Gary Forrester

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Gary Forrester

Forrester in 2008
Born July 3, 1946(1946-07-03)
Decatur, Illinois
Occupation Musician, writer
Nationality New Zealand, Australia, USA
Genres Novels, poetry, bluegrass
Literary movement Post modern, deconstruction
Influences
Official website

Gary Forrester (born in the United States, 1946) is a New Zealand-Australian musician,[1] composer,[1] novelist,[2][3] and poet.[4][5][6][7][8][9] He was profiled by Random House Australia (Australian Country Music, 1991) as one of the major figures in the Australian music scene during the 1980s and 1990s.[1] Also a law professor,[10][11] he represented Indian tribes in securing restoration legislation through the United States Congress;[12][13] authored a text on American Indian law;[14] and wrote numerous articles on the rights of indigenous peoples, the environment, and other legal topics.[15]

Contents

[edit] Bluegrass music

Forrester’s musical compositions were recorded (under his stage name Eddie Rambeaux) on the albums Dust on the Bible (RCA Records, 1987), Uluru (Larrikin Records, 1988) and Kamara (Troubadour Records, 1990).[16][17][18][19] In 1988, his single “Uluru”[20] (the Aboriginal name for Australia’s central Ayers Rock) was featured on two national commemorative albums by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC), as “the cream of a very rich mix” of Australian country music.[21][22][23] The ABC observed: “Like our landscape, the history of Australia is best told by our poets, and this recording offers a unique slice... of our bushland, our people, our dreams, and our extraordinary sense of humour.”[21]

Random House Australia’s 1991 profile declared that “the most striking aspect of the albums, apart from their frequency, is the exceptionally high standard of songwriting.”[1][24] Australian Country Music observed that the bluegrass band fronted by Forrester (as lead singer and guitarist), the Rank Strangers,[25][26][27] “have a musical immediacy that typifies the best of bluegrass and recalls such players as The Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe.”[1]

According to Country Beat, Australia’s country music journal, Dust on the Bible was “one of the best bluegrass-country albums released in Australia” in 1987, and Forrester was “one of the best songwriters living in Australia.”[25][26][27]

In 1988, the Rank Strangers swept the Australian Gospel Music Awards in Tamworth, New South Wales, winning Best Group, Best Male Vocalist, and Best Composition.[1] In 1989 and 1990, Dust on the Bible and Uluru were finalists (top five) in the overall Australian Country Music Awards.[1] In 1990, the Rank Strangers finished second in the world (to a Czech band) in an international competition sponsored by the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), Nashville, Tennessee.[24][1]

Forrester led the Rank Strangers on tours of Australia and America,[23][28][1][16] sharing billings with bluegrass legends Bill Monroe, Alison Krauss,[29] Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris, Tony Rice, and many others. The American tour included “successful appearances at the Station Inn in Nashville [with country-folk icon Townes Van Zandt] and the IBMA Fan Fest in Owensboro, Kentucky,”[16][30] as well as headlining at the Louisville Bluegrass and American MusicFest in Kentucky, then “the largest [acoustic] music festival in the USA.”[31]

Bluegrass Unlimited, the oldest and arguably most influential journal of bluegrass music[32] (based in Nashville, Tennessee), declared that “the Rank Strangers have a unique angle on bluegrass music, and ought to be proud of making their own brand of music come out on top in the Land Down Under.”[18] BU described Uluru as “one of the most intellectually stimulating bluegrass works of recent years, and it cannot be restricted to mere national boundaries.”[17]

Britain’s country music newspaper, International Country Music News, noting the band’s successes at Australia’s National Country Music Festival in Tamworth, New South Wales, found the compositions contained “archetypal elements of nostalgia, humour and religion,” as well as themes that were “contemporary and Australian in influence.”[33] International music critic Eberhard Finke, writing in the German magazine Bluegrass-Bühne, identified the source of some of the compositions: “In 1987 when his grandfather died in Illinois, he put his grief into writing songs. Not that they are sad songs - there are swinging happy ones, with plenty of religious overtones that brought him closer to his grandfather's legacy. He tuned his guitar to DADGBD, making the G-run more difficult, but better suiting his words and melodies.”[34]

