Judy Small (advocator of justice & peace) one of our finest Australian Singer/Songwriters.
Janice: Judy, who was active on the scene when you started playing and singing and were there specific venues that were favoured? For example when I began going to hear music as a teenager I'd go with my cousins to small folk clubs in the city or the Trad Jazz venues like the Iron Workers Building which I think was in George Street.
Judy: When I started playing in the Sydney folk scene in 1973, there were 2 major folk clubs in the city that I was aware of.
One was Cellar Folk (which may still have been called PACT Folk then), which was on Friday nights in the basement of the old YWCA building in Liverpool Street and where the music was pretty much contemporary folk (ie acoustic singer-songwriters or singers who sang the acoustic songs that were on the radio eg those of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan etc).
Judy: Well I think Tom Paxton said it best when he wrote “Peace will come, let it begin with me”.
Janice: Through the lens of your experience both as a spokesperson on the world stage and as a much loved artist in Australia your legacy is vast and multifarious..... this brief interview I hope will encourage readers to delve further into your extraordinary contributions. Thank you Judy for taking the time to share some of your insights with us.
Judy: Thank you so much for this opportunity Janice. As you know, I’ve been a fan of you and your work since the 60s and it’s wonderful to catch up with you like this.
Mar 23, 2022
Jun 3, 2016
Judy: When I started playing in the Sydney folk scene in 1973, there were 2 major folk clubs in the city that I was aware of.
One was Cellar Folk (which may still have been called PACT Folk then), which was on Friday nights in the basement of the old YWCA building in Liverpool Street and where the music was pretty much contemporary folk (ie acoustic singer-songwriters or singers who sang the acoustic songs that were on the radio eg those of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan etc).
The main performers I remember from that part of the scene were Mike McLellan, Marion Henderson, Doug Ashdown, Bob Hudson, Margret RoadKnight, Kate Delaney, Alan Ward, Dan Johnston and a really good guitarist whose first name was Lee but I can’t remember his surname, although there must have been others I don’t recall. That’s where I played my very first professional folk gig, well before I started writing songs, and I sang songs by writers like Melanie Safka, Janis Ian & co as well as the above and others, but not trad folk.
The main performers I remember from that part of the scene were and a really good guitarist whose first name was Lee but I can’t remember his surname, although there must have been others I don’t recall.
That’s where I played my very first professional folk gig, well before I started writing songs, and I sang songs by writers like Melanie Safka, Janis Ian & co as well as the above and others, but not trad folk.
The other club was “The Liz”, the traditional folk music club that met every Wednesday night in the upstairs bar of the Elizabeth Hotel in Elizabeth Street.
The other club was “The Liz”, the traditional folk music club that met every Wednesday night in the upstairs bar of the Elizabeth Hotel in Elizabeth Street.
The people who ran that were very suspicious of the contemporary folk movement and I had to go back and learn or relearn a whole lot of traditional English, Scottish, Irish, American and Australian folk songs in order to play there, although later in the 70s and early 80s they were more welcoming of the music of contemporary singer-songwriters who wrote songs about more modern issues in the folk tradition like our Eric Bogle, Phyl Lobl, and Bernard Nolan, and people like Ralph McTell, Frankie Armstrong and Dick Gaughan from the UK.
I have some great memories of those days and remember one particular Wednesday night after the pub had closed and about 20 of us stood outside in Elizabeth Street sing “Bright Morning Star’s A-Rising” in about 8 part harmonies. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven!
The two clubs were quite separate when I started but then others sprung up, like the Kirk Gallery in Redfern and Blacktown Folk Club and one in a pub in Flinders Street, and the partition between strictly traditional and contemporary folk seemed to become a bit more porous.
It was only after listening to Eric and Phyl in particular that I realised it was acceptable to write Australian songs in the folk tradition about the contemporary issues I wanted to sing about. There were Americans doing that, like Dylan and Joan Baez of course, and Tom Paxton and Si Kahn, but it was listening to the Australians who sang about contemporary issues that mattered that got me into the kind of songwriting I later became known for.
