'We're tougher than we seem'

On the Outskirts Indijjinus
Larrikin Entertainment
Reviewed by Bob Wills In recent years, music by Aboriginal and Islander performers has become increasingly popular. The music that has gained most attention from the music industry arbiters has been the more mainstream pop songs and club dance remixes. Yet the music that is the staple of many Aboriginal performers and probably remains the most popular in the community is country music.
This music has a rich tradition in the indigenous community — legends like Jimmy Little and Lionel Rose, in his post-boxing champ days, spring to mind. The country influence is never far below the surface in the work of Kev Carmody, Yothu Yindi, Coloured Stone or the Warumpi Band, just to name a few.
Aboriginal country music has a distinctive lively and rootsy sound. The stories it tells and the messages it contains have an importance perhaps greater than the music itself. It shares with the original country music of the US — the music made by poor farmers and backwoods settlers prior to its much-parodied "Nashville" commercialisation and homogenisation — an ability to emotionally express the lives, troubles and feelings of an oppressed and struggling people.
This album by Rockhampton band, Indijjinus, is a great example of the vitality of this music. Pat and Cavel Cora, Angus Gooda and Arnold Bird have a long history playing music in north Queensland and have built up a loyal following. Their rollicking brand of country rock, tinged with a touch of rockabilly, conveys a sincerity that demands to be taken seriously.
Songs deal with the perennial topics of love lost, love regained and regret (the pure country gem "Hey Mr Dark Cloud", the rocking "Just Call Me Babe", the maudlin "Daddy's Gone" or the corny "Woman"), as well as more pressing issues facing the indigenous community.
Indijjinus sing of deaths in custody ("Natural Causes" and the reggae-inflected "Tell the Man"), Black history and pride ("Black Man", the didj-drenched "Black", and "Survivor") and the destructive dual influences of racism and drug and alcohol abuse (the almost surreal"Evil Darkness").
While the band tackles these issues head-on, the album is not pessimistic. The tone is one of defiant celebration and pride of survival, and a determination to beat the odds stacked against Australia's indigenous people. In "Black Man", Indijjinus vows that Aboriginal people will be around for another 40,000 years and in "Survivor", which sums up the mood of this appealing album, they sing: "After 40,000 years of dreaming, we've survived and we're alive/ A couple of hundred years of fighting, trying to find ourselves a better place/ A couple of hundred years of fighting couldn't knock us out of the human race/ We're tougher than we seem".