Houseboating in the Ozarks, 2003
Houseboating in the Ozarks, 2003

[edit] Novels and poetry

Following the demise of the Rank Strangers in the 1990s, Forrester turned to writing novels and poetry, with a focus on music and family.[2] Houseboating in the Ozarks (Dufour Editions, 2006), which includes fictional accounts of a bluegrass band, is the story of a circular journey through the American Midwest, with reflective detours to Australia, South America, Japan, and Italy. Houseboating in the Ozarks meanders through tribal and Western spiritual traditions, including those of Aboriginal Australia and Lakota sun dances in Green Grass, South Dakota, led by Yuwipi medicine man Frank Fools Crow. A 2006 review in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found Houseboating in the Ozarks idiosyncratic, but still engaging: an autobiographical "extended meditation on the difficulty of preserving familial and social memory, and sustaining and transmitting values and culture in our mobile, throwaway society.”[35]

Begotten, Not Made, his second novel, recounts the travels of a wandering musician and his deaf sidekick, shuffling along on a doomed walking marathon from New York to San Francisco in the 1920s. A lengthy extract from Begotten, Not Made was published in 2007 by the University of Nebraska Press, in Scoring from Second,[36] an anthology featuring the works of “thirty accomplished writers”[37][38] from North America, including Michael Chabon, Andre Dubus, and others.

Poems from Forrester’s 2008 New Zealand book of verse, The Beautiful Daughters of Men: A Novella in Short Verse from Tinakori Hill, have appeared in prominent journals including the South Dakota Review,[4] Poetry New Zealand,[5]JAAM (Just Another Art Movement),[7][8] and the Earl of Seacliffe Art Workshop.[6] The complete poems have been accepted for publication in The Legal Studies Forum, a journal established by the American Legal Studies Association to promote humanistic, critical, trans-disciplinary legal studies, and featuring works of poetry, essays, memoirs, stories, and criticism.[39] The Beautiful Daughters is the tale of two migrants to New Zealand, a woman from Chechnya and a dying man.

[edit] Representation of US Indian tribes

Forrester learned bluegrass music in the early 1980s from two Lakota Indians, Cheeto Mestes and Mervin Frazier,[19][12][24] while defending Indian tribal rights[12] in South Dakota. During these years, while living on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, he also advised members of the American Indian Movement, including activist Kenny Kane[40] and others, and helped Lakota clients, including Kane, Madonna Thunder Hawk, and spiritual leader Sidney Uses Knife Keith, prepare for interviews and participation in Peter Matthiessen's landmark 1983 book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.[41]

As Director of the Native American Program for Oregon Legal Services (NAPOLS) in the mid-1980s, he represented several American Indian tribes, notably as tribal attorney assisting the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Klamath Tribes before the United States Congress in securing federal legislation restoring treaty rights following generations of “termination.”[13][42] In representing these tribal governments before Congress, he collaborated with activist (and later Congresswoman) Elizabeth Furse, as well as tribal leaders including Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) and Charles Kimball (Klamath).

His text Digest of American Indian Law: Cases and Chronology[14] derived from his Oregon lectures at the Northwestern School of Law in Portland. He also lectured at the University of Melbourne,[43][11] [44] the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana,[12][11] and Victoria University of Wellington, and wrote extensively on indigenous rights and other matters.[15]

[edit] Life

Playing mandolin with New Orleans pick-up band
Playing mandolin with New Orleans pick-up band

Gary Forrester was born in Decatur, Illinois, “the soy-bean capital of the world.”[45] He grew up in central Illinois,[46] but spent most of his adult life overseas.

His father, an Irish-American basketball and baseball coach, was inducted into the Quincy University Hall of Fame for his ground-breaking work on behalf of African-American athletes in the racially-segregated 1950s.[47][48] His mother, a primary school teacher and piano player of European and African-American descent, came from a line of musicians that included the German-American violinist Otto Funk, who gained an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for playing the fiddle from New York to San Francisco.[19][49][50][51][52][53] (The “Walking Fiddler's” journey was chronicled in Forrester's second novel, Begotten, Not Made.)

