Rudolstadt Symposium – Labour Songs Across The Globe

LABOUR SONGS ACROSS THE GLOBE

The conference will take a comparative look at the culture of political songs, including its various manifestations in different regions of the world. Academics, music journalists and musicians will debate aspects such as the historical and cultural circumstances in which music becomes political, the types of music involved, the people who make it, and the contexts in which this music becomes influential, e.g. by generating group identities.

Devised by Prof. Martin Butler from Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
With Srđan Atanasovski (Serbia), Stefan Bohman (Sweden), Mark Gregory (Australia), Frank D. Gunderson (USA), Clark D. ‘Bucky’ Halker (USA, see photo), Michael Kleff (Germany), Richard MacKinnon (Canada), Hazel Marsh (UK)

Martin Butler and Michael Kleff will deliver their papers in German, the other speakers in English. Simultaneous interpretation into English and German available.
Library/Bibliothek –– Friday 6 July, 9.00am, all day

Lesbia Venner Harford – 1891-1927

Poet, songwriter, IWW member, seamstress, Lesbian Harford

The Australian Dictionary of Biography provides the following details:


Lesbia Venner Harford (1891-1927), poet, was born on 9 April 1891 at Brighton, Melbourne, daughter of Edmund Joseph Keogh, a well-to-do financial agent, and his wife Helen Beatrice, née Moore, both born in Victoria. Her mother was related to the earl of Drogheda. About 1900 the Keoghs fell on hard times and in an effort to retrieve the family fortunes Edmund went to Western Australia, where he eventually took up farming.

Lesbia was born with a congenital heart defect which restricted her activity throughout her life. Nettie Palmer remembered her at a children's party as 'a dark-eyed little girl who sat quite still, looking on'. She was educated at Clifton, the Brigidine convent at Glen Iris, and Mary's Mount, the Loreto convent at Ballarat, but she rebelled against the family's staunch Catholicism: in 1915 she conducted services for Frederick Sinclaire's Fellowship group.

In 1912 she enrolled in law at the University of Melbourne, paying her way by coaching or taking art classes in schools. She graduated LL.B. in December 1916 in the same class as (Sir) Robert Menzies. During her undergraduate years she had become embroiled in the anti-war and anti-conscription agitation, forming a close friendship with Guido Baracchi (son of Pietro Baracchi) who claimed later that 'she above all' helped him to find his way 'right into the revolutionary working class movement'.

On graduation she chose what she considered to be a life of greater social purpose and went to work in a clothing factory. Much of her poetry belongs to this phase of her life and she shows a growing solidarity with her fellow workers and an antagonism towards those whom she saw as exploiters. She became involved in union politics and like her brother Esmond (later a Melbourne medical scientist) joined the Industrial Workers of the World.

She went to Sydney where she lived with I.W.W. friends and worked, when strong enough, in a clothing factory or as a university coach. On 23 November 1920 in Sydney she married the artist Patrick John O'Flaghartie Fingal Harford, a fellow I.W.W. member and clicker in his father's boot factory: they moved to Melbourne where he worked with William Frater in Brooks Robinson & Co. Ltd and was a founder of the Post-Impressionist movement in Melbourne.

For many years Lesbia had suffered from tuberculosis. She tried to complete her legal qualifications but died in hospital on 5 July 1927. She was buried in Boroondara cemetery.

Lesbia transcribed her poems into notebooks in beautiful script; she sang many of her lyrics to tunes of her own composing. Some she showed to friends or enclosed in letters.

She was first published in the May 1921 issue of Birth, the journal of the Melbourne Literary Club, and then in its 1921 annual. She provoked much interest at the time and Percival Serle included some of her poems in An Australasian Anthology (Sydney, 1927). In her review of the anthology, Nettie Palmer singled out Lesbia's poetry for special praise, and in September and October 1927 published four of her poems in tribute to her.

Lesbia mistrusted publishers, explaining that she was 'in no hurry to be read'. In 1941 a collection edited by Nettie Palmer was published with Commonwealth Literary Fund assistance. No complete collection exists. On her death her father took custody of her notebooks and they were lost when his shack was destroyed by fire.

Strength in Battle – Edited by Hugh Anderson

See Australian Scholarly Publishing – http://www.scholarly.info/book/612/

Strength in Battle: The Memoirs of Joseph Anderson Panton Goldfields' Commissioner and Magistrate
Edited by Hugh Anderson

The Victorian gold rushes attracted punctilious worthies and sharp operators, but rarely were these characters fused as in the personality of Joseph Anderson Panton, high-minded pillar of society as well as scourge of poor miners and political foes. Panton’s previously unpublished memoirs trace vividly his strange career as itinerant dignitary, severe commissioner and magistrate, vigneron, pastoralist and painter, revealing new and surprising aspects of colonial social life.

‘Hugh Anderson’s meticulous edition of J.A. Panton’s memoirs affords a unique and unforgettable glimpse of Australia in the colonial era. Strength in Battle tells the story of Panton’s journey from Scottish lad and military student to respected young commissioner on the turbulent Bendigo goldfields, his adventures in desolate Mallee country, and a maritime journey to the remote north-west of the continent. This is an endlessly rich, frequently colourful and invariably lively tale, peopled by thrusting settlers chasing independence in a new land, Indigenous people seeking a place in an old one taken from them, and Chinese miners living in a white man’s country where few welcomed their presence. The book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about life on the Victorian goldfields, the foibles of the era’s prominent personalities such as Lola Montez and Governor Hotham, and the remarkable society that gold left in its wake.’

