COUNTRY DOWN UNDER

​Buried Country’s reach continues to expand, and further overseas too. Country Down Under is a BBC Radio 4 documentary that was directly inspired by it. Writer/producer Rachel Claire Hopkin, a US-based British musicologist, happened to hear the interview I did with Denise Hylands on her 3RRR radio show Twang (that you can hear here), and got in touch. I gave her every assistance I could and when she came out to Australia in June she conducted interviews with me along with such luminaries as Roger Knox, Kev Carmody, L.J. Hill and Auriel Andrew and also, I was delighted to note, other such fine artists such as Glenn Skuthorpe and Sue Ray, which at least added a new dimension beyond what BC already covers thoroughly. Yet though I am listed in the program description as an interview subject I was cut from the final result, on the BBC’s insistence apparently, in what I can only interpret as an act of reverse discrimination, that wanted the show free of whitefellas. Still, I can’t complain too much because it’s small beer compared to the outright discrimination many of the featured artists have always had to endure, and the show is a good albeit brief glimpse at Aboriginal country music that gets the message out there that bit moreso… Click through the below panel to hear a podcast as long as it stays up there…