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The Music Show

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All kinds of music and all kinds of musicians in conversation with Andrew Ford.

music music interviews

All Episodes

0:54:04

Marlon Williams' te reo Māori album, and canons in...

The Music Show ·

2025/04/05

Who hasn't sung a canon or round at some point in their life? 'Frère Jacques', 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' and 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree' are among the best-known children's songs and they're all meant to be sung as rounds. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, composers loved playing with canons in both sacred and profane music (some of it very profane indeed). The University of Queensland Chamber Singers has just made an album of music from the 14th to the 16th centuries,

0:54:03

Genre-defining strings with Abel Selaocoe and Aaron...

The Music Show ·

2025/04/04

Almost every description of South African singer, cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe starts with a phrase like “genre-defying”, but Abel refers to himself as genre defining. He’s here to perform with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and he brings with him a lifetime of musical influences ranging from his childhood in Sebokeng, a township outside Johannesburg, to adolescence at Soweto’s African Cultural Organisation of South Africa, to study at the Royal Northern College of Music in

0:54:06

Stasis, flux and stamina: saxophonist Adam Page can...

The Music Show ·

2025/03/29

Saxophonist, composer, improviser and master looper, Adam Page, has brought a bunch of looping pedals and instruments into our Adelaide studio to show us how he builds layers of music on the fly. Adam's just finished a run performing a live improvised score for Australian Dance Theatre’s A Quiet Language, which sampled percussive sounds captured by the dancers' bodies in rehearsal. He’s also working on a PhD exploring new techniques for improvisational looping, and occasionally

0:54:06

Allison Russell on jamming with Joni Mitchell, Annie...

The Music Show ·

2025/03/28

Allison Russell’s jazz, blues, and folk influences create a sound that seems infinitely adaptable across her many projects. Her collaborators include Joni Mitchell, Annie Lennox, Hozier, Brandi Carlile, and Orville Peck, as well as making music with her husband JT Nero, and with three other banjo players (including Music Show alumni Rhiannon Giddens and Leyla McCalla). She talks to Andy ahead of her Australian tour dates. Please note this interview makes mention of child abuse,

0:54:06

Organised Delirium: Pierre Boulez at 100

The Music Show ·

2025/03/22

People talking about the French composer Pierre Boulez tend to wear out the word iconoclast pretty quickly. To celebrate the “High Priest of Modernism” on the occasion of his centenary, The Music Show looks beyond Boulez’s clockwork reputation to the sensuality and emotion of his music and his kind, collegiate relationship with other musicians. Authors Edward Campbell and Caroline Potter, pianist Paavali Jumppanen and archive from the man himself bear witness to Boulez’s complex

0:54:06

The legacy of the Shangri-Las, and Palestinian band...

The Music Show ·

2025/03/21

Melbourne historian and musician Lisa MacKinney has written the first full-length history of 1960s New York pop group The Shangri-Las. They were responsible for hits like Leader of the Pack and Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand), teenage soap opera songs that sounded like nothing else on radio at the time.MacKinney’s book Dressed In Black: The Shangri-Las and their Recorded Legacy flips a lot of the accepted narrative about the group on its head, and argues that their talent and

0:54:07

From the Bronx to BBQs to Barkaa—the evolution of...

The Music Show ·

2025/03/15

In the years since it originated in New York City in the late 1970s, hip hop has become a global music phenomenon. Reaching Australian shores in the early 1980s, tensions quickly arose between those looking to emulate their American rap heroes, and those using their own Australian accents. Dr Niall Edwards-FitzSimons takes us on a potted history of Australian hip hop and the 'accent debate' that came to a head in the 2000s. With voices from The Music Show archives like Urthboy,

0:54:07

Anarchy and acoustics: Sex Pistols and Pistols in St....

The Music Show ·

2025/03/14

For a band that weren't around very long and only really put out one studio album, the cultural and musical impact of the Sex Pistols is staggering. Guitarist Steve Jones opens up to Andrew Ford about starting the group when he was just a kid, how it feels to be considered a guitar hero now, and why he thinks we're still talking about the band fifty years on. Sex Pistols tour Australia next month (with singer Frank Carter replacing Johnny Rotten).When a gunshot rang out in St

Nana Benz du Togo, Sauljaljui and The Joy live at...

The Music Show ·

2025/03/08

The Music Show is back on Kaurna Land at Adelaide's Botanic Park for WOMADelaide 2025, a festival celebrating music from all over the world.Named after a group of powerful grandmas in the 1970s and 80s who sold wax print fabrics at the Lomé central market and drove a Mercedes Benz, Nana Benz du Togo are a five-piece band with three female lead vocalists. PVC pipe percussion, a DIY drum kit and Korg synthesizer form their hypnotic rhythm section, and their music is inspired by their

0:54:07

Eleanor Jawurlngali, Duo Ruut and Ana Carla Maza at...

