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A Song For Banjo Clarke, Aboriginal Elder

Dearest Sherri,

 

My son and his wife were traveling in the State of Western Australia, which is the opposite side of Australia to Victoria (where Banjo and my family lived) and New South Wales (where I am living now).  In the town of Margaret River, they met a woman who calls herself “Deslie”, who lives in a trailer and composes and sings songs.  When she heard my son was from Victoria, she said did he know Framlingham Aboriginal Settlement?  When he said “Yes”, she mentioned that she had just finished reading a library book called “Wisdom Man by Banjo Clarke as told to Camilla Chance.”  She asked my son if he knew Camilla Chance, and he replied “She’s my mother.” 

 

Deslie then said that the library book she borrowed had inspired her to write a song about Banjo Clarke, whom she had not heard of till then.  She immediately performed the song, and gave my son her CD of it.

 

Here is the song.  As you are making an Aboriginal Page, I thought you might like it:

 

Down in the Western District of Victoria

Breathes a man’s Spirit whose ancestry goes back to Tasmania

 

You can try to kill half a nation, but you can’t kill a man’s soul.

Yeah, you can try to kill half a nation, but you can’t kill a man’s soul.

 

And you’ll hear the words on the wind again and again:

“Peace and safety through compassion; peace for all men.”

 

You can try to kill half a nation, but you can’t kill a man’s soul.

You can try to kill half a nation, but you can’t kill a man’s soul.

 

“Old people say,

When people do wrong, say wrong things and bad things,

Gotta turn the other way.

 

Gotta look after the little kids.

Gotta feed everybody, welcome them into your home.

 

You can try to kill half a nation, but you can’t kill a man’s soul.

 

You’ll hear the words of Banjo Clarke

On the wind again and again:

“Peace and safety, peace through compassion …”

 

You can try to kill half a nation, but you can’t kill a man’s soul.

 

Much love,

Camilla

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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