Indigenous Music as a Space of Resistance

Abstract

In the late 1970s in the inner city suburbs of Melbourne, such as Fitzroy, Carlton and Richmond, Indigenous peoples often had problems getting into local pubs, bars, general nightlife and music venues. As Uncle Alf Bamblett states: ‘we finished off being barred from all the places around, purely on the base of race’.2 Not content with this situation he, along with others such as Tony Lovett, approached the Eastern Hill Public Bar, and stated they wanted to put a night on themselves, ‘somewhere for our own mobs to go and enjoy themselves’.3 They ‘scratched together a band’, with members including at the time Uncle Alf Bamblett, Tony Lovett, Tony Gorrie and Janice Johnstone.4 What they would create through their music was more than a band. Rather, their performance, the places they performed, and the spaces they and their audience created when they performed would generate critical sites of Indigenous resistance.

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