Kev Carmody

Carmody completed his Bachelor of Arts degree, then postgraduate studies and a Diploma of Education at the University of Queensland, followed by commencing a PhD in History, on the Darling Downs 1830–1860.

"I was supposed to be studying history and music, but I'd be in the library with books on everything, geology, theorems of thermodynamics. I wished I'd had the time to take every course."

- Kev Carmody

At university, Carmody had used music as a means of implementing oral history in tutorials, which led to his later career.

Kevin Daniel Carmody (born 1946), better known by his stage name Kev Carmody, is an Aboriginal Australian singer-songwriter and musician, a Murri man from northern Queensland.

Kevin Daniel Carmody was born in 1946 in Cairns, Queensland.

His father, John "Jack" Carmody, was a second-generation Irish descendant and his mother, Bonny, an Aboriginal woman of Lama Lama and Bundjalung descent, were not allowed to get married because she was Aboriginal, and they went to Cairns because "the rules were a lot slacker there" due to the large number of migrants working in the cane fields.

Jack (also known as "Bull"), had been a member of the red beret parachute commando unit in World War II, and had sustained a back injury during training.

Kevin's younger brother, Laurie, was born three and a half years later.

His family moved to southern Queensland in early 1950, and he grew up on a cattle station near Goranba (and Tara ) 70 km west of Dalby in the Darling Downs area of south eastern Queensland.

They lived in a hut with a dirt floor, and his parents worked as drovers, moving cattle along stock routes.

The boys had to be hidden from authorities for fear of being taken from their parents.

At ten years of age, Carmody and his brother were taken from their parents under the assimilation policy as part of the Stolen Generations and sent to a Catholic school in Toowoomba, after Jack and Bonny were given the choice of sending the boys to school, or Bonny and the boys being sent permanently to live on Great Palm Island.

The school was housed in an old army barracks on about 90 ha and run by nuns.

Carmody said that the boys did not do much schoolwork, but spent their time feeding chickens, collecting eggs, "hauling in coal for the kitchen stoves and buttering bread for the nuns".

They were allowed to visit their parents twice a year.

He did not learn to read until he was 11 years old.

After schooling, he returned to his rural roots and worked for 17 years as a country labourer, including droving, shearing, bag lumping, wool pressing and welding.

The family all pooled their earnings into the same bank account, and lived mostly off the land.

In 1967, he married Helen, with whom he has three sons; they later divorced but remain "good mates".

In 1978, at the age of 33, Carmody enrolled in university, Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education (now part of the University of Southern Queensland).

"At the night time I was always just interested in music, so I started to study music [by myself] and got to a standard, when I moved to Toowoomba and got a proper music teacher. And she said to me, 'you know, you're miles ahead of the standard they’d require to get into the music course at the University of Southern Queensland'."

- Kev Carmody

Due to his limited schooling, Carmody's reading and writing skills were not up to required university standard.

Undeterred, he suggested to the history tutor that until his writing was suitable he would present his research in a musical format accompanied by guitar.

While this was a novel approach at university, it was in line with the far older Indigenous tradition of oral history.

Although Carmody had extensive historical knowledge, learnt by oral traditions, much of it could not be found in library history books and was attributed to "unpublished works".

In the early 1980s, Carmody began his musical career.

He signed a recording contract in 1987 and his first album, Pillars of Society, was released on the Rutabagas label (a label founded by artist Frances Mahony and technologist Joe Hayes); the rights were later transferred to Larrikin Records/EMI in December 1988.

It drew heavily upon country and folk styles with tracks such as "Black Deaths in Custody" and "Thou Shalt Not Steal" describing ignorance and oppression experienced by indigenous Australians.

In the song "Thou Shalt Not Steal", Carmody draws attention to the hypocrisy of British settlers who brought Christianity to Indigenous Australians, including the commandment prohibiting theft, and yet took the land that the Aboriginal people had inhabited for more than 60,000 years.

He emphasises the importance of land to the indigenous people, "The land’s our heritage and spirit", and turns the Christian lesson given to indigenous people around: "We say to you yes, whiteman, thou shalt not steal".

A Rolling Stone (Australia) journalist, Bruce Elder, described it as "the best album ever released by an Aboriginal musician and arguably the best protest album ever made in Australia".

Pilllar of Society was nominated for a 1989 ARIA Award for Best Indigenous Release.

In subsequent recordings Carmody adopted a broad range of musical styles, from reggae to rock and roll."That first album was acoustic because we didn't have enough money for anything else, but as I went on, I was always exploring sound. One of the things he [Carmody's grandfather] said to us was, you have to learn to listen to the wind. What he was saying was, use your imagination, widen it out, be aware of things around you. You learn to listen in another way. That's the key to my music. Just opening up to that sensory perception of sound."

He is best known for the song "From Little Things Big Things Grow", which was recorded with co-writer Paul Kelly for their 1993 single.

It was covered by the Get Up Mob (including guest vocals by both Carmody and Kelly) in 2008 and peaked at number four on the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) singles charts.

Carmody has won many awards, and in 2009 was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame as well as being a recipient of the Queensland Greats Awards.

In 2019, Carmody was recipient of the JC Williamson Award at the Helpmann Awards.

He is also known for his activism for Aboriginal rights.