Waltzing Matilda – The Secret History – Dennis O’Keeffe

$28.00

Available on back-order

SKU: TN1835-B Categories: ,

Description

An expose of two cover-ups: one the death of a swagman by a billabong; the other, a torrid affair between Banjo Paterson and his fiancee’s best friend, and how the two events come together in Australia’s best-loved national song.

Paperback x 294pp illus pics

Contents

1 Australias Song for the World
1
   
2 The Backdrop for a Song
13
   
3 Clancy and the Man from Snowy River
27
   
4 There Once Was a Swagman
37
   
5 Up Rode the Squatter
59
   
6 The Banjo
83
   
7 The Old Billy Boiling
107
   
8 Warrnambool to Winton
129
   
12 Dagworth Burns
199
   
13 The CoverUp
211
   
14 Christinas Tune
223
   
15 The Love Affair
231
   
16 The Jolly Swagman Song
245
   
17 And His Ghost May Be Heard
259
   
Bibliography
276
   
Notes
279
   
Picture Section
142
   
9 Australia for the Australians
143
   
10 The Fight Begins
165
   
11 The Burning of the Rodney
181
   
Index
288
   
Back cover
295
   
   
   

Dennis O’Keeffe is one of the nation’s leading performers of Australian traditional songs, and has been a successful song-writing teacher for over ten years. For as many years, he has led the Australian traditional song sessions at the National Folk Festival in Canberra. Dennis plays an Anglo-concertina, an instrument that came to Australia during the gold-rushes of the 1850s, and was the most popular instrument in the Australian outback until the turn of the century. Regrettably, there are very few concertina players left in Australia. Dennis has been at the birth of literally hundreds of songs, having written some forty songs about Australian history, and nurtured many song-writers from their first idea through to the first public performance of their song. Twenty years of painstaking research into the origins of Waltzing Matilda, combined with his knowledge of Australian traditional songs and proven song-writing ability, gives Dennis an intimate understanding of how the song was written.

Additional information

Weight .500 kg
Dimensions 21 × 14 × 2.75 cm

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