Description
Stranger In My Land is a collection of songs originally written by Aborigine artists who were Knoxs peers and predecessors; some tunes previously recorded but difficult to find as well as several unrecorded, handed-down folk songs (which without this recording, could have been lost forever). It is powerful and moving material, heartbreaking and hilarious, downtrodden and uplifting, suffused with longing, alienation, resilience and hope; universal themes arising out of largely unexplored context. It possesses the urgency of a Alan Lomax field recording, but with a spirit that remains relevant in todays world.
Country music crossed the equator in the kitbags of US servicemen in WWII and magically struck a chord with a voiceless and near invisible aboriginal population. Soon American cowboy songs and honkytonk classics were retooled to describe rugged outback lifestyles and the migration from country to city. Turns out, you cant beat this music as a vehicle for telling tough tales and the Aboriginal Country & Western Songbook is peppered with drinking songs and prison songs; songs that yearn for justice and for home; songs of alienation and the loneliness of the outsider. Humor, resignation and outrage stalk a superficially familiar musical landscape thats been re-populated with stockmen, bandicoots, wallabies, porcupines, grog-drinkers, pelicans and policemen.
Stranger In My Land features guest vocals and instrumental performances from Bonnie Prince Billy (Scobies Dream), Kelly Hogan (Blue Gums, Took The Children Away,) Dave Alvin of X, Blasters (Land Where The Crow Flies Backwards), Sally Timms (Home In The Valley), Andre Williams (Stranger in My Country) and perhaps the last known recording from Charlie Louvin of the Louvin Brothers (Ticket to Nowhere). All this star power is backed The Pine Valley Cosmonauts and the Sadies.
Also included in a album is a lovely insert by Langford that gives an apt history of the songs, artists, and people behind this fragile, yet empowering music. This is an album about a man and a peoples struggles in their own place of origin, and the experiences in a journey that such a complex life path can take. Knox is the conduit for these stories and these songs, but this isnt ancient history and these songs are not museum pieces.
The place names and characters are different, but the humanity remains common. In making Stranger In My Land, Roger Knox closes the circle on a strange journey that takes the music and stories of his people all the way around the planet and back to America.
The best music is border music, the sound of cultures colliding. In the late 20th century Black Australians assimilated Country & Western, that whitest of American musical forms, to tell the story of their physical subjugation, spiritual stoicism and eventual political awakening.
Jon Langford, from the liner notes
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