MUSIC

Margret RoadKnight: Singer with a Conscience

Margret RoadKnight is one of Australia's foremost singers and has a vast cult following. She is seen in numerous concerts for worthy causes across the country. GLENYS EVANS talks with Margret before her tour in support of Loudon Wainwright III.

AFTER 20 years in show business, Australian folk/blues singer Margret Roadknight is still directing her energy and music into causes such as nuclear disarmament and women's issues things that concern "the very survival of the planet." Every centimetre of Margret's 1.93m frame (6'4") seems to have a social conscience.

"I'm like a resource for the various causes that I believe in. I know that I wouldn't be able to get up and speak about issues to convince people one way or another, but what I can do I do through my music.

"Music allows me to reinforce ideas about important issues and to push them to bit. I wouldn't say that I could change anybody's actions this way but I hope that I can somehow guide the community in some sort of positive direction.

"I feel lucky that I have the power to contribute at that level as well as being able to contribute financially without having to dip into my own pocket by appearing at various fund-raising events.

"My music has enabled me to support things that have been important over the years, such as aboriginal land rights, nuclear disarmament and conservation. All these causes overlap in one way or another: they are all trying to make the world a little better place to live in.

"I believe in a lot of causes but right now the one that is the most important is the very survival of the planet it's a matter of priorities. I'm not even talking environmentally at this stage but more in terms of an immediate freeze on nuclear armaments followed by an international deescalation. What is going on at the moment is nuclear madness.

"It seems as if a lot of other people feel the same way about nuclear weapons and are prepared to temporarily forego other issues in the hope that they can get together and make more of an impact on the nuclear question. It's not much sense having improved child-care facilities if somebody's going to push the button.

"I support these issues because I have to be able to live with myself and what I do. For the same reason I disagree with a meaningless commercially-viable song. It would be nice to watch a song rocket up the top-40, but I want to be free to do

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what I like with my music. If I made a commercial song, I would be categorised by it and people would come to see me perform on the basis of that particular style of music. You have to be honest with people and preserve and integrate a programme."

Margret, now 40, was born and educated in Melbourne. Failing to secure a university scholarship, she joined the workforce: "Our family was poor and as I didn't manage to win a scholarship, I just couldn't go to university.

"For the first two years after I matriculated, I worked as a recreation leader I which meant that I was studying and working simultaneously. What I was actually doing was teaching art, craft and sport to kids after shool and in the school holidays.

"Like all social work jobs it was extremely underpaid. One day I looked in the wardrobe and said, Well that was a nice experiment, and that was the end of my career as a recreation leader!

It was at about that time when Margret first discovered folk music: "In those days, probably because I didn't know any better, I leaned towards the Ella Fitzgerald type of music. It really only appealed to me on a purely entertaining level. But when I discovered folk music my whole perspective changed. It had relevance, it had history and meaning. Musically I also found it more interesting as it used different scales and modes that you don't usually find in mainstream music.

"I'd always had it in the back of my mind that I would like to be a singer but up until then it was very vague and certainly no driving ambition."

Margret began singing by night and "pen-pushing" with the PMG in the daytimes: "I began to dabble in all forms of music from Italian lullabies to John Valance stuff. Pretty quickly I began to lean towards black American music: I guess I just felt more at home with it. Its influenced a lot of my ideas and attitudes about music, although I do less of it now than I used to.

"After 18 months of being a public servant by day, I took a good look around me and realised that unless I got out

there I'd still be doing exactly the same thing in 40 years' time. I decided it was time to go all the way and give full-time music a try.

"A black theatrical troupe called "Overseas Black Nativity" were playing in Melbourne at the time. I became interested in them and managed to link up with the cast to such an extent that I was actually in the throes of making an album with them.

"Before we managed to get it finished the troupe was scheduled to leave for a season in Sydney. That was all the incentive I needed to throw in my job with the PMG and head for Sydney. I suppose I was a musical groupie.

"As could be expected, a black Nativity show in February isn't really a crowddrawer and the troupe only lasted in Australia a few more weeks. The record was never finished and there I was in Sydney, with a job and a family in Melbourne that I had left. I thought that I might as well try to make it as a singer.

"The folk scene in Melbourne in 1965 was a lot different from Sydney: in Melbourne it had always been a fairly steady sort of thing whereas in Sydney it was a real fad. Suddenly everyone wanted folkmusic TV shows. I got my first TV coverage that way in a show called Folk Mood which was hosted by Leonard Teal.

Between 1965 and 1974, Margret made Sydney her permanent base: "I sang a lot then. I was full-time-well, as full-time as a singer can be. Singing is more of a week-by-week thing, so you

can't really call it full-time, I suppose Your livelihood depends on people hirin you and they usually don't hire you fo long periods of time. If you're lucky you might get a six-months' contract. It's no like most professions where you sign contract and you've got a permanent job Looking at it that way you can't really say that you're going to be a singer whe you're 80, although that's what I fully intend to do.

"It's a funny business: I think I'm lucky to be paid for indulging in my hobby. My main interests centre around music: spend a lot of time just listening to musi or going to hear other people perforn and reading about music and performers haunting second-hand music stores and going overseas and meeting my peers. It' a great life."

In 1971, Margret made her first record "It was folk sampler with all sorts o people like Jeannie Lewis, Marian Hend erson and a few other people that are no longer around in the folk scene. That yea I also did five blues songs on a traditiona jazz album which gained me some acclain with the jazz critics in America.

"My next album was a live effort a Trainers in Melbourne in 1973. All I di was the same program over two night with an audience there. It is a hell of way to make an album as you have a tap rolling of the performance and don't ge to remove all those terrible mistakes be cause the audience will get too bored i you begin to repeat songs. I learned some valuable lessons from Get Ready: I stil