Frank Bongiorno FRHistS FASSA, Professor of History, Australian National University

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Hugh Anderson Checklist of Publications 

Duke of the Outback The Adventures of a shearer named Tritton by John Meredith
Melbourne, Red Rooster Press, 1983, vii, 132 pages.
Contents: 13 songs by Tritton;
21 songs performed by Tritton;
12 songs told by Tritton; Envoi,
He was a friend of mine and Duke's Song by Gary Shearston
Studies in Australian Folklore No.5

THE PEOPLE STAND UP: A story of Australia and the world in the 1930s by Ralph Gibson.
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1983 viii, 415 pages.
Foreword by J.D. Blake.

THE CHINESE IN VICTORIA Official Reports & Documents by Ian F.McLaren.
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1985 x iii, 114 pages. Part 1.
Victorian Parliamentary Papers Relating to the Chinese, 1855-1900,
Part 2. Victorian Acts Relating to the Chinese, 1855-1900.

MARCH TO BIG GOLD MOUNTAIN by David Horsfall.
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1985 viii, 183 pages.
16 Illustrations.

HEADPHONES Verses by Warwick Anderson.
Images by Polixeni Papapetrou. Melbourne, Red Rooster Press, 1986 50 pages.
Published with assistance of the Ministry for the Arts of the Victorian Government.

THE FIGHT GOES ON,
A picture ofAustralia and the world in two post-war decades by Ralph Gibson.
Melbourne, Red Rooster Press, 1987 [vi], 272 pages. Foreword by June M. Hearn.

OCCASIONS FOR COMMENT,
poems by Jean Stone.
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1992 x, 52 pages.
Frontis Piece Jean Stone.

SOUND RECORDINGS
AUSTRALIAN COLONIAL BALLADS, VOLUME 1 Sound & Film Enterprises CRT-12-LP-012, 19--
Programme notes by Hugh Anderson
The Catalpa Singers (Maryjean Officer, Ian Logan, Hans Georg, Shirley Jacobs, Alan Pope)
Songs are--
Click go the shears
Black velvet band Old bark hut
Bold Jack Donahoe
Eumerella shore
Bound for South Australia
Wild colonial boy
Overlander Look out below!
Death of Ben Hall
With my swag on my shoulder
Botany Bay

AUSTRALIAN GOLDRUSH SONGS
Wattle Recordings, 1960
Notes by Ron Edwards
The Fossickers (Ron Edwards, Bill Dempsey, Jim Mills)
Songs are--
Green new chum
German girls
For all that
Look out below!
Cooey!
The cabbage tree hat
Shepherding
Laying Information
Coming down the flat
Bryant's Ranges O
I'm a trap
Weston and his clerk
A squatter's troubles
Coming down the flat
Where's your licence
Jolly Puddlers

GOLDFIELD SONGS by Charles thatcher.
Collected selected introduced by Hugh Anderson.
Studies in Australian Folklore No.9. Hotham Hill. Red Rooster Press.
revised edition. 83 pages. 42 songs with music.
Adds "Bryant's Ranges Otis "Scrumptious Young Gals" and "Song of the Trap", and omits
"The Ballarat Man" but ( wrongly) retains "Blatherskyte".

BLACK BULL CHAPBOOKS
THE DYING STOCKMAN a ballad with notes by Hugh Anderson & Lino Cuts by Ronald G.Edwards.
Black Bull Chapbooks No.1 Hand set in Baskerville on Tudor Antique paper by R. G.Edwards.
Bound in calfskin. 75 copies.
Ferntree Gully, Rams Skull Press, February 1954. [15 pages]

TWO SONGS OF '57 with notes by Hugh Anderson.
Lino cuts by Ronald G.Edwards. Black Bull Chapbooks No.2.
Hand set and printed on cream wove Goatskin Parchment by R. G. Edwards at the sign of the Rams
Skull Press, Lording Street, Lower Ferntree Gully, Victoria, March 1954.

MISCELLANEOUS
Periodicals Contributions to periodicals includes: Present Opinion, MUM, Farrago; Southerly, Meanjin, Overland, Bulletin (Sydney), Austrovert, Biblionews Australian Folklore, Folklife (UK), Folk Music Journal (UK); Australia-China Review, Victorian Historical Journal, Labour History, Recorder, Journal ofAustralian Colonial History.

Australian dictionary of biography entries by Hugh Anderson.

vol.1 W.J.T.Clark; J.P.Fawkner.
vol.6 C.Thatcher.
vol.7 T.R.G., and H.N.Beggs; J.M.Christie.
vol.10 D.Macdonald; J. S.Neilson.
vol.11 M.J.Pitt.
vol.12 A.V.Vennard (Bill Bowyang);
vol.14 Ted Harrington
vol.15 Simon McDonald.
vol 17. ‘Edward Ted’ Hill.

In Frankfurt – Inside Goethe House