Sound Affects

GetUp! is an Australian political advocacy group, modeled on MoveOn! in the USA, but not nearly so reviled by those on the opposite side of the political spectrum

GetUp! has released its first record, a re-working of Paul Kelly’s classic anthem “From Little Things Big Things Grow”. But it is not merely a case of a simple cover version.

The song features famous Australian musicians (John Butler, Kev Carmody, Paul Kelly, Urthboy, Missy Higgins, Mia Dyson, & Ozi Batla) singing not only the original song, but also singing select quotes from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generation as well as former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s historic Redfern Address from 1992.

Their ambition is to reach the very top of the Australian singles charts, thereby achieving high rotation on radio and TV, reaching millions of people who may never even have heard of GetUp and who have never given any thought to issues of reconciliation.

Their website says, “From little things, big things grow. This song can fill every home, cafe, pub and workplace in the country with a message of hope that we will achieve reconciliation and equality for all Australian citizens – a resounding message from the 2020 Summit.”

Lofty aims, certainly. But is the song good enough to achieve this?

As far as the music goes, this truly is an extraordinarily compelling piece. Kelly’s original melody and lyrics have always possessed a certain simplicity and beauty, and that is not lost. Indeed, if anything, it is enhanced by the different voices singing and rapping.

The instrumentation has been revamped from the original acoustic tune to include guitar, drums and even a small string section that swells in the chorus. It’s a beautiful treatment of a strikingly simple song, and it manages to both highlight the beauty of the original and to subtly tug at the heartstrings without ever seeming overbearing and preachy.

But the most remarkable bit of this song is the inclusion of sections from these two famous speeches.

We live in a time of instants.
Instant coffee.
Instant meals.
Instant news.
And what we are losing is our capacity to be overwhelmed.

Every aspect of our lives go by so quickly, and are replaced so quickly, that we are losing patience.

And when you lose patience, you don’t allow anything to grow, and everything becomes quick, immediate and empty.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of oratory.

No one gives speeches anymore. Oh, sure, people speak for a long time, but there is no imagery, no poetry, no sense of performance. Instead, politicians simply try not to offend anyone; to appeal to everyone by playing it completely safe and never actually saying anything of substance.

But humans are, by their nature, hungry beings.

We long for something to inspire us, to stimulate our minds, to force us to sit back and marvel.

Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generations was such an event.

True, Rudd is not an orator. His language is almost always bureaucratic, complex and dense, and his delivery leaves much to be desired.

But in this case, the substance of Rudd’s Apology was so extraordinary, and so overdue, that it opened the floodgates on emotions that Australians had been blocking and ignoring for years.

Yes. Aboriginal children were removed (often forcibly) from their families.
Yes. In many cases it was a part of a broader plan to eradicate the Aboriginal race for good.
Yes. This deserves, at the very least, an acknowledgement of past wrongs, and an apology from the government on behalf of those who went before them.

And as the song begins, and the strings swell underneath Rudd’s voice, the song manages to capture the way the Apology made us feel.

Excited.
Elated.

Inspired.

“As Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry.

On behalf of the government of Australia, I am sorry.

On behalf of the parliament of Australia, I am sorry.

And I offer you this apology without qualification.”

_____________________

All profits raised by this song will go to GetUp!’s Reconciliation Fund and Aboriginal organisations on the ground. Help take their message to a new audience who they need to join us on this national journey, by clicking here to view and buy the song:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/MakeThisAHit

For those of you not in the know, the 2020 Summit was a weekend in our national capital when the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, invited 1000 people to share their ideas on the future of Australia, specifically with regards to where we would like to be in the year 2020.

10 groups were set up: Communities & Families, Productivity, Governance, Creative Australia, Indigenous, Health, Rural, Security and Environment.

Much has been written about the 2020 Summit, most of it by far better writers than I. And, admittedly, by far more knowledgeable writers than I.

And I’m sure that in the coming weeks the event will be dissected, analysed and assessed from every angle. Many of the high-profile ideas will be critiqued and discussed, and maybe the same can be said for some of the lower-profile ones.

But what this event has achieved, more than anything, is to get people talking again.

For far too long, Australia was a country were nobody really asked anything of anyone, much less our leaders. We all just plodded along, looking after ourselves and ignoring everything else. The 11 long years of the Howard government led to many things, but by far the most obvious consequence was that we became a nation of ostriches – all 20 million of us had our heads buried deep in the sand.

But now…

There is a reawakening.

People are talking about things, debating ideas and becoming passionate about subjects and issues that no one has spoken about for years.

When Kevin Rudd went to meet the Queen in London he was asked whether he would broach the topic of an Australian Republic – an idea that has been neither seen nor heard since its death by referendum in 1999 – and in response said something along the lines of “I think it will happen eventually, but I don’t think that time is now.” 

This line was repeated in every newspaper, every TV news, every radio news broadcast in the country. And then the Day Two stories began – people being interviewed about whether they thought now was the right time to reappraise the Republic debate.

And then, only a matter of days after the PM declared the Republic was an idea for another time, everyone was talking about it. Talkback radio, letters to the editor, taxi drivers, people at bars, people in the streets – everyone was talking about the idea of an Australian Republic.

And now, the main recommendation to come out of the 2020 Summit is that Australia needs a complete overhaul of its system of government – with a Republic at the top of that new system.

If nothing else, people are talking…