Like a dazed and long-eyelashed five-hour-old foal, five days in, the 2008 Sydney Festival has got up on its feet. The brumbie mare has thrown back to exquisite palomino origins and she nuzzles with pride. And the smart little colt was named last night: ‘You Cannot Buy My Soul’.

I’m trying to capture the feeling as the curtain came down last night on a stunning concert at the State Theatre celebrating the song writing of Kev Carmody featuring Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins, Tex Perkins, Dan Kelly, Clare Bowditch, The Herd, Sara Storer, Steve Kilby, The Drones, The Last Kinection, the Pigram Bothers and a great support band. Not to mention Carmody himself and kin, including several grandchildren.

And I mean thanks. This line up of some of Australia’s most authentic folk-rock talent put individual agendas to one side, not only to pay genuine tribute to an honoured elder, but without exception opened their hearts to us in an evening of astonishingly soulful musicality. We turned to each other at the end knowing we had just been part of one of those incredibly rare nights unlikely ever to repeat itself. An evening that exposes us - in the tradition of family - to the best in each other and ourselves.

Before you despair, let me add quickly, there is another performance tonight if you can get a ticket. There is also a CD you can buy (good - if not quite up there with the live experience); and a 55-minute documentary in the making which, says producer Martin Fabinyi, will be screened on SBS “sometime after the Beijing Olympics”. Are we really still a sporting culture first and foremost?

Carmody’s story begins with land and tradition, but leads quickly to the arrival of white man and the singer/songwriter’s own early days as a drover. Carmody spends much of the concert at a ‘bush camp’ created on one side of the stage: some of his story pre-recorded, some of it delivered off the cuff. It’s all in the songs anyway, from looking up at the star-gazed heavens while cattle drowse, the rounding up, to separation, dislocation, grog and drugs and the ambulance siren. Just as each song stands on its own, together Roach has documented in verse and melody - as laconic as it is vivid - the story of his people as he has witnessed it, and lived though it, these past 60-plus years. Roach has been speaking to his own people all this time.

And here, at last, we have the best of the descendents of the invading mob acknowledging that the likes of Carmody (Archie Roach, Rover Thomas, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, et al) have much to teach us too. I have long believed we will never know this country, and it will never take us in, until we sit at the feet of the above-mentioned and ask – in all humility – ‘Please tell us what you know’.

-----

Major arts festivals can also be experienced at more than one level. There are the myriad stand-alone events of various quantity and quality; and also their cumulative effect as encounters builds upon each other. Five days in, and this witness/participant (Moi!) is on a slow build to the high ground. The response to Fergus Linehan’s massive dance and music-based opening-night street festivities not only set the theme and tone of this year’s Sydney Festival, it staked a benchmark by which all else to follow would inevitably compared.

Let the court of public opinion note that there was some choked muttering when this year’s program was first unveiled: ‘Where was the high art?’ The megabucks opera import, the shimmering string quartet, the spangle-gowned counter-tenor? Well, you know – there’s some such stuff on offer in Sydney throughout every year. And it does not bring the masses out of their homes. This year we were to have a festival brimming with high-quality acts that lots and lots of people might enjoy.

It is simply not true that all good art requires a university degree in discernment; and I am guessing, at this early stage in the unfolding of his third Sydney Festival, that this is Fergus Linehan's point.

Focusing on the common ground between music and movement (one could simply say ‘song and dance’) Linehan is not only offering us some splendid one-off gigs, but certain curatorial drivers are already beginning to emerge. For example: let’s ask ourselves in a few days – having encountered the national dance company of Spain and the works of half a dozen small-scale (big in imagination) Australian contemporary dance troupes what this festival tells us about our flag carrier The Australian Ballet. Clearly I am lighting a wick here.

And how high does art have to be if last night’s Carmody concert cannot be described as a pinnacle?

Festivals are not just programmed events – they are experiences, many stumbled upon by chance. The more any of us give to a festival, the more we get back. In theory anyway and mostly in practice.

Floating out of last night’s concert my mate Todd and I decided a celebratory drink and a judicial chinwag was due. We stumbled off to the voluptuously de-contextualised Marble Bar underneath Sydney’s Hilton. The gods were kind. First arrived the Drones, then the Herd. Soon after, Missy Higgins, Tex Perkins, Sara Storer, Paul Kelly, Dan Kelly, the Pigram Brothers, the back-up band!

It is rare to stumble upon an opportunity to lift glasses with artists who have just taken you on a ride through the heavens and kiss the hems of their gowns. Lol - It’s been a longtime since I’ve crawled for celebrity signatures, but the opportunity was too good. This was a night of nights. And no, since you ask: the multi-scribbled upon CD is not going up on e-bay any time in the near future. In fact, I’m playing it now as I write.


Images:
Top Left - Kev Carmody. Photo - Adrian Cook
Centre Right - Steve Kilbey
Bottom Left - Missy Higgins