Quality Teaching and Song Lyrics
Favourite Australian Song Needs Attention from Music Education
Music teachers and students should be aware of how values, music and politics all intersect in Australia's favourite song.
Music education needs to help students think critically about the texts of songs they sing. Teachers of other curriculum areas have a role here too, but the quality music teacher in schools should encourage students to think carefully about how the song lyrics relate to the culture that produced them and to the culture of the audience. Consider, for example, the song at the heart of Australian culture.
Favourite Australian Song
With a text penned in 1895 by Banjo Patterson, Waltzing Matilda is Australia’s favourite song. Sometimes proposed as a replacement for the national anthem, it is taught widely in schools, sung by crowds at international sporting events and by war-bound troops, and played by bands for memorial marches. Yet few really ponder the song's text.
The Narrative
The origin of Waltzing Matilda is in itself interesting and somewhat controversial, but the narrative the song tells is fairly straightforward – at least on the surface. Omitting the old and peculiarly Aussie vernacular, it goes as follows. A homeless and jobless man camping by a backwater in the Australian bush sings a ditty to his blanket roll while his tea brews over a fire. A sheep wanders down the bank to drink. The man gleefully grabs it and stows it in his back-pack. The owner of the sheep and three police, discovering the man and his deed, move to arrest him. Swearing they will never take him alive, the man dives into the water and drowns. The song ends with the ghostly voice of the man singing his ditty over the water to ensuing generations of passers-by.
Villainy and Failure as Australian Values?
A foreigner may well ask why a nation would idolise a story that apparently celebrates failure, vagrancy and anti-social behaviour – and even perhaps holds up suicide as a laudable means of outwitting authority. Yet the swagman’s voice does indeed echo down the generations to today. Increasingly Australians, especially the young, sing Waltzing Matilda to cultivate a sense of meaning and community. What values does it teach them?
Even John Howard Waltzes with Matilda!
In a doorstop interview Prime Minister John Howard publicly endorsed its primacy in the popular canon: “I don't incidentally think that anything will replace Waltzing Matilda as the authentic Australian song that touches our hearts more than anything else.” This is not the first time he and other political leaders have made such statements, and polls have shown that he is correct about the feelings of the general community.
Other Interpretations of Matilda
Now of course Australia as a nation does not hold anti-social behaviour and suicide in high esteem, whatever this superficial reading of Matilda may indicate. A more probing interpretation of the Matilda narrative may yield a different result. For instance, based on the social history of the time and place of the song’s origins, the homeless man could well be a starving shearer unfairly treated by the ruthless, land-grabbing sheep farmer and the justice system that favoured property owners. The song John Howard reveres may thus become an anthem for the poor who are denied rights to food, land, shelter and respect by established society. If so, however, how would Howard justify his contempt for Sorry Song which exhorts community empathy with (or perhaps apology to) dispossessed Aborigines?
Role for Australian Education
One aspect of good music education should be to examine the song lyrics in their social context. Language and narratives ride the melodies so easily into the minds of youngsters and adults alike, and interpretations of them may clash heatedly. Quality teaching of music should make young people critically aware of this.
