Buried Country
Andy Nehl | Australia 2000 | 74 min
Where black Americans turned to the blues, Aboriginal Australians found inspiration in country and western music and created a style of their own. From the bush to the city, Aboriginal people have used country music to tell their stories of life and the struggle for justice.
Featuring rare recordings, archival images and first-hand interviews with the singers and songwriters, Buried Country traces six decades of this rich tradition.
What emerges is not only a poignant record of Indigenous Australia, but also a celebration of how music can lift the human spirit. Buried Country explores the largely untold story of Aboriginal country music. It is ‘a story about storytelling’.
Aboriginal people adopted country music to tell their stories in a way that could be understood by non-Aboriginal Australians. Although the subject of the film is country music, the stories told are about the life experiences of Aboriginal people.
