The Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards is an annual series of awards nights celebrating the Australian music industry, put on by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). The event has been held annually since 1987 and encompasses the general genre-specific and popular awards as well as Fine Arts Awards and Artisan Awards, Achievement Awards and ARIA Hall of Fame – the latter were held separately from 2005 to 2010 but returned to the general ceremony in 2011. For 2010, ARIA introduced public voted awards for the first time.
2008 ARIA Hall of Fame, at Melbourne Town Hall
The music of Australia has an extensive history made of music societies. Indigenous Australian music forms a significant part of the unique heritage of a 40,000- to 60,000-year history which produced the iconic didgeridoo. Contemporary fusions of indigenous and Western styles are exemplified in the works of Yothu Yindi, No Fixed Address, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and Christine Anu, and mark distinctly Australian contributions to world music.
President George W. Bush enjoys a performance of Aboriginal song and dance during a 2007 visit to the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney with traditional instrument, the didgeridoo.
Horace Watson recording the songs of Fanny Cochrane Smith, considered to be the last fluent speaker of a Tasmanian language, 1903. Folk-singer Bruce Watson, descendant of Watson, composed a song about this picture and later performed it with singer Ronnie Summers, a descendant of Smith.
Cover to Banjo Paterson's seminal 1905 collection of bush ballads, titled The Old Bush Songs
Eric Bogle
