RIP Ruby Hunter

[the_future_modernes]

According to this site on Aussie rock musicians Ruby Hunter was the first Aborginal woman to record solo in the history of Australia music.

Her Wikipedia gives slightly more information.

She was a member of the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal nationality, and often performed with her partner, Archie Roach, whom she met at the age of 16, while both were homeless teenagers.^[3] She received two ARIA Award nominations, for Best Indigenous Release for Thoughts Within in 1995, and Best Blues & Roots Album for Feeling Good in 2000, respectively.

Hunter won Deadlys in 2000 for Female Artist of the Year, 2003 for Outstanding Contribution to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Music and 2004 for Excellence in Film & Theatrical Score. She made her acting debut in One Night the Moon. With Archie Roach and Paul Grabowsky she wrote and performed the concert "Ruby's Story", which tells her life story through song and spoken word.^MORE

Her voice is deep and sends shivers down your spine...

Ruby Hunter with Paul Hester - ain't no time for me to ever complain

Apparently she died of a heart attack on Feb 18 this year Australian Broadcasting Network

In an interview with the ABC's Talking Heads in 2008, she revealed her proudest moment was when she released her first album, Thoughts Within, in 1994.

"I asked one of my brothers to name this album. He came back, I said: 'So what do you think, brother?' He said: 'Oh, you know what sister? I never knew you had those thoughts within'," she said.

In her lifetime, Hunter was nominated for two ARIA Awards - best Indigenous release and best blues and roots album.

'A great Australian'

In 2004, Roach and Hunter collaborated with Paul Grabowsky and the Australian Art Orchestra to produce Ruby's Story - a musical documenting Hunter's own life and search for identity.

The production won the Deadly Award for excellence in film and theatrical score.

Hunter also won a Deadly in 2000 for female artist of the year and in 2003 for outstanding contribution to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music. MORE

Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter - Kutjeri Lady

The interview with ABC's Talking Heads Programme is Here.

Award winning singer/songwriters Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter met as homeless teenagers, using alcohol to ease their suffering as members of Australia's stolen generation. Their shared passion for music and performing has taken them around the world and seen them share the stage with the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Armatrading, Billy Bragg and Tracy Chapman.
PETER THOMPSON: Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter are a singer/songwriter team of extraordinary spirit. Archie's song, 'Took the Children Away' Brought him instant fame and two ARIA awards. 'Ruby's Story' was called an uplifting affirmation of the human spirit. Together, their journey has been one of healing through music, love and reconnecting with family. Both members of the Stolen Generation, Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter were homeless when they met at the age of 16. But their powerful music straight from the heart has taken them around the world. Archie and Ruby, welcome to Talking Heads.


...


RUBY HUNTER: I was born in South Australia in the Riverland at a billabong. When I was born, I was rubbed in the ashes and held up to the moon. It was up at the Coorong and that's where I remember the music there 'cause we used to have family nights and have a sing-along. We were supposed to really actually forget about that lifestyle. But it'd come back to me in song. I was eight years of age when I was taken from the Coorong. MORE

RUBY HUNTER Down City Streets

Her Obituary in The Age

WITH the passing of Ruby Hunter, Australia has lost one of its truly great, and unique, voices. Her sound nursed somewhere at its heart a moan, a lament, which came from a deep place, a place outside of particularities of space and time, but a singularity, nonetheless.

Occasionally I was reminded of Nina Simone, but more often it evoked the red earth of the interior, a vibration, a hum, an undulation on a distant horizon line. Like all great voices, it could be turned to many uses: the determination of a woman on the way up from nowhere in Down City Streets, the patience and wisdom of an elder singing No Justice to the tune of a Bach chorale, the mother of us all when she sang her glorious children's songs to rapt audiences across the Kimberley.

Sitting by the banks of the Murray in Ngarrindjeri country late one afternoon, Ruby Hunter talked about her land and her people. ''This was our land,'' she said, ''and they took it all way from us.'' She cried quietly, and Archie Roach, her life partner, consoled her as he always did with the words, ''It's all right, Mum.''

The simple, unaffected way they expressed their love underplayed the epic journey that each of them had made; in fact, they had recently reclaimed some of that land, having bought a house in Monash, near Berri, in South Australia's riverland. Ruby's way of relating her story of descent and re-emergence, the very core of the stolen generations, was so devoid of rancour as to be more healing than a thousand apologies. (my emphasis: WHUT?)MORE

Ruby Hunter Let My Children Be