After graduating from Tuscola High School in 1964, Forrester worked his way through university by farming, life-guarding, and stacking bottles at a Kraft Food plant. He became a conscientious objector and anti-war activist during the Viet Nam conflict, and performed alternative service in the Peace Corps teaching mathematics in Guyana, South America.

Following an M.A. in English and a law degree, Forrester emigrated to Australia, where he taught at the University of Melbourne[12] and befriended Aboriginal leader Brian Kamara Willis[54] in Alice Springs. Through Kamara Willis, Forrester became interested in the rights of indigenous peoples, and left Australia in 1980 to work on Indian reservations[12] in the USA. (The album Kamara is dedicated to the memory of Kamara Willis.)

Upon the successful restoration of the Grand Ronde and Klamath tribes,[13][42] Forrester wrote his book on Indian law[14] and returned to Australia to form the Rank Strangers and represent Aboriginal clients[55] and others. He was also politically active, advising Australian Democrats leaders Senator Don Chipp and Senator Janine Haines in regard to the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio and the Democrats' successful campaign to save the Franklin River in Tasmania.[56]

Throughout the 1990s, with the assistance of international WWOOFERS ("Willing Workers on Organic Farms"), he and his family (including six children) operated an 80-acre organic farm in an Australian eucalypt forest in Shire of Hepburn, Victoria, based on principles developed by permaculture designer and fellow Shire of Hepburn resident David Holmgren.[57] During this time, he also worked with Father Bob Maguire on behalf of homeless children in Melbourne, studied theology under Veronica Lawson RSM[58] at the Australian Catholic University, and wrote weekly newspaper columns in Central Victoria.[59]

In 2000, Forrester accepted a professorship at the Law School of the University of Illinois.[11] In 2006, following the completion of his first two novels and several years of anti-war protests against the USA’s invasion of Iraq,[60] he and his family left America to live on Tinakori Hill in Wellington, New Zealand, where he wrote the poems collected in The Beautiful Daughters of Men. In 2007-08, he worked as a lawyer for Te Komihana O Nga Tari Kawanatanga, and lectured in law (beginning in 2008) at Victoria University of Wellington.

Forrester's life has been fictionalized, as the character "Skidmore," in the works of Philip F. Deaver, winner of the 1986 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction for his story collection Silent Retreats.[61] See [5].

[edit] Selected bibliography

  • Forrester, Gary. Houseboating in the Ozarks. Dufour Editions (2006) [ISBN 978-0802313416] (hardcover); [ISBN 0802313418] (paperback)
  • Forrester, Gary and H. Barry Holt. Digest of American Indian Law: Cases and Chronology. Fred B. Rothman & Co. (1990) [ISBN 083770684-x].
  • Forrester, Gary. “Begotten, Not Made.” Scoring from Second, P. F. Deaver (ed.) University of Nebraska Press (2007) [ISBN 0803259913].
  • Forrester, Gary. “The Beautiful Daughters of Men: A Novella in Short Verse from Tinakori Hill.” The Legal Studies Forum, Volume XXXIII, No. 1, West Virginia University (2009), ISSN: 08945993 (a journal established by the American Legal Studies Association to promote humanistic, critical, trans-disciplinary writing, and featuring works of poetry, essays, memoirs, stories, and criticism).

[edit] Selected discography

  • Dust on the Bible. RCA (Nicholls and Dimes) (1988) (finalist, Australian Country Music Awards)
  • That’s Australia. Larrikin Records (Australia) (1988) (composite album produced by ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) television
  • Uluru. Larrikin Records (Australia) (1989) (finalist, Australian Country Music Awards)
  • Kamara. Troubadour Records (Australia) (1990)
  • Music Deli. Larrikin Records (Australia), Larrikin LRF 227 (1988) (composite album of music "borrowing from different traditions and creating new forms")

