First all-Aboriginal reggae band talks the ‘toughness’ of Peter Tosh
No Fixed Address still on the journey 45 years later
Published:Sunday | September 1, 2024 | 10:06 AMYasmine Peru - Senior Gleaner Writer
Musician Bart Willoughby speaks eloquently about the “powerfulness of truth” and the fact that “truth doesn’t tell lies”. A member of the original people who inhabited Australia, he also speaks with a quiet passion about racism, being a part of the ‘Stolen Generation’, reggae music, Bob Marley, the “toughness” of Peter Tosh, and survival.
Willoughby is a founding member of No Fixed Address, the first all-Aboriginal reggae-rock band to emerge out of Australia and its most influential. A quick history of the band shows that it was “formed in 1979, split in 1984, with several brief reformations or guest appearances in 1987–1988 and 2008, before reuniting in 2016 and continuing to perform into 2024”.
Willoughby and his band members were in the UK last month for a gig - in celebration of their first performance in England 40 years ago - and they also performed for free at the Jamaica Independence celebrations 0121 Festival in Victoria Square, Birmingham. The proud, First Nations troubadour, who plays the drums and is also the lead vocalist of No Fixed Address, has a lot of stories, some amusing but many simply poignant.
“When I was two and a half years old, the cops came and took me and my brother from my mother’s arms and I went to the baby home first and later to the correction boys’ home. It was a prison. Music was my salvation. The history of the First Nation and Captain Cook is one of mass killings in Victoria … burning bodies so that there is no evidence. But the evidence is in their characters … and they wake up to the nightmare wreaked by their forefathers,” the outspoken Willoughby said as he reflected on “the harshness of Australian society on the Aboriginal people”.
Between 1910 and 1970, the British Government introduced policies of assimilation, which “led to between 10 and 33 per cent of Aboriginal Australian children being forcibly removed from their homes”. Referred in history as the ‘Stolen Generations’, these children were placed with adoptive families and in institutions and banned from speaking their native languages.
Upon leaving the home, Willoughby attended the South Australian Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music at the University of Adelaide where he was introduced to reggae music, which he didn’t understand until he experienced an epiphany.
“I was into heavy metal. I didn’t understand reggae. One day, my music teacher said we got tickets for The Harder They Come. They didn’t tell me that Bob Marley would be there. I zoomed into what the percussion [was] doing … my whole life was changed right then and there. With reggae ... I had never heard music played that fast ... I was blown away by how much energy you can give by not doing too much. Once you’ve got reggae, you’ve got the full horizon,” the pioneering Aboriginal reggae artiste and activist told The Sunday Gleaner.
Playing reggae music since the 1980s, Willoughby has a zest for the music that is captivating. He reminisced briefly on playing with Peter Tosh when the reggae icon toured Australia in 1982.
“Peter Tosh tour … that was amazing. Peter Tosh was one of the best. He reminded me of some of the kids I grew up with at the boys’ home … he had that toughness. The boys’ home was tough and, if you survive … you are one of the lucky ones … like me. I could identify that toughness,” Willoughby explained.
He added. “I got to talk to Peter Tosh and Santa Davis for about six hours. Music makes you fall in love and that’s what happened to Peter Tosh, he fell in love with music. When we played music, we felt the love and the imagination of that love,”
No Fixed Address made history as the first Aboriginal band to sign with a major label, when, in 1982, the band inked a deal with Rough Diamond Records, a subsidiary of Polygram Records, and released their début mini-album From My Eyes. Following the successful Peter Tosh tour, they scored another first - the first Aboriginal band to travel overseas, touring Great Britain.
The band is happy to be trailblazers, giving a voice to the voiceless and giving birth to other Indigenous bands whose messages mirror theirs - speaking out against genocide, racism, and police harassment - and for those who all count themselves as survivors.
“ We have survived the white man’s world, and the horror and the torment of it all,” Willoughby sings on We Have Survived, which is considered an Aboriginal anthem and an “anthem of cultural persistence”. It appears in the movie Wrong Side of the Road, which features No Fixed Address. In 2008, We Have Survived, which Willoughby wrote at 18, was added to the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia registry.
“Maybe I was like Peter Tosh. I was brought up hard … and so … you do the Peter Tosh thing - you tell the truth. When the Rastas say ‘Jah Rastafari ever living, ever faithful, ever sure’, that’s the toughest words I have ever heard,” Willoughby said.
The original members of No Fixed Address were Bart Willoughby, Les Graham (aka Leslie Lovegrove), Ricky Harrison, John Miller, and Veronica Rankine. As of 2024, the members are Willoughby, Harrison, Tjimba Possum Burns, and Sean Moffat. The band was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the inaugural National Indigenous Music Awards, as well as the SA Music Hall of Fame, and have had a laneway in Adelaide CBD named in their honour.