Tribute to Chris Kempster

When war drums rattle, equality challenged or the working class threatened with a thrashing, the songwriters are usually the first to rally. Chris Kempster, guitar in hand, was usually in the frontline of struggle, ready to lend a song and sing a rebel chorus. He wore his socialist banner proudly for all of his adult life including his formative years as a member of the Eureka Youth League. Like many eager political beavers his political position mellowed over the years to where it finally sat with a humanitarian stance viewing the old enemies, especially rampant capitalism and aggressive imperialism, with a knowing and disappointed eye. Chris Kempster was a compassionate man who carried the 'banner with Hannah' because he believed in a better world and that mankind was worth the fight.

He was passionate about Australia, especially the Australia as portrayed by Henry Lawson, for he saw this era as the turning point of the nation, as the population shifted from the bush to the cities and the changing of the century struck the bells of Federation. It was undoubtedly Lawson's voice for the common man that cried out to Kempster as a songwriter. In truth Lawson's poems cried out for a sympathetic working partner, someone who could fashion tunes to carry the words.

The Eureka Youth League was the favoured meeting place for radical youth in the 1940s. Essentially it was the Communist Party's youth group where sport, music and protest came together under a flying red banner. Folk singing was a major part of EYL gatherings and, understandably for an organization interested in cultural protection, singing Australian songs as an important element. A glance through any of the socialist songbooks of the time shows bush songs sitting side by side with Solidarity Forever and The Internationale. By the late 1940s folk music had also been 'discovered' by tin-pan-alley and by the early 1950s it was booming. Chris Kempster had joined The Bush Music Club in Sydney and had been persuaded by its driving force, the collector, visionary and fellow Eureka Youth league graduate, John Meredith, to join the Club's pioneering bush music performance group and so he became a member of The Bushwhackers in 1953. This was the first visible band, complete with button accordion, tea-chest bass, tin whistle and harmonica, to interpret Australia's bush dance and song tradition and definitely not the last. Chris Kempster played guitar and performed on the Wattle label's 75-rpm release of 'The Drover's Dream' which sold an astonishing 20,000 copies in 1956.

In 1953 the Bushwhackers joined the cast of New Theatre's production of a new work by Dick Diamond called Reedy River. Originally commissioned by the Melbourne New Theatre the play is set in the aftermath of the 1890s shearing strike, one of the most monumental labour strikes of our history, which saw the Shearer's Union almost destroyed, its leaders goaled and its membership dazed. Reedy River is full of colourful characters, great songs and high drama as it tells of the Union's struggle and solidarity. Chris Kempster lasting contribution was to set a wonderful tune to Henry Lawson's poem Reedy River. In 2002 four of the original Bushwhackers: Alex hood, Cecil Grivas, Harry Kay and Chris Kempster performed in a Reedy River reunion at the national Folk Festival, Canberra, celebrating this landmark play's 50th anniversary.

Chris Kempster kept putting poems to music contributing some of the classics of the Australian folk revival including 'Sailor Home From The Sea' (a collaboration with Dorothy Hewitt), 'Cane Killed Abel – but it won't kill me' (a collaboration with Merv Lilley) and a whole catalogue of Lawson works, which he eventually edited into a book 'The Songs of Henry Lawson'.

He also kept performing, especially when he retired from his school-teaching days, and eventually joined my group The Larrikins. Chris was a 'natural larrikin' and toured with the group and made several ABC radio productions. He was also the ideal band member with a 'she'll be right' attitude and a strong music line that complimented the group's serious attempts to redefine Australian traditional music.