Bestowed with the title of "Songwriter of the Year" by the Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA) for the Christine Anu-treated "Island Home", Neil Murray has finally been heaped with some official recognition for his tireless work over the years. A long-standing fixture on the live music scene here and an ardent proclaimer of the beauty and rights of the indigenous people of the world, Murray has not only cranked out songs for other performers - as well as working with the reputed Warumpi Band - but he has also undertaken prose and poetry writing, as well as penning tunes for his own recordings, the most recent of which is the new album, Dust.
Dust is an offering which takes Murray's picturesque tales of everyday life and the concerns therein, and fashions them into one cohesive work which sweeps across a myriad of different styles. But boil his musical work down, and Murray suggests that he is part of a new way of looking at the age-old movement called 'folk'.
"It's the people's music essentially," Murray explains. "I'm finding that folk music might be a more applicable term for a lot of the songs that I do [now], although the commonly accepted term of 'folk music' conjures up ideas of bush ballads or Irish-influenced music or Scottish music. But I think it's more than that. I feel that I'm part of a cultural continuum, forging an identity for contemporary music
that's folk but still has an indigenous stance to it. People say 'Oh you sound so Australian'. I don't try to sound Australian, it just so happens that I am Australian. I tend to write about what happens to me, what I observe. And because I've lived in Australia, these are the things that come out."
Last year, Murray travelled through Europe with the Warumpi Band, and he laughs as he explains the upshot of that overseas jaunt. "I got two songs out of that trip," he says, "and both of those songs were about Australia. I got the inspiration from being overseas and being homesick, and really panicking -'I hope we're gonna make it home' - you know? I really came to appreciate this country; I liked it over there but I could never live there. I really strongly identify with this land, and I think sometimes you have to go away to really realise that."
Murray's travels have also taught him that there is a common "world-view philosophy" regarding how we must treat the earth, a respect that is held by indigenous people and those who live close to the land right across the planet. It is the denial of that respect for the land which is one of Murray's greatest concerns, and his music aims to help rectify complacency or even that which exists at worst - the outright destruction of nature.
"There's a lot of things that worry me," he states, "just about taking care of this country, and trying to engender a consciousness of shared responsibility, which the song on the album 'Native Born' tries to do. We have a sacred duty to look after this environment, and we can't rip the guts out of the country for madness or profiteering, at the expense of future well being for our children and for the land and the wildlife and everything else. It's the feeling that we're al interconnected with all living things," he continues, "and we've got to achieve a balance, or else we're squandering the earth's resources at our peril."
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