The Music Show ·

2025/03/07

Alice Keath presents The Music Show for International Women’s Day, with some of the great international and local women on the WOMADelaide line-up.Latin American pop and classical sensibilities meet in the music of Cuban cellist and singer Ana Carla Maza. She joins Alice to explain why producing her own record was an act of power in the male-dominated Latin music industry.Mudburra and Garrawa woman Eleanor Jawurlngali is based in Marlinja, in the remote Northern Territory. Her

0:54:08

Cover Story: The Times They Are A-Changin'

The Music Show ·

2025/03/01

In the final episode, for now, of Cover Story, singer and rapper Ziggy Ramo and musician and broadcaster Alice Keath look at Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ – a political anthem just vague enough to apply to the US civil rights movement, the Velvet Revolution, Perestroika, and in some cases seemingly nothing at all.Music details:The Times They Are A-Changin'Composed by Bob DylanOriginally recorded by Bob Dylan for the album The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964) on Columbia

0:54:07

Innovation and imitation: Maurice Ravel at 150

The Music Show ·

2025/02/28

Aspirations of modernity, progress and innovation drove music through the 20th century. For French composer Maurice Ravel, inspiration from (and imitation of) his peers, of the voices and styles around him, made him a true original. He pulled from Spanish music, 18th century music, Viennese waltz and jazz, and yet within seconds it’s always possible to hear Ravel’s own, distinct, voice. To mark the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth, director-composer-lyricist-translator and friend

0:54:06

Cover Story: Under The Milky Way

The Music Show ·

2025/02/22

In 1987, Steve Kilbey and Karin Jansson were living together, and armed with a joint and a piano, one night they came up with the bones of Under The Milky Way. It became a hit for The Church as part of their fifth studio album, Starfish, and since then it’s featured in almost every list of great Australian rock songs (and a fair few car ads too). On Cover Story, Andy is joined by poet, singer-songwriter and academic Kate Fagan, and Youth Group member, singer-songwriter, academic

0:54:07

Otherworldly sounds with Charm of Finches and The...

The Music Show ·

2025/02/21

Sisters Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes have been making music as Charm of Finches since they were children. Now seasoned touring artists with four albums under their belts, they swing by The Music Show studio to play live and tell Andy about the joy of singing in unison, and why they’re drawn to really dark stories. Comprised of five female musicians The Cloud Maker transports listeners through song, using cello, drums, clarinet and Taonga Pūoro (Maori Singing Treasures) to channel

0:54:06

Cover Story: Running Up That Hill

The Music Show ·

2025/02/15

In 1985, Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love album made a moderate showing in the pop charts. In 2022, the single Running Up That Hill burst back into the charts after a particularly impactful needle-drop in the Netflix show Stranger Things. So perhaps it’s no surprise that there are dozens of cover versions from around 2022 - as well as a handful from earlier in the song’s 40 year lifespan. Cover Story this week looks at some of the best, worst and weirdest, with singer and producer June

0:54:06

Richard Dawson's evocative songwriting, and...

The Music Show ·

2025/02/14

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that this program contains the name and voice of someone who has died. Written from the small shed on his allotment in Northern England, the lyrics on Richard Dawson’s new album End of the Middle are filled with small observations and rich characters. He's a prolific and verbose songwriter, likening his habit of jamming too many syllables into the end of lines with "putting too many clothes in a suitcase". Rich's record is

0:54:06

Cover Story: Heart of Gold

The Music Show ·

2025/02/08

“This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch”, said Neil Young about his only major hit, Heart of Gold, from the 1972 album Harvest. Whether or not the dozens of artists who’ve covered it since consider it “middle of the road”, they’ve certainly taken it right off the beaten track. Andy’s guest analysts in this second edition of our new Cover Story series are singer-songwriters and broadcasters Henry Wagons and Georgia

0:54:04

An obscure orchestra and an opera for the dead

The Music Show ·

2025/02/07

Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra has more of an ethos than a sound. A twenty five piece indie band with constantly evolving membership, it began as a solo project by Matt Hsu, whose values and “punk-trained” composition shine through on not one but two new albums released on the same day: Noodle, and Forest Party.Opera for the Dead (祭歌) is a "contemporary Chinese cyber opera" that explores cultural practices around death and grieving. Guzheng player and in-demand collaborator Mindy

0:53:50

Cover Story: Lay All Your Love On Me

The Music Show ·

2025/02/02

Metal, marimbas, vampires and EDM: ABBA’s Lay All Your Love On Me as you’ve never heard it before, with producer Paul Mac and composer Alice Chance.This is the first episode of Cover Story, a new series from The Music Show in which Andy and his guests take songs of the popular music canon and examine their cover versions, for better, worse, and weirder. Music details:Lay All Your Love On MeComposed by Benny Andersson & Björn UlvaeusOriginally recorded by ABBA for the album

0:53:49

The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band and remembering...

The Music Show ·

2025/01/31

British singer and songwriter Marianne Faithfull has died at the age of 78. In 1996, Andy spoke to her about finding her true voice, why she was drawn to the music of Kurt Weill and the Weimar Republic, and why she was wrong about The Rolling Stones.Armed with homemade instruments and a larrikin spirit, Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band were mainstays of Melbourne's alternative music scene in the 1970s. Brothers and founding members Jim and Mic Conway are the subjects of a new

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