I've known about Shane Howard for a little while, thanks to a great Blog called That Striped Sunlight Sound, a website dedicated to Australian music. Always enlightening, well worth visiting! He's quite famous in Australia, but not so much here in America, unfortunately.
He was originally a member of Goanna, the first pop group to deal with the issue of Aboriginal rights in Australia. Their song Solid Rock is one of the great Australian protest songs, and was a huge hit at the time. The song was the first time a commercial group used the didgeridu on a song. As a solo artist Shane has recorded a number of albums, some of which are available through his own webstore. It has been 30 years since this landmark album was released, and he has just completed an Australian tour in celebration of this event.
But I want to speak a little bit about Clan, Shane's wonderful but long out print album released in 1996. I was fortunate enough to snag a copy on eBay. It's a special album, seemingly a bit of a concept album, beautifully executed, powerfully thematic, incredibly heartfelt and personal.
I wanted to say something about Clan about the time of Saint Patricks, to illustrate another aspect of the Irish diaspora than the Ellis Island experience. And here we are in mid-April. I recall reading about the history of Australia for the first time from Robert Hughes' book The Fatal Shore. But what really spun my head around was when I read True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, which impressed on me mightily the treatment of the Irish in the early years of white settlement of Australia. Both books are highly recommended reading in my estimation. Carey's book is some of the finest literature, and was the winner of the Booker Man Prize, his second.
So when I saw great praise for Clan on Striped Sunlight Sound, I kept an eye peeled for a copy.
When I finally acquired the disc from halfway around the world, I was completely delighted.
Part of the album is about his heritage as the descendant of Irish immigrants who arrived in this new land (to them) in the wake of the Irish Famine of the mid-1800's.
As he states eloquently in the album liner notes,
"This is the story of my people, my ancestral clans. The story of dispossession of land by an overwhelming force; the story of famine, resistance and uprisings, of exile and survival-the struggle of the oppressed; the burning desire not for revenge but for equity and justice."
Telling this story involved the history of Ireland, the immigrant experience of the Irish people in Australia, and the state of Ireland today.
What makes this recording an album for the ages is the connection he makes with the Aboriginal experience in the wake of contact with Europe. He was struck by the continuities between the two sagas. In some ways a case of history repeating itself. As he states,
"Here we are, as Australians, descended of migrants of many cultures, now living on Aboriginal country under a British colonial political system. How do any of us non-aboriginal people make sense of ourselves and who we are and what we are doing here?
So Clan is the story of two Clans, and how their stories intertwine in Australia.
This is heavy stuff. As Americans, you can't help but think of our unfortunate legacies here. These are things that are not easily or perhaps even possibly resolvable. Growing up, Howard lived near Aboriginal settlements, but did not really know much about the people. Ultimately, he learned a new narrative about Australia, not just about oppression, but also about people who have a history stretching well beyond our own meager one. Whenever I see exhibitions of Aboriginal art I find myself deeply moved. I don't pretend to have any expertise or understanding, but they reach at some level that I intrinsically know but can't explain. I even bought an artwork a few years ago from a dealer in New York. It was money that should have gone toward a new car, but I can be impulsive once in a blue moon. I am very glad I did it, in retrospect.
So Clan, begins after an introductory No Man's Land, has Silvermines, a fantastic historic tale about a young woman leaving her homeland for an unknown place, told in the first person, about lives turned upside-down, but the ancestral bonds remain.
Set upon the open seas to the corners of the world
Lambs to the slaughter into this hell we've hurled
My only dream was to survive I was just a girl
Hide your face and hide your fear in these dark and tangled curls.
Tarerer follows, a song about the Tarerer Gundidj Clan of the Dhauwurd Wurrong nation, a people Howard grew up nearby.
Rounded up like cattle
Herded unto mission land
Defending your own country
From this cruel and greedy hand...
Howard was inspired by his visit to Belfast in 1993 to write the plaintive ballad Free as Stone. As he states in the preface to the song, he walked through the city on a cold Sunday morning and "the city was absolutely deserted, except for armoured parol cars and footsoldiers in battle fatigues."
Rebel Song is about uprising in the gold fields of Ballarat in the 1850's. Howard's great-grandfather was arrested there in 1854, so the story is a personal one. The songs on the album are basically folk songs with a Celtic touch to them, with fiddle, mandolin, whistles and bodhran. Melding all these themes together in an album does not strike me as an easy task, but I really think he pulled it off.
Often sad, there is a also a lot of themes of empowerment on Clan. One of my favorite songs is Give A Little, a song that makes you want to keep going, even in the face of impossible odds. Don't Say Okay is another inspirational number, with great imagery, reminiscent of one of Alejandro Escovedo's ballads.
The ghosts are back again at the window
They're back again tonight
Looking in on us so we have to get it right....
Clan is a beautiful album, a work that Shane Howard should be extremely proud of. An album definitely in need of a reissue. For me this is an album that practically popped out of nowhere, so I knew at some point I would need to try to spread the word in my own small way. Sorry the videos are not that representative of the record.
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