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Explore powerful stories at the intersection of history, culture, and music—from Aboriginal cricket pioneers and war heroes to legendary albums by Hendrix, Miles Davis, and Gurrumul. This blog dives deep into First Nations resilience, iconic protest music, and untold truths that shaped Australia and the world. Engaging, thoughtful, and unapologetically real—where powerful voices from the past meet today's social conversation.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this page contains images and names of deceased persons.
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Blak History Month: The Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Choir. Voices That Carry Culture Across Generations.
Music has always been a powerful way to share stories, preserve culture and bring people together. Few groups embody that spirit more beautifully than the Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Choir. Made up of women from remote communities across Central Australia, the choir is unlike any other. Their performances blend centuries-old Lutheran hymns with the rich sounds of Aboriginal languages including Arrarnta and Pitjantjatjara, creating a musical tradition that is both de
Groote Broadcasting
Jul 112 min read
Blak History Month: Warumpi Band; The Sound of a New Australia.
Before Indigenous music was regularly heard on mainstream radio, four young men from the remote community of Papunya were quietly changing Australian music forever. Formed in 1980, Warumpi Band became one of the country's first Aboriginal rock bands to achieve national recognition. Their music blended infectious rock rhythms with stories of Country, family and identity, creating a sound that was unmistakably Australian. What made Warumpi Band truly groundbreaking was their fe
Groote Broadcasting
Jul 42 min read
Blak History Month: The hidden history of Aboriginal stockmen and stockwomen.
This is a story that doesn't get told nearly enough — the hidden history of Aboriginal stockmen and stockwomen, and the back-breaking, brilliant, largely unacknowledged role they played in shaping rural Australia as we know it. From the earliest days of European pastoral expansion, Aboriginal people didn't just work the land — they made the industry possible. Station owners conceded they could not survive without Aboriginal knowledge and labour — pastoralists were even willin
Groote Broadcasting
Jul 33 min read
NAIDOC Week is almost here — and this year is a big one. The 50th.
Most people know NAIDOC Week as a time of celebration. Flags flying, art, dancing, community events, kids learning culture at school. And it absolutely is all of that. But the story of how it began? That's something every Australian should know. Because NAIDOC didn't start as a party. It started as a protest. Back in 1938, on the 150th anniversary of British colonisation, Aboriginal leaders organised what they called the Day of Mourning. While the rest of the country celebrat
Groote Broadcasting
Jun 262 min read
Artist Spotlight: Emma Donovan.
Emma Donovan is one of those artists that has the rare ability to make you feel every word they sing. A proud Gumbaynggirr and Yamatji woman, Emma has spent more than two decades establishing herself as one of Australia's most respected and beloved performers. Whether she's singing soul, country, gospel or blues, there's an authenticity to her music that can't be taught. It comes from culture, family, experience and a deep connection to story. Born into the renowned Donovan m
Groote Broadcasting
Jun 201 min read
Music Spotlight | Frank Yamma
Central Australia has a sound. It's in the heat that radiates off red rock at dusk, in the dry creek beds, in the silence that stretches further than most people are comfortable with. Frank Yamma somehow put all of that into a guitar and a voice — and the result is some of the most honest music this country has ever produced. Frank was born at a waterhole in Kaltukatjara in Australia's Northern Territory and grew up in Alice Springs. His father, Isaac Yamma, was a pioneer — o
Groote Broadcasting
Jun 132 min read
Barunga Festival: What It Is, Why It Matters, and Why You Should Know About It
If you've never heard of Barunga Festival, you're not alone — but you probably should have. Every King's Birthday long weekend in June, something quietly extraordinary happens in a small Aboriginal community 80 kilometres southeast of Katherine in the Northern Territory. Thousands of people roll in from across Australia — and beyond — set up tents in the red dust, and spend three days immersed in one of the most authentic Indigenous cultural experiences this country has to of
Groote Broadcasting
Jun 84 min read
Music Spotlight | BRIGGS.
Some artists make music. Briggs makes history. And he's been doing it so consistently, so fearlessly, for so long, that it's easy to forget just how much ground this bloke has covered. Adam Briggs — born and raised in Shepparton, Victoria — is a proud Yorta Yorta man, and he wears that identity literally: the name of his people is tattooed on both forearms. "So every time I rock the mic," he's said, "people know that I am representing." That says everything about where he's c
Groote Broadcasting
May 303 min read
Artist Spotlight: William Barton.
He grew up on a cattle station outside Mt Isa, picked up a didgeridoo at age seven, and somehow ended up performing at Westminster Abbey, Anzac Cove, and the Beijing Olympics. That's William Barton, and his story is something else entirely. For anyone who hasn't heard of him — you're about to want to fix that. William started learning the yidaki from his uncle, Arthur Peterson, an Elder of the Wannyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga people. It wasn't a formal lesson. It was a handover
Groote Broadcasting
May 233 min read
Artist Spotlight: Ziggy Ramo
An award-winning musician, writer and producer of Wik and Solomon Islander heritage, Ziggy Ramo has become one of the most fearless and important voices in contemporary Australian music. Through hip hop, soul, spoken word and razor-sharp storytelling, he’s built a body of work that confronts racism, identity, history and healing — without ever losing sight of humanity. What makes Ziggy stand out is his ability to balance power with vulnerability. One moment he’s delivering bl
Groote Broadcasting
May 161 min read
65,000 years of unbroken connection to Country.
