While they might have been singing about war, it used to be that folk singers did so from the safety of the home front. But when Fred Smith sings about “endless fucking dust” getting into eyes and hair, weapons and boots; or, with a slight crack in his voice, urges young soldiers to “go call your mother, call your old man, on that welfare line. Tell them you love them, while you