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Latta, David, Australian Country Music (Random House Australia, 1991), [ISBN 0 09 182581 4].
  2. ^ a b Houseboating in the Ozarks, Dufour Editions, 2006, [ISBN 978-0802313416] (hardcover), [ISBN 0802313418] (paperback).
  3. ^ Begotten, Not Made, University of Nebraska Press (2007) (extended extract appears in Scoring from Second, pp. 129-46, [ISBN 0803259913]).
  4. ^ a b See, e.g., “Sitting Bull Hegira,” South Dakota Review'', The University of South Dakota, Fall 2007, p. 8.
  5. ^ a b See, e.g., “Unrequited,” Poetry New Zealand, Vol. 36, February 2008.
  6. ^ a b See, e.g., “Mockingbird,” Poetrywall, Earl of Seacliffe Art Workshop, September 2007, [ISBN 1-86942-095-0].
  7. ^ a b See, e.g., “Fleamarket,” JAAM ("Just Another Art Movement") September 2008.
  8. ^ a b See, e.g., “Homo Sapiens Neandertalis,” JAAM ("Just Another Art Movement") September 2008.
  9. ^ All from The Beautiful Daughters of Men: A Novella in Short Verse from Tinakori Hill, The Legal Studies Forum, Volume XXXIII, No. 1, West Virginia University (2009), ISSN: 08945993 (a journal established by the American Legal Studies Association to promote humanistic, critical, trans-disciplinary writing, and featuring works of poetry, essays, memoirs, stories, and criticism).
  10. ^ University of Melbourne (senior tutor), 1976-80; Northwestern School of Law (Portland, Oregon), 1983-85; University of Illinois, 2000-03; Victoria University of Wellington (lecturer), 2008.
  11. ^ a b c d “Gary Forrester’s novel follows odyssey of profane lawyer,” ISBA Bar News, Vol. 46, No. 10, April 2006 ([1]).
  12. ^ a b c d e f “Lawyering down under leads to bluegrass tunes, Rank Strangers,” Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, 22 September 1989, p. 2.
  13. ^ a b c “Grand Ronde Reservation Plan” (Gary Forrester, Tribal Attorney), November 1985 (prepared under a grant from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, pursuant to Public Law 98-165, 22 November 1983, Grand Ronde Restoration Act).
  14. ^ a b c Forrester, Gary and H. Barry Holt, Digest of American Indian Law: Cases and Chronology, Fred B. Rothman & Co. (1990), [ISBN 083770684-x].
  15. ^ a b See, e.g., “Aboriginal Land Rights,” Melbourne University Law Review'', 1986; “U.S. Indian Legal Services,” Australian Legal Services Bulletin, 1982; “The Himalaya,” Melbourne University Law Review, 1978; “Judicial Approval of Ritual Spearing,” Melbourne University Summons, 1976; “Illinois’ Capital Punishment Statute,” University of Illinois Law Forum, 1975; “Recovery for Economic Loss,” Melbourne University Summons, 1977; “The Credit Contract & Consumer Finance Act,” New Zealand Lawyer, Issue 50, October 2006; “Know Your Rights,” New Zealand Law Society Law Talk, Issue 671, July 2006; “Illinois’ Respondents’ in Discovery Statute – Federal Implications,” The Trial Journal of the Illinois Trial Lawyers’ Association, Summer 2005; “Respondents in Discovery and the Statute of Limitations,” The Trial Journal of the Illinois Trial Lawyers’ Association, Winter 2001; “Conflicting Statutes of Limitation and Municipal Liability in Illinois,” The Trial Journal of the Illinois Trial Lawyers’ Association, Spring 2001; “The Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Practices Act,” Illinois Causes of Action – Elements, Forms and Winning Tips: Estate, Business & Non-Personal Injury Actions, Chapter 2, Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education, 2002-08; "Removal and Remand from Federal Court," Illinois Causes of Action - Elements, Forms and Winning Tips: Estate, Business & Non-Personal Injury Actions, Chapter 55, Illinois Institute for Continuing Education, 2008; “Decisions Interpreting Chapter 735 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes, 5/2-801 through 5/2-806,” American Bar Association Class Action Survey, 2002-06 editions; "American Nightmare" (regarding the visionary architect Buckminster Fuller), Pacific Ecologist, April 2008.