When Aboriginal people were already living, cooking, making tools and painting on the walls of rock shelters across this continent — the pyramids of Egypt were still 60,000 years from being built. Rome didn't exist. Neither did Greece. The entirety of what we call Western civilisation hadn't yet formed as a concept. First Nations Australians were here. Not just surviving. Flourishing. The evidence isn't mythological — though oral traditions carry their own profound authority.
Groote Broadcasting
May 112 min read
Artist Spotlight: Alan Dargin.
He started at age five, with a hundred-year-old instrument and a grandfather's hands guiding his own. Born in Wee Waa, New South Wales in 1967, Dargin began learning the didgeridoo at age five from his grandfather, who passed down the instrument as a treasured family heirloom — cut from a variety of bloodwood tree that has since gone extinct. Those early lessons weren't just music lessons. They were a transmission of culture, story, and identity across generations. The didger
Groote Broadcasting
May 92 min read
We are now LIVE at 5.00am!
New broadcasting times are now in effect and don't forget the sensational sista's Amathea and Jaslyn will be starting their new Daily Show soon! Stay tuned.
Groote Broadcasting
May 41 min read
'The Loner' by Vic Simms.
Some albums are polished in studios. Others are forged under pressure — and 'The Loner' is about as raw and real as it gets. Recorded in just one hour inside Bathurst Gaol in 1973, with a mobile studio rolled in by RCA, this wasn’t meant to be a landmark moment in Australian music. It was supposed to be a public relations exercise for the prison system. Instead, it became something else entirely. Vic Simms — a Bidjigal man and inmate at the time — turned that brief window int
Groote Broadcasting
May 22 min read
Indigenous art is having a moment. A big one.
Indigenous art is having a moment. A big one. And that's both wonderful and complicated. Walk into any gallery in a major Australian city right now and you'll find stunning First Nations artwork commanding serious attention — and serious money. The world has woken up to the power, the depth and the extraordinary beauty of the oldest living art tradition on the planet. That recognition is long overdue and genuinely exciting. But here's where it gets uncomfortable. An estimated
Groote Broadcasting
Apr 302 min read
Anzac Day 2026.
This year, we want to make sure we remember some of the people who have too often been left out of that promise. When Australia answered the call in 1914, thousands of young men signed up to serve a country they believed in. Among them were an estimated 1,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who served with the Australian Imperial Force in the First World War. The precise figure will never be known — because a number of those who served changed their names and bir
Groote Broadcasting
Apr 252 min read
Artist Spotlight: Budjerah
If you haven’t been paying attention to Budjerah yet, now’s the time. The platinum-selling, ARIA Award-winning artist — a Coodjinburra man from the Bundjalung nation — has quietly become one of the most compelling voices in Australian music. What hits you first is that voice. It’s rich, soulful, and carries an emotional weight well beyond his years. There’s a sincerity to the way Budjerah sings — no over-singing, no gimmicks — just pure feeling. Whether he’s leaning into stri
Groote Broadcasting
Mar 281 min read
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon: A proud Yorta Yorta woman, Soprano, Composer, and Educator.
Few figures in Australian music have reshaped the cultural landscape with as much vision and determination as Deborah Cheetham Fraillon. A proud Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer, and educator, Cheetham Fraillon has spent decades redefining what opera can mean in Australia — expanding the art form to include First Nations languages, stories, and performers who had long been excluded from its stage. Her journey into music is inseparable from her personal history. Removed fr
Groote Broadcasting
Mar 142 min read
Today is International Mother Language Day and what better way to celebrate and promote linguistic and cultural diversity...
Known affectionately as the “Queen of the Bandrarl Ngadu (Fitzroy River) Delta,” Kankawa Nagarra stands as one of the most spiritually resonant voices in Australian music. A Walmatjarri, Gooniyandi and Bunuba Elder from the Kimberley, Nagarra is not an artist shaped by industry ambition or commercial expectation. She is, first and foremost, a custodian of culture — a singer whose music carries Country, memory, and lived experience with rare authority. Kankawa Nagarra’s life s
Groote Broadcasting
Feb 212 min read
The Stolen Generations: The effects did not end when the policies did.
In the quiet spaces between official records and family memory lies one of the most confronting truths of Australia’s modern history. Between 1910 and the 1970s, it is estimated that as many as one in three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families under formal government policies of assimilation. These children would later become known as the Stolen Generations — though the term itself barely captures the scale, duration, and hu
Groote Broadcasting
Feb 112 min read
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