on lead guitar, Andrew Belletty (drums), Witiyana Marika on manikay, bilma and dance, Milkayngu Mununggurr on yidaki (didgeridoo), Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu on keyboards, guitar and percussion, past lead singer Mandawuy Yunupingu and present Yirrnga Yunupingu on vocals and guitar.
Indigenous or Aboriginal rock is a style of music which mixes rock music with the instrumentation and singing styles of Indigenous peoples. Two countries with prominent Aboriginal rock scenes are Australia and Canada.
Mandawuy Djarrtjuntjun Yunupingu, formerly Tom Djambayang Bakamana Yunupingu; skin name Gudjuk; also known as Dr Yunupingu, was an Aboriginal Australian musician and educator.
Goanna are an Australian rock band which formed in 1977 in Geelong as The Goanna Band with mainstay Shane Howard as singer-songwriter and guitarist. The group integrated social protest with popular music and reached the Top 20 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart with "Solid Rock" (1982) and "Let the Franklin Flow". Their debut album, Spirit of Place peaked at No. 2 on the related albums chart. They disbanded in 1987 and briefly reformed in 1998.
Indigenous music of Australia comprises the music of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia, intersecting with their cultural and ceremonial observances, through the millennia of their individual and collective histories to the present day. The traditional forms include many aspects of performance and musical instrumentation that are unique to particular regions or Aboriginal Australian groups; and some elements of musical tradition are common or widespread through much of the Australian continent, and even beyond. The music of the Torres Strait Islanders is related to that of adjacent parts of New Guinea. Music is a vital part of Indigenous Australians' cultural maintenance.
Wrong Side of the Road is a 1981 low-budget feature film made in South Australia. It is distinctive for being one of the first attempts to bring modern Australian Aboriginal music to a non-Indigenous audience, featuring all-Aboriginal rock reggae bands No Fixed Address and Us Mob.
Bart Willoughby is an Indigenous Australian musician, noted for his pioneering fusion of reggae with Indigenous Australian musical influences, and for his contribution to growth of Indigenous music in Australia.
Joseph Benjamin Geia is an Australian musician of Murri Aboriginal heritage. As a solo artist he has released three albums, Yil Lull (1988), Tribal Journey (1996) and Nunga, Koori and a Murri Love (2005). He has worked with artists, No Fixed Address (1982–83), Shane Howard and Rebecca Barnard (1990). In 1988 Geia composed the track, "Yil Lull", which has been recorded by other artists, Paul Kelly, Archie Roach, Jimmy Barnes, and the Singers for the Red, Black and Gold, which included Howard, Kelly, Christine Anu, Renée Geyer, and Tiddas.
No Fixed Address (NFA) are an Australian reggae rock group whose members are all Aboriginal Australians, mostly from South Australia. The band formed in 1979, split in 1984, with several brief reformations or guest appearances in 1987–1988 and 2008, before reuniting in 2016 and performing several times since then.
Kevin Daniel Carmody, better known by his stage name Kev Carmody, is an Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter and musician, a Murri man from northern Queensland. He is best known for the song "From Little Things Big Things Grow", which was recorded with co-writer Paul Kelly for their 1993 single; it was covered by the Get Up Mob in 2008 and peaked at number four on the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) singles charts.
John Martin Armiger was an Australian musician, record producer and composer. He was one of the singer-songwriters and guitarists with Melbourne-based rock band the Sports from August 1978 to late 1981, which had Top 30 hits on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart with, "Don't Throw Stones" (1979), "Strangers on a Train" (1980) and "How Come" (1981); and Top 20 albums with Don't Throw Stones, Suddenly and Sondra (1981).
Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. Australia has several bands and sound systems that play reggae music in a style faithful to its expression in Jamaica. Australia has a relatively small Jamaican community, but reggae penetrated local consciousness via the popularity of reggae among the non-Jamaican population of England in the 1960s and 1970s. Many indigenous musicians have embraced reggae, both for its musical qualities and its ethos of resistance. Examples include Mantaka, No Fixed Address, Zennith and Coloured Stone.
Scrap Metal were a band from Broome, Western Australia who played rock music with elements of country and reggae. The members had Aboriginal, Irish, Filipino, French, Chinese, Scottish, Indonesian and Japanese heritage.
Mixed Relations were an Australian band formed by Bart Willoughby. They played a mixture of reggae, pop, rock and jazz. Mixed Relations toured Aboriginal communities, Australian cities, Pacific Islands, New Zealand, United States, Europe, Canada and Hong Kong. The group were chosen as the closing act for the 1989 inaugural Invasion Day Concerts at La Perouse, Sydney and then every Invasion Day concert until its final date at La Perouse in 1994. Their track, "Aboriginal Woman", was listed at No. 89 on the Triple J Hottest 100, 1993.
"We Have Survived" is a song originally performed by No Fixed Address. It was composed by Bart Willoughby when he was 18. It first appeared in the film Wrong Side of the Road and on its soundtrack and was later included on No Fixed Address's album From My Eyes. It has since been included in The Black Arm Bands concert murundak.
"Treaty" is a protest song by Australian musical group Yothu Yindi, which is made up of Aboriginal and balanda (non-Aboriginal) members. Released in June 1991, "Treaty" was the first song by a predominantly Aboriginal band to chart in Australia and was the first song in any Aboriginal Australian language to gain extensive international recognition, peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play singles charts. The song is in Gumatj, one of the Yolngu Matha dialects and a language of the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land in northern Australia.
Glen Heald is an Australian guitarist and multi instrumental singer/songwriter who plays a mix of contemporary rock, fusion, blues, blues rock, folk and acoustic ballads. He is a fully independent Aboriginal recording artist who has written, recorded and produced eight solo albums.
Stephen Pigram is an Australian musician and songwriter. He has been a member of Kuckles (1981–82), Scrap Metal (1983–95) and the Pigram Brothers (1996–present). With his brother, Alan Pigram, and joined by Alex Lloyd, he worked on the soundtrack of Mad Bastards, a film he co-produced with Alan, Brendan Fletcher and David Jowsey. Pigram released a solo album, Wanderer, in 2013.
The National Indigenous Music Awards 2011 are the 8th annual National Indigenous Music Awards; However, 2011 was the first time the event went national after its first seven years had purely focused on the Northern Territory artists.
reggae rock.