"In 1788 down Sydney Cove, the first boat-people land, and they said sorry boys our gain's your loss,
we gonna steal your land," says Kev Carmody in his song Thou Shalt Not Steal.
The song reflects the singer-songwriter's trademark honesty and poetic brilliance, highlighting the hypocrisy of the Christian teachings espoused by the English.
Kev Carmody will be recognised with the lifetime achievement award at this year’s Helpmann Awards. Credit:Melissa Adams
Carmody has been awarded Australia's highest accolade in the performing arts, the JC Williamson award, as part of the 2019 Helpmann Awards to be presented in July.
"Apparently everybody that knew didn't tell me," he says with a laugh. "Even Paulie Kelly, he came up and stayed here for a couple of days before the BluesFest and he didn't tell me."
Following the traditions of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, Carmody's work speaks about Indigenous rights and challenges white versions of history. He has written dozens of songs, most notably From Little Things Big Things Grow, co-written with Kelly.
Carmody in 2015. Credit:Janie Barrett
Speaking from his home near the Darling Downs, he says the award is a recognition "of not me but the culture… the ancient culture".
"That's why I'm accepting it on behalf of the all the people that went before and all the people that are going to come," he says. "It's a recognition of the wider thing, not just Kev Carmody… I'm proud of being in existence for a start, and the real positivity that I've seen happen from day one until now, despite all of the negativity. You could get bogged down in all the negativity and never get up. I've been privileged to get my head up above the cauldron and have a bit of a look around and make a statement on it and people have said 'I agree with that'."
Not formally trained until his thirties, Carmody was exposed to a broad range of music growing up. During many years droving, he was educated by Aboriginal elders, who told stories and played music, and an old dry cell radio strung up in a tree.
"It was amazing laying out in a swag under the night sky, travelling your eight miles a day, then of a nighttime this massive universe above to infinity, listening to Beethoven or Mozart," he says.
ABC Radio exposed him to everything from Patsy Cline to Slim Dusty (known to them as "hillbilly music"), radio plays and classical music.
Starting university at 33, he had a voracious appetite for learning, reading everything he could. That interest continues to this day.
Carmody sees the Uluru Statement from the Heart as a template for reconciliation and argues for recognition of First Peoples in the constitution. "Look at where we are situated on the globe. It's this ragged bungee cord we've got back to Britain that we're still hanging onto," he says.
"We're gonna stay in kindergarten [in Australia] for a while longer. The more the archaeologists keep digging, we're going back 10,000 years every time they come up with a shovel."
Aboriginal people were thought to have been in Australia for 60,000 years, "now [author] Brucie Pascoe reckons 120,000".
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