Kindred Chords

By Loretta Barnard

This book is the first of its kind in Australia, a book that introduces readers to more than 26 Australian musical families from across the musical genres to provide a glimpse into the extraordinary creativity of Australian musicians and their families - the interactions, the influences, the sharing of ideas, the love and support, the special bo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shooting Star Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781925821543

Loretta Barnard

Loretta Barnard has written two non-fiction books, co-authored two more and ghost-written a number of memoirs. She's been a contributing writer to a wide range of reference books and is a regular columnist for a number of websites for whom she writes on music and arts-related subjects. She also mentors aspiring young writers from around Australia. Loretta comes from a distinguished jazz family, has been closely observing musicians her entire life and has personal connections with a number of musicians featured in this book. She brings a unique perspective to the families discussed in this book.

Book preview

ABC

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is the national broadcaster.

AIR

The Australian Independent Record Labels Association is ‘dedicated to supporting the growth and development of Australia’s independent recording sector’. Their awards are presented to artists who are not represented by a major record or publishing company.

APRA AMCOS

Australasian Performing Right Association and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society. APRA is a music rights association representing Australian composers, songwriters and publishers, and assists music creators to get paid for their work. AMCOS licenses out musical works to third parties and distributes mechanical royalties to writers and publishers. APRA Awards are presented annually across a range of musical categories, recognising the work of Australian composers, songwriters and artists.

APRA-AGSC Screen Music Awards

Awards presented annually by APRA in conjunction with the Australian Guild of Screen Composers for excellence in television and film scores and soundtracks.

ARIA

The Australian Recording Industry Association is responsible for providing official records of music sales in Australia by collecting music sales data from music retailers and streaming sites. Presented annually across a range of musical categories, the ARIA Awards recognise excellence in music and production.

Australian Music Prize

Established in 2005, the Australian Music Prize is awarded annually for best album by a band or solo artist. Focusing on ‘creative merit over mainstream popularity’, it comes with a substantial cash prize as well as global media exposure.

Australian Women in Music Awards

Established in 2018, the AWMAs acknowledges the achievements of women in Australian music across genres and recognises First Nations and multicultural performers and music practitioners. The awards cover performance, composition, production, music journalism, music photography, film making and humanitarian work.

Bell Awards

Also known as the Australian Jazz Bell Awards, these are presented annually for achievement in jazz music. They were named after pianist and bandleader Graeme Bell.

Country Music Awards

Also known as the Golden Guitar awards, the Country Music Association of Australia recognises ‘excellence and outstanding achievement’ in Australian country music. The Golden Guitars are presented each year during the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Deadly Awards

Also known as the Deadlys, these were presented annually between 1995 and 2014 for achievements by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the fields of music, arts, sport and community. They were replaced in 2017 by the National Dreamtime Awards, also known as the Dreamtime Awards.

Freedman Music Fellowships

Funded by the Freedman Foundation and administered by the Music Trust, the Freedman Fellowships are awarded annually to one classical music instrumentalist (up to the age of 30) and one jazz musician (up to the age of 35). They’re awarded to established musicians to assist them in furthering their careers.

Gold certification

This is given to a recording when sales to retailers reach 35,000 units, which applies to singles and albums. For music videos (including DVDs) to achieve Gold certification, 7,500 units must be sold. In the United States of America, to reach Gold certification, 500,000 units must be sold.

Golden Guitar Awards

See Country Music Awards.

Grammy Awards

One of the major entertainment awards in the United States of America, the Grammys are presented annually by the Recording Academy to celebrate achievements in the music industry.

Helpmann Awards

Named for Australian ballet legend Robert Helpmann, the Helpmanns recognise achievements in the performing arts: contemporary music, opera, classical music, musical theatre, dance and comedy. They are presented annually.

Logie Awards

Officially known as the TV Week Logie Awards, the Logie awards are given annually for achievements in the television industry.

MO Awards

Awards for live entertainers established in 1975 as the New South Wales Star Awards. The name was changed to the MO awards in 1976 to honour the impact on the Australian theatre and live performance scene of comedian and singer Roy Rene (1891-1954). His comic creation Mo McCackie has been the stuff of legend for over a century.

MTV Video Music Awards

Annual awards presented by American cable television channel MTV to recognise achievements in popular music videos.

Musica Viva

The largest presenter of chamber music in the world, presenting leading Australian and international artists to concert audiences and school students across the country.

