Kev Carmody Says Don’t Tear Statues Down

Indigenous music legend Kev Carmody rejects the concept of tearing down statues of British invaders like Captain Cook. He tells Noise11 they should stay as a reminder of what happened.

“The whole thing about the statues, I’m with Stan Grant,” Kev Carmody tells Noise11.com. “I think what we should do is leave the statues there as a symbol of what happened and put a plaque on to say what happened. We’ve been here for 80,000 years. If the archaeologists keep digging with the bloody shovel goodness knows what they’ll come up with in the caves. If Rio Tinto stops blowing them up we’ll have a bit of a chance. It’s not your fault. Together we can do stuff. It’s like Black Lives Matter. We need every bugger in the whole thing and we have to change to system that’s producing this”.

Kev was talking to Noise11 as his 2007 tribute album was being upgraded with new covers of his songs. “Its been 14 years between now and when Paul Kelly first did it,” Kev says. “Paul’s partner Sian Darling is the one doing this one. She is the one getting the younger ones to do videos to it. I purposely didn’t do videos because I thought all the glitz and glamour and what was going on, I thought the song has to stand by itself. Now the younger ones are right into videos and I still don’t have to do videos. I can sit back behind the couch and let ‘em go”.

The first album had an A list of Australian artists singing Carmody’s songs. “On the first one, Johnny Butler, Missy Higgins, Steve Kilbey, Tex Perkins, now we are listening to these new ones. Holy mackerel – Courtney Barnett. She blows me away that girl. And she did a video sitting on the bed with her Kelpie dog. The way she has done it, it becomes her song,” he says.

“Alice Skye has sent a video through. She has travelled all around Australia and put this video through. Again, it just blows me away. There’s no glitz and glamour and body gyrations that I wouldn’t want to see my granddaughters doing. I think it fantastic the way they have both done it”.