  16. ^ a b c Bluegrass Unlimited, June 1990, p. 67.
  17. ^ a b Bluegrass Unlimited, May 1989, p.69.
  18. ^ a b Bluegrass Unlimited, April 1989, p. 59.
  19. ^ a b c “Melbourne Australia’s Rank Strangers Play It Straight,” Bluegrass Unlimited, December 1988, pp. 54-57 (feature article).
  20. ^ The song Uluru tells the story of the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance, one of Australia's most notorious murder mysteries. Forrester based his song on the 1985 book by lawyer colleague John Bryson, Evil Angels (ISBN 0-670-80993-4). Bryson's book became the basis for a major film, A Cry in the Dark, starring Meryl Streep and New Zealander Sam Neill, directed by Australian Fred Schepisi.
  21. ^ a b That’s Australia, Larrikin Records, 1988 (produced by ABC television).
  22. ^ Music Deli, Larrikin Records, Larrikin LRF 227, 1988 (noting that "the Rank Strangers from Melbourne play their own style of contemporary bluegrass").
  23. ^ a b “Strangers’ band with a bluegrass mission,” The Sun-Herald (Australia), 4 December 1988, p. 140.
  24. ^ a b c “Bluegrass artist from Tuscola gains fame down under,” Champaign-Urbana (IL) News-Gazette, 24 January 1992 (“etc./Music” section).
  25. ^ a b “Good story, good songs,” Country Beat (Australia), 2 December 1987.
  26. ^ a b “Riding high on gospel-country boom,” Daily Telegraph (Australia), 8 October 1987, p. 25.
  27. ^ a b “Strangers rank with the best,” Weekly Times (Australia), 4 November 1987, p. 55.
  28. ^ “Joining the front ranks,” Champaign-Urbana (IL) News-Gazette Weekend, 8 September 1989, p. 14.
  29. ^ Krauss, like Forrester a native of Champaign, Illinois, graciously loaned her bass player John Pennell (a Tolono, Illinois, native and a successful Nashville songwriter) to the Rank Strangers for their appearance at the International Bluegrass Music Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, and elsewhere.
  30. ^ “Die-hard fans call for more as bluegrass festival ends,” Owensboro (KY) Messenger-Inquirer, 25 September 1989 (incl. photo).
  31. ^ “Louisville Bluegrass and American MusicFest,” Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, MusicFest advertising section, 31 August 1989, p. 2.
  32. ^ Neil V. Rosenberg, in Bluegrass: A History, University of Illinois Press (1985) (ISBN 0-252-00265-2), sets out the history of Bluegrass Unlimited (continuously published since its inception in 1966) at pp. 224-227, and thereafter notes (at 263, 278, 280, 285, 299, 315, 329, 334, 344, 354, 362 and 367) its prominence and influence as the oldest of the nationally-distributed bluegrass magazines. As Bill C. Malone observed in Country Music USA, University of Texas Press (2002) (ISBN:0292752628), at p. 542, Bluegrass Unlimited magazine was established by highly-regarded musicians Peter Kuykendall and Richard Spottswood. It is almost exclusively devoted to bluegrass music in the USA and abroad, with occasional reference to old time country music. It is a treasure trove of information on every phase of bluegrass music - biographical articles, discographies, record and book reviews, concert and festival dates, interviews, classified ads, and songs.
  33. ^ “Blue Skies: Roots & Branches,” International Country Music News (England), January 1989, p. 10.
  34. ^ “The Rank Strangers,” Bluegrass-Buhne: Old Time & Bluegrass Magazine, 8 Jahrgang, Nr. 46, August-September 1988, pp. 34-35 (translation by Vera Christmann).
  35. ^ Northway, Martin. "Novel’s engaging style outweighs its idiosyncratic form", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2008-05-28. 