National Indigenous Music Awards

Presented annually to recognise achievements in the Northern Territory music industry.

Platinum certification

This is given to a recording when sales to retailers reach 70,000 units, which applies to singles and albums. For music videos (including DVDs) to achieve Platinum certification, 15,000 units must be sold. In the United States of America, one million units must be sold in order to achieve Platinum certification.

Sounds of Australia

The National Film and Sound Archive’s selection of sound recordings of particular cultural, historical and social importance in the Australian context.

triple j

The national youth broadcaster. Part of the ABC, it’s the most popular radio station for young people and a platform for emerging artists.

triple j Hottest 100

An annual popular music poll conducted by radio station triple j, part of the ABC’s broadcasting arm.

Urban Music Awards

These were presented annually for artists in the fields of soul, hip hop and R&B.

Foreword

There was never any doubt in my mind that music would be the path I would follow. I have been surrounded by musicians my whole life and I’m

so lucky to have been born into a musical family. From

the age of three I can recall listening to Dixieland jazz, fascinated by how all the instruments intertwined, each playing a different melody, yet all fitting together somehow. My father Len was a huge influence on my musical sensibility. He and my mother Jane never tried

to steer me in any other direction, like telling me to get

‘a real job’.

Being born into life of music is both a joy and a curse. It’s an extremely challenging life, alternating between deep troughs of financial woe, blood, sweat, tears and insecurity to extraordinary moments of pure indescribable spiritual joy.

Music is what connects us. It can inspire, heal, revive, change lives and make you feel that you are not alone in the world. Having read the stories from this wonderful book, it has confirmed what I’ve always known – that the music fraternity is really one very big family, no matter what style or genre, be it classical, rock, country, jazz, pop, you name it.

I can think of nobody better than my cousin Loretta to write this book. She understands the life of a musician and what it means to be born into a multi-generational musical family. We both have sons who are keeping the family tradition alive and well! And she has the gift of getting people to open up and tell their stories, providing us with a wonderful insight into how the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Rebecca Barnard

Introduction

When the child of a musician shows some musical aptitude, the response is often ‘it’s in the genes’. And perhaps it is – my own sons are fourth generation professional musicians and it made me wonder about all the other families out there were whose lives, like my family’s, are driven by music.

I come from a jazz family – my father is the legendary Australian trumpeter Bob Barnard (born 1933), himself the son of musicians, and I don’t remember a time when music wasn’t playing in our home. Possibly my earliest musical memory is watching my parents sitting by the record player tapping their feet and murmuring various happy noises as American cornet player Bix Beiderbecke played ‘Clarinet Marmalade’ or ‘Royal Garden Blues’, or howling with joy as they listened to King Oliver, Louis Armstrong or Jack Teagarden. And there was plenty of Australian jazz being played too: Graeme and Roger Bell, Ade Monsbourgh, Tony Newstead and many others, not to mention Bob’s own recordings and the countless others he played on. He was forever listening back to what he’d done, picking apart the phrasings with a constant view to improving his performance. My mother Pat was an amateur pianist and was often tinkling away, playing light classics or very old-fashioned songs like ‘Nola’ that we sometimes played together as a duet because it reminded her of her own mother.

Our home was often a meeting place for other musicians, writers, artists, dancers and various eccentrics, so as children my brothers and I were exposed to an array of people of assorted talents, and we heard plenty of live music in our house when visiting musicians from home and abroad took out their horns and played as if they were on stage at Carnegie Hall instead of in our modest lounge room. We assumed this was normal, that most families were exactly like ours. Why would we think otherwise?

My brothers and I were used to seeing our dad in the daytime but rarely in the evenings, so there’s a lot we picked up simply by unconscious observation. Quite often my father would be off in ‘Bob Land’ as we called it – there was always a part of his brain focused on augmented fifths or whatever, or he had his nose buried in a chart for the evening’s gig. Sometimes he’d noodle around on the piano just for a moment or two while his mind was tossing around chords or modulations. Without specifically intending to, my father taught me to listen to music. Something would be playing on the stereo and he’d say ‘shhh, wait for this’ and then a matter of mere seconds later, he’d ask if we’d heard whatever it was that he considered particularly noteworthy. This happened so regularly that before I’d even had a music lesson, I was learning to hear the layers of sound that made up a band, recognise modulations and tempo changes, the beautifully pitched individual notes, and generally have a richer listening experience.

