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Steps And Strides
Monday, March 03, 2008
John Butler Takes Another Triumphant Year In His Stride. By Martin Jones.
It’s been another massive year for Mr John Butler. The release of the John Butler Trio’s third studio album Grand National saw triple j listeners crown it their favourite album of 2007 and the Trio touring the globe more relentlessly than ever. 2008 sees the release of John Butler’s first live solo album, One Small Step, accompanied by a solo tour with Clare Bowditch and The Waifs billed as The Union Of Soul, as well as a significant expansion in the JB Seed grant program, now in its fourth year.
And yet, as I speak with one of Bluesfest’s all-time favourite sons the day after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s momentous ‘sorry’ speech, I get the feeling that for Butler, all personal achievements have, for the moment, faded into the background.
You have strong ties with Australia’s Indigenous musicians and community, have you had much feedback to Mr Rudd’s speech? Do you feel it’s been well received?
From all the crew that I’ve talked to, it was a special day, it was respect. And not only was it respect for the Indigenous community, it was respect for the truth and reality. We’ve been living in denial for the last 200 years, you know, there was that sense of like Kevin said, just cold stony silence that just made for a kind of incomplete life for a lot of us. It was the first time I’ve ever felt national pride in my life.
Really?
Yeah I have a love for country, I have strong ties to my country and a strong love for the land and culture, and the spirituality of it, but coming from two nations, America and Australia, that both were founded on genocide and bloodshed and colonisation, there wasn’t a lot to really feel proud about. And yesterday that really acknowledges culture, acknowledges the past’s wrongdoings but also takes responsibility for it and… kind of grows ups. A day that a nation chooses to stop being a teenager and become an adult, it’s a lovely thing to watch and to be a part of. And it gave me a really great sense of pride that I’ve never felt and I allowed myself to feel it because I felt like it was the right conditions. It wasn’t denying anything, it wasn’t ignoring reality like we kind of have. I’m not saying it’s the be all and end all solution, I think it’s only the first small step in a huge journey, we all need to roll up our sleeves and get stuck into it. But it was a great day.
And the motivation seemed to be genuine – like politically speaking it wasn’t a safe action, he probably had more to lose than to gain.
No other than all the good things, like a sense of really healing the heart of Australia. Or starting the healing. And giving some soul to this beautiful country that we have. The government is an extremely important establishment where people have extremely important jobs to represent the morals, ethics and values of its people. And it should be a soulful thing and yesterday was extremely soulful. Like all good things are. Like no matter what kind of music you listen to, if it has soul, it’s usually good. And it’s good to see some politicians with it as well.
You’ve taken efforts to single out Indigenous artists for funding in the JB Seed, just how much worthy Indigenous music is out there that never reaches the country’s ears due to lake of artists’ means?
Oh heaps, heaps. It’s unfathomable. It’s pretty massive. The hip hop scene, the country scene, the reggae scene and all the scenes that fuse all those styles together are pretty vibrant and it’s the reason why I was really headstrong in all the JB Seed meetings last year to really start an Indigenous hip hop category. I believe a lot of people look outside the country for their inspiration when it comes to hip hop. And that’s good because all our forefathers of hip hop do come from overseas but I really believe there’s some indigenous crew here that could really inspire their communities and their people and it would be really good to see young indigenous hip hop artists actually looking up to really kick ass indigenous hip hop artists. I really believe there’s an equivalent Eminem here that people would just be going ‘holy shit!’ Just the amount of soul that the Indigenous community has when it comes to art is amazing.
The scope of the Seed program is growing all the time – it must be incredibly gratifying to see so many others embrace and assist the concept. Its growth is evidence that it was sorely needed!
Yeah we definitely wanted to make it an inclusive project and not just be about me or my organisation funding, that’s why it’s so important that people like Paul Kelly and Missy Higgins are contributing, and Richard Kingsmill and The Cat Empire and a lot of other philanthropists as well. So it’s really good to see a community coming together to support an emerging community.
Read the full feature in March Rhythms.
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