Book: Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music (Walker 2000)

Buried Country: The story of Aboriginal Country Music.
Walker, C.(2000). Buried country: The story of Aboriginal country music. Sydney: Pluto Press.
ISBN 9781864031522 (1864031522)

Review:
I will recommend this book highly as a reference as it exposes a considerable lack of accessible published information in this realm. There are many reasons for this: of particular note is the fact that Australian Aboriginals were not accepted as Australian Citizens until a referendum in 1967 gave Indigenous Australians the same rights of inclusion under the constitution, as the predominantly white hegemony. Also, there were significant differences in how the cultures, of European descent and of Aboriginal descent, recorded their histories. European cultures had archived their histories in print and visual mediums (and later, by recorded electronic media) whereas Aboriginal cultures recorded their histories by evanescent oral media and by visual media open to interpretation.
Tracing the history of some of the better known Aboriginal Country Music Artists is, for me, very topical. The book starts extremely well with a thoroughly researched and documented article about one of our most recognisable Australian Aboriginal Performing Artists: Jimmy Little. However, I found other articles throughout the book lacking the research rigour and editorial finesse of the first article.
Many of the articles seemed to rely on unsubstantiated opinion from the author, especially regarding the ability or the potential ability of the cited artists. Because many of these artists were never given the opportunity to record, or the recordings that do exist are of poor quality, we may never know what the artists were capable of; therefore the claims remain unsubstantiated. But, as a whole, the book is highly thought provoking. Therefore, I hope it leads to more works in this area before this valuable knowledge is lost.

Other reading of related texts
Reference List / In-Text Citation Styles in APA 6th
Please Note: I do not strictly follow APA style in these citations as I would like various technology and media to be able to access these pages.
Smith, J. (1984). The Book of Australian country music. Gordon, N.S.W: Berghouse Floyd Tuckey Pub. Group.. The Book of Australian Country Music by James "Jazzer" Smith (1984) is possibly the primary reference for Buried Country. My copy of The Book of Australian Country Music is listed with ISSN 0814-3730; that indicates the Publisher considered the title part of a series. However, I do not believe subsequent volumes were issued. The book consists of 24 articles in the first 230 pages on topical matters; the following 134 pages are biographies of known artists and include late addenda. I will try to give a complete review in 2020 of this important work.

Latta, D., & Brennan, P. (1991). Australian country music. Sydney: Random House Australia.
The Worldcat entry for this book seems to have been corrupted with information about another title.
My copy of the book consists of 70 articles based on topics and artists of Australian Country Music contemporary to that period (c1990). In the 190 pages of articles, just three pages are devoted to Aboriginal country artists.
Smith, G. (2005). Singing Australian: A history of folk and country music. North Melbourne, Vic: Pluto Press Australia. . An interesting complementary read from the same publishers who gave us Buried Country: Pluto Press Australia. I read this book in 2018 and will report on it in 2020.

Seal, G., & Willis, R. (2003). Verandah music: Roots of Australian tradition. Fremantle, W.A: Curtin University Books. An incredible resource; in 128 pages there are 47 articles on individual musicians, bands, and communities of musical talent from throughout Australia, who played from the early 1900's until the early 2000's and beyond. Verandah music is one of those rare op-shop finds I previously knew nothing about, that has now become a valuable resource. It contains two audio CDs to complement the written pieces. It is interesting to note, though, that many of musicians highlighted in this book played accordian or piano-accordian. I only realised this fact after reading books on modern drummers, Hawaiian steel guitar players, and USA blues musicians: where drum and fife had a major early influence.

Poore, B., & Eicke, J. (1998). Rockabilly: A forty-year journey. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard. Billy Poore's personal history of Rockabilly: A forty-year journey is an interesting and possibly unique book. It has a quirk in the style of writing, though, as it looks like someone may have transcribed long passages directly from audio recordings; I mention this because the style of these passages is more akin to a spoken style with local idioms, rather than journal-style written reflection.

McKean, J. (2012). I've been there (and back again). Sydney: Hachette Australia. 
ISBN: 9780733629310 0733629318
Slim Dusty would have been 93 today, as I write this entry. He was a consummate showman; but it was his wife and talented musical partner Joy McKean who is the consummate story teller. Possibly my alltime favourite song "Lights on the Hill" was written by Joy and made famous by Slim. This book is one of a number written by Joy about their life and times from Slim's early days trying to get a break into what would become the Australian Country Music business, to becoming an icon of the Aussie CM and the travelling roadshow that made them famous. It's an easy read, because joy breaks it down into short episodic chapters, with a great collection of accompanying photographs and selections of lyrics appropriate to the story.
 
Kernaghan, L., & Buchanan, C. (2017). Boy from the bush. Sydney, N.S.W. : HarperCollins Australia.
ISBN: 9780733338076 0733338070
Nelson, W. (2003). The facts of life: And other dirty jokes. London: Metro. ISBN: 1843580616 9781843580614
Nelson, W. (2015). My Life: It's a Long Story. London: Little, Brown Book Group.
ISBN: 9780751561746 0751561746
 
 
See also A desktop reference of hip vintage guitar amps to understand my interest in folk and popular music and technology.

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Walker, C. (2000). Buried country: The story of Aboriginal country music. Sydney: Pluto Press.

Unless otherwise noted all books listed were in my personal library at the time of the first blog posting about the book.
Some titles were borrowed from RMIT University libraries during the period 2006-2016, or from Hobsons Bay City Council library.

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This work is also available as a Music CD Volume and a Documentary Film; and has toured as a live music performance. Walker, C. (2000). Buried country: The story of Aboriginal country music. Sydney: Pluto Press. Walker, C., Walker, C., Nehl, A., & Film Australia. (2000). Buried country: The story of Aboriginal country music. Sydney: Pluto Press.