Now let me say right here that although I studied piano and music theory for some years, I am not a musician, having chosen a book-based career in the publishing industry after receiving my MA in English literature way back when. But music is in my blood – my grandparents, my father and uncle, my two brothers, my cousin and her son and my own two sons were and are professional musicians. I’ve been closely observing musicians my entire life: not just my own family over four generations but also friends and acquaintances from all age groups and I have personal connections with a number of the musicians featured in this book.

Music is as necessary to me as food and drink and although I had a mainstream jazz upbringing, perhaps my favourite music of all comes from the baroque period and I freely confess that my main musical loves are classical and jazz. But the truth is that like many music lovers, I listen to all kinds of music depending on what mood I’m in at any given time, and I feel it’s somewhat problematic trying to slot music into this or that genre. Obviously, the music of AC/DC is rock music through and through and there’s no question about its genre, but it’s not always so clear cut. Some of the modern jazz coming out of Australia today could well be classified as chamber music; some songs labelled country songs easily fit into the popular or rock mould; ‘world’ music defies conclusive categorisation and, to my mind at least, it’s insufficient to simply define it as music influenced by, or incorporating, non-Western musical elements. Of course, naming things gives meaning to them and I haven’t shied away from using genre labels, but the thing about pigeonholing is its lack of finesse: it’s often extremely difficult to apply definite genre labels to various forms of musical expression.

The musicians covered in this book come from many different backgrounds. Some are self-taught, others have been trained in some of the finest music schools in the world. Some play simple tunes, others write symphonies; some are geniuses at improvisation, others prefer the discipline of written charts. The common denominator is that whatever style of music they play, people are listening, people are responding. As the Restoration poet and playwright William Congreve wrote in 1697, ‘music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak’. Music has the extraordinary power to move us and all the musicians you’ll read about here do just that.

Some of the families within these pages are household names, others might not be as widely known but are locally and internationally acclaimed in their particular milieus, so while you may not be familiar with some of the musicians and composers written about in the following pages, rest assured that plenty of other people are. Just because you may not have heard of someone doesn’t mean they’re not successful. And remember that the world of music is generous – there really is something for everyone.

This book is intended as kind of a part-history, part-biography, part musical checklist, but it’s mainly a celebration of music and families. It’s also a celebration of diversity. Clearly, it’s impossible to write about every Australian musical family and a decision had to be made about who to include and who to leave out. My main criterion for the final selection was that I wanted to cover as much of the musical spectrum as I could and to that end chose musicians from the classical, rock, pop, country, jazz, electronic, soul, baroque, R&B, world, children’s music, musical theatre worlds and so on. A few families are across a range of genres which made their inclusion a logical choice. I’ve also tried to acknowledge the contributions of past masters as well as today’s game changers.

My other major criterion was a desire to show musical continuity both across generations and within generations, so there are parents and children, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, even husbands and wives represented. Another thing I was keen to explore was the concept of musical connectivity between family members and whether people believe there’s a genetic component

to musical talent. Where it was possible, I spoke to family members to gain first-hand their responses to questions about family influence, support and guidance, and my deepest thanks go to everyone who took the time to speak with me.

Needless to say, there are many outstanding Australian musical families for whom there simply wasn’t the space, and perhaps there’s room for another volume at some time in the future. There are, for example, the Farriss brothers. When they established a rock band in 1977, little did they realise how successful it would become. INXS was made up of brothers Andrew Farriss on keys, Tim Farriss on guitar and Jon Farriss on drums. They were joined by saxophonist Kirk Pengilly, bassist Garry Beers and the luminous Michael Hutchence on vocals. The Farriss brothers made an effective team. Music writer Toby Creswell refers to Andrew as ‘a composing savant’, he credits Tim with being ‘the great motivator’ and Jon with challenging the status quo by incorporating electronic drums and percussion into the band’s sound, something still relatively new in the 1980s. The band’s power and the close family dynamic helped make them one of the leading bands in Australian rock history.