  36. ^ Scoring from Second: Writers on Baseball. ed. Philip F. Deaver, University of Nebraska Press (2007), pp. 129-46, [ISBN 0803259913].
  37. ^ “Book Review: Scoring from Second,” Mattoon-Charleston (IL) Journal Gazette Times-Courier, 17 October 2007 (http://onsportz.blogspot.com/2007/10/scoring-from-second-reveals-how.html).
  38. ^ “The writing is polished, and the sentiments will touch a chord,” Library Journal, 15 May 2007 ([2]. The selected authors for Scoring from Second included Rick Bass, David Carkeet, Ron Carlson, Michael Chabon, Andre Dubus, Leslie Epstein, William Least Heat-Moon, Lee Martin, Michael Martone, Cris Mazza, and Floyd Skloot.
  39. ^ The Beautiful Daughters of Men: A Novella in Short Verse from Tinakori Hill, The Legal Studies Forum, Volume XXXIII, No. 1, West Virginia University (2009), ISSN: 08945993.
  40. ^ See Matthiessen, Peter, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (The Viking Press 1983), pp. 543, 546, 594, ISBN 0-670-39702-4.
  41. ^ Matthiessen, Peter, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (The Viking Press 1983), ISBN 0-670-39702-4.
  42. ^ a b “Return to heritage celebrated,” The Oregonian, 22 September 1986, p. 1 (re: Klamath tribal restoration under Public Law 99-398).
  43. ^ “Exporting bluegrass music down under,” Champaign-Urbana (IL) News-Gazette, 27 September 1988, C-7.
  44. ^ ISBA Bar News, Vol. 46, No. 10, April 2006 ([3]).
  45. ^ “Decatur Journal: City Winces in the Glare of the Spotlight on Tires,” The New York Times, 25 September 2000.
  46. ^ “Talent of Tuscola returns with books,” Tuscola (IL) Review, 28 May 2006, pp. 1, B-6.
  47. ^ “He did more than coach,” Champaign-Urbana (IL) News-Gazette, 6 October 2005, pp. 1 & C-1
  48. ^ Steven Eighinger, Quincy (IL) Herald-Whig, 17 April 2005, p. C-1.
  49. ^ “Son Gains Fame Down Under,” The Morrisonville Times (IL), 19 February 1992, p. 1.
  50. ^ “Prof. Otto Funk, Troubadour of the World: He Walked, Fiddling All the Way from New York to California,” The Montgomery County News (Hillsboro, IL), 24 July 2004, p. 1.
  51. ^ “Out West With the Walking Fiddler: From Amarillo to San Francisco, Prof. Funk’s Final 1689 Miles,” The Montgomery County News (Hillsboro, IL), 31 July 2004, p. 1.
  52. ^ “The Walking Fiddler,” Modern Woodman'' magazine, Vol. LXXVI, No. 5, October 1959, p. 10.
  53. ^ “Otto Funk Admits He’s as Good as the Best Fiddler and Better than Most of Them,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 29 April 1928 (magazine section).
  54. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=IbDL3fI961YC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=brian+kamara+willis&source=web&ots=mtsHZZENx_&sig=QB7uftE6QOgYAjK4lu8TyFrFFpI
  55. ^ See, e.g., “Mier Scandal Cover-Up,” The Herald-Sun, Melbourne (Australia), 28 July 1992, p. 7.
  56. ^ See, e.g., Gee, H. and Fenton, J. (eds) (1978), The South West Book - A Tasmanian Wilderness, Melbourne, Australian Conservation Foundation, [ISBN 0-85802-054-8]; Griffiths, Peter, and Baxter, Bruce (1997), The Ever Varying Flood: A Guide to the Franklin River, Richmond, Vic., Prowling Tiger Press, [ISBN 0958664714].
  57. ^ See David Holmgren, Permaculture in the Bush (Hepburn Design Services, 1985; 2nd ed. 1993), Hepburn, Victoria, Australia.
  58. ^ See, e.g.,[4].
  59. ^ Daylesford Advocate newspaper (later Hepburn Shire Advocate), 1993-2000 (weekly column of Australian politics, humour and advice, sub nom. “The Beagle Speaks”).
  60. ^ See, e.g., “U.S. warns arms inspectors to leave Iraq,” Champaign-Urbana (IL) News-Gazette, 17 March 2003, p. 1 (incl. photo).
  61. ^ University of Georgia Press (1988), ISBN 0-8203-0981-8.

[edit] External links