Kev Carmody, MONA FOMA January 2017, MONA, Tasmania, Australia.
Live Review by Malachi Doyle.
I’ve been moved by
the crying of the newborn
The honey sweetness
of the air in spring
I’ve watched the
moonlight flood
Across them sleepy
hills and valleys
Heard the sadness
in her requiem
I can think of no better living songwriter, Australian or
otherwise, than Kev Carmody. I feel it’s important to get this on record while
Kev is still with us (and I apologise if Kev, you take this as an pre-emptive epitaph,
I hope you take it with humour and my deep respect), appreciating with my limited
cultural knowledge, the law prohibiting the naming or showing of images of the
deceased for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. Anyway, enough about such
things, Kev is with us and at 71 remains a powerful solo performer, as
witnessed by my first Carmody gig at MONA FOMA back in January 2017.
I was completely knocked out and totally sober on the
occasion (which I thought was important to do justice to Kev’s scope and
vision), and the audience was given a masterclass in audience captivation by a
solo performer (true Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie sat in on a couple of songs,
but he operated more as a prop than an accompanist). Kev sang, fingerpicked an
instrumental piece and even blew a healing incantations on his homemade
beautiful didgeridoo. Equally as important, he introduced his songs via
personal stories, which were equal parts salt of the Earth and lyrically
virtuosic. Kev is a master story teller in song and speech who uses wry humour
and authority to tell revelatory messages: Kev knows who his people are, where
he lives and just as importantly, knows who he is as an individual. Kev does
something that so few Australians know how to do: be down-to-Earth without
being self-deprecating. It so refreshing to find a performer who doesn’t lesson
himself to appeal to every pub goer’s inner-bogan.
When I first imagined Kev Carmody, before I’d ever sat down
and listened to a full album, I had the limiting pre-impression that Kev was
first and foremost a political firebrand. How partial was that view. Half way
through the first cd I listened to I was gripped by a spiritual epiphany where
the whole room was bathed in a light show of the sun’s making and my whole
being expanded into a pure connectedness with the moment. (Again, I don’t think
this would have happened if I wasn’t sober.) So Kev Carmody’s music is
spiritually transformative as much as it is socially comment. Kev doesn’t dress
in flowing robes or speak of his magical properties, but he possesses them. Of
course, I am open to such things, in the way that a rationalist might merely
have experienced and called it Kev’s truthful evocations of the living.
Romantic or Rationalist, Kev was to touch everyone (through whatever the
refractions of their subjectivity) who was present at his MONA FOMA show.
In addition to all this, and I’m aware that I’m rambling, is
Kev’s awesome intellect. Dr Kev Carmody, if you don’t know, has a PhD in
History, not bad for a Stolen Generation boy, who began adult life working as
an itinerant labourer in the Queensland bush. Because of his biography, he has
incredible personal anecdotes to share, and he tells them with the linguistic
facility of a Great poet. (I am not using the term Great easily, as Rock
Journalism usually does. I rarely give over to overstatement in my non-fiction).
Ok, so, The Set:
Kev started with his mighty Thou Shalt Not Steal, the clearest and catchiest presentation of
the Colonial Vs Indigenous tug-of-war over the reality of White Invasion and
Black Subjugation in an English Language song. Truly awesome and necessary, and
Kev told the story of how he came to write and record it, and Thank God it
caught on.
Then Kev did something unexpected by me, who had never seen
him live before: he told the pretty much all white audience, that he was going
to focus the show on matters that were uplifting and uniting. I was a little
disappointed. I thought “surely we can take it? We’re adults aren’t we?” But
Kev knows performance better than I do. Unite the crowd. Get them on your side.
Kev then went on to present the most tender performance of the life of the
spirit and the mind that I’ve ever heard. He sang his ballad of Ned Kelly,
telling the audience he wasn’t advocating for any orthodoxy, just thought the
story was a good one. He sang with a break at times in his voice, songs about
nature and its spirits which uplifted and enriched. I must make special note
here of his song Moonstruck which if
you haven’t heard it, and you call yourself a sentient being, you must. His evocation
of a sight he once saw of an albatross in flight, following the soaring of the
bird with guitar and voice. A note about Kev’s guitar playing. Kev is no alt-country
4 chord plodder. Kev approaches music as seriously and with as much care, as he
does words. He avoids clichés and explores the usually unexplored. A complex
and profoundly beautiful piece, the performance stays in and warms my heart
these months later.
No-one’s lost who
finds the moon
Or the sweetness of the wattle’s bloom
Rebirth with the rain in spring
Or the dingo’s howl on the autumn wind
Spirit of the moon here calls me home
Kev then stood up, made mention that part of his skeleton is
currently held up by a metal rod and picked up his didgeridoo. He first told
the story of how he was taught the right way to pick a piece of wood to be
shaped into an instrument, before playing his healing song to the island of
Tasmania, so devastated by the brutality of the British Colonialists towards
its Indigenous inhabitants. For the duration that the piece sang out, I wonder,
was a salve maybe felt by the spirits of the deceased? I offer this thought
with the utmost humility and offer no authorial objectivity on the subject.
Kev’s final song was of course From Little Things Big Things Grow, which Kev asked the audience to
help him with. We all did, but for one I must admit it was hard to sing the
words through the tears. Not tears of sadness but depth of feeling. Of being
moved, the way my grandfather wept. Kev Carmody put on a masterful show that I
will remember forever. No one would have blamed Kev for coming out the fighter,
but it was in his guise as lover that he really moved all those present to a
path of greater compassion, a connection with our beautiful land and its
creatures and respect for the wisdom and artistry of its traditional owners.
There is path forward for Australia if we are willing to work with wisdom. Kev
didn’t play his song I’ve been moved,
but by God was I.
©Malachi Doyle 2017.
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