Janice: You are a voice of awareness sharing songs of the ever present need for social justice. You've walked the talk as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. What do you feel we can individually and collectively bring into being as an expression of peace in our communities ?
The two clubs were quite separate when I started but then others sprung up, like the Kirk Gallery in Redfern and Blacktown Folk Club and one in a pub in Flinders Street, and the partition between strictly traditional and contemporary folk seemed to become a bit more porous.
It was only after listening to Eric and Phyl in particular that I realised it was acceptable to write Australian songs in the folk tradition about the contemporary issues I wanted to sing about. There were Americans doing that, like Dylan and Joan Baez of course, and Tom Paxton and Si Kahn, but it was listening to the Australians who sang about contemporary issues that mattered that got me into the kind of songwriting I later became known for.
Janice: You are a voice of awareness sharing songs of the ever present need for social justice. You've walked the talk as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. What do you feel we can individually and collectively bring into being as an expression of peace in our communities ?
Judy: Well I think Tom Paxton said it best when he wrote “Peace will come, let it begin with me”.
If we as individuals treat others with respect, dignity and a genuine sense of common humanity, especially those who are culturally, racially or religiously different from us or with whom we disagree politically, then peace and social justice will indeed come.
That applies to any situation, including being a judge, and I hope you’re right when you say that I walked that talk.
And one of the ways of spreading that message is through the telling of people’s stories, whether in songs, poetry, prose, theatre or other art forms, or in journalism.
The arts are how we see ourselves and our times reflected in a way that moves us, and I think it’s only when we’re truly moved that we can open our minds to different ways of thinking.
That said, we can also make our voices heard collectively when we see injustice happening and that is also very important, as long as we do it respectfully and peacefully.
The only time I think violence can be justified is when a person or a people is being attacked by an enemy who is totally impervious to moral persuasion. For instance, while Mahatma Ghandi’s nonviolent protest was a major force in bringing independence to India - even at the expense of his own life - it was only because the British cared about what the world thought of them.
Those strategies were entirely useless against the Nazi regime in Germany because that regime cared nothing about its reputation and was perfectly content to murder anyone who protested against its crimes.
So I think there are lots of things we can do.
On an individual level, we can become volunteers for organisations whose purpose is to promote peace and justice, whether legal or social, or we can write to our parliamentary representatives to bring instances of injustice to their attention, or we can donate money if we are able to assist people who need it or organisations as stated above.
And we can try to muster the courage to speak up when we see a Muslim woman being harassed because she is wearing hijab, or a homeless person being assaulted, or a child wearing clothing that identifies him as Jewish being taunted, or a person with a disability being ridiculed.
On a collective level we can join the peaceful protests against the things we see as unjust, we can vote for politicians who espouse humanitarian policies, we can contribute to social media discourse and challenge those posts which promote or sanction injustice, we can persuade our social, sporting and religious institutions to collaborate in promoting peace and social justice - and oh, so much more.
I suppose the message I’m tying to convey is that we should become involved - in our neighbourhoods, in our social and faith institutions, in our communities, in our political institutions, in national and international organisations that promote those values.
Anything really, except watch and do nothing or sit on our bums and complain!
As Edmond Burke once said: “He is a foolish man who does nothing because he can only do little”.
Janice: Through the lens of your experience both as a spokesperson on the world stage and as a much loved artist in Australia your legacy is vast and multifarious..... this brief interview I hope will encourage readers to delve further into your extraordinary contributions. Thank you Judy for taking the time to share some of your insights with us.
Judy: Thank you so much for this opportunity Janice. As you know, I’ve been a fan of you and your work since the 60s and it’s wonderful to catch up with you like this.
Janice: It is such an honour to know you Judy, thank you for sharing with us.
There are so many videos of Judy's wonderful singing and writing on her above website and on youtube. Along with those are two special videos I've just discovered which share more of her exquisite mind and depth of spirit, caring & vision.
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