Closer to home are my good friends Con and Sue Mavridis. When my sons were learning piano and didn’t want to practise, I’d threaten to ask Sue to come over. A cellist, pianist and music educator, she imposed a very strict practice regime on her own children, one that brooked no deviations or allowed for even the slightest laxity. It was a bit of a running joke in both our families but sure enough, the boys went back to their scales with renewed vigour. Con’s family has a captivating musical story to tell. His parents, Chinese-born ethnic Russians Tatyana and Kosta Mavridis, were popular entertainers in China during the 1940s; they migrated to Australia in 1955. Their sons, bass baritones Constantine and Yuri grew up in Sydney, worked with their parents singing programs of Russian music and later toyed with operatic careers. Con was in fact a soloist with the Australian Opera for a time and sang opposite Dame Joan Sutherland in a production of Rossini’s Semiramide in 1983. But later that year, wishing to put aside the gruelling career of freelance opera singers, the brothers and their wives, cellist Sue and pianist Valerie Forbes-Mavridis, established cabaret act Black Tie, presenting a mix of opera arias, show tunes, instrumental solos and stand-up comedy. Over the last 35 years they’ve entertained countless thousands on cruise ships across the globe and in 1991, in recognition of their talents, they won a MO award for best cabaret act. Their children are all musically gifted and while Con and Sue’s children chose professions outside music, Yuri and Valerie’s children look likely to continue the family tradition. George is a tenor, his sister Natalie a fine violinist.

I wonder how many Australians realise that the much-loved multi-award-winning singer-songwriter Paul Kelly also has a fascinating musical heritage. His maternal grandfather Ercole Filippini was an Argentinian operatic baritone who sang in the famed La Scala Opera in Milan. With his wife Anne, later known as Nancy Filippini, he established the Italo-Australian Grand Opera Company which operated in South Australia and Western Australia during the 1920s. Their mission was to bring Italian opera to Australian audiences. Ercole was usually the lead and Nancy usually directed, but she was also a singer and conductor, and many say she was Australia’s very first female professional orchestra conductor. Following Ercole’s death in 1934, Nancy continued to promote Italian opera and made her living as a singing teacher and a choir and orchestra leader, something she did until her death in 1987. While other family members didn’t follow the musical path, her grandson Paul Kelly did. He’s often called the greatest songwriter Australia has ever produced and along with the Yothu Yindi song ‘Treaty’ (see Chapter 5) which he co-wrote, his 1987 song ‘To Her Door’ was included in APRA’s 2001 list of 30 top Australian songs. He’s also the most nominated ARIA artist in the history of the awards.

There are many other examples that can be cited. So many families, so much music.

The stories you hear about musicians struggling for their art are usually true. My father relates a rather charming anecdote about his parents Kath and Jim Barnard, with their young sons in the back seat, driving to an engagement one rainy night in Melbourne during the war years when petrol, like many other consumables, was rationed. Cars sometimes ran on kerosene which was illegal but how else were they to get to the gig? On the way, they had to pull over because Jim needed to adjust the ropes that held the bass drum in place on the car roof, but something didn’t go right and the drum fell off, rolled down the hill and was rendered unplayable. His response, ‘What a wicked night’, was very restrained considering the circumstances. I’ve often wondered what it cost them to have that drum repaired.

Musicians often work for a pittance just for the sheer love of making music. ‘Door deals’ – where the artists receive only the token entry price to a nightclub, and don’t forget that amount is then shared between three, four, five or more band members – often don’t yield enough income to pay for whatever it cost getting to and from the gig, let alone pay the rent. I’ve heard plenty of stories where musicians are paid in meals rather than money. And every time you’ve paid to see a band, keep in mind that the musicians have spent many unpaid hours behind the scenes writing charts, rehearsing, hiring PA gear and organising transport.

Many musicians fund their own recordings and don’t expect to make any money from them, treating them as promotional material rather than a source of income. And the digital age has brought new challenges to musicians’ incomes. Streaming services pay peanuts – an average of around $US0.0039 per stream and that amount has to be shared between the often numerous rights holders in a piece of music, namely record labels, publishers, performers, and songwriters/composers – so unless you’re a huge international star you’re unlikely to accrue enough money to even cover the costs of making the recording that people listen to for free or for a few cents. Literally.

It’s one of the great shames of so-called civilised society that we undervalue our creative and performing artists. Musicians are resigned to the realities of streaming – they’re artists first and foremost and they want their work out there even if they’re starving in a garret – but I strongly believe we should try to repay them for the pleasure they give listeners by buying an album every now again from one of the digital platforms. This is especially applicable to niche and indie artists who don’t receive mainstream media attention, and it’s a fiercely competitive field in which to throw your hat so even on blogs and dedicated genre websites, it’s tough getting exposure for your work. I also urge you to go out there and listen to as much live music as possible. There’s much to be learned by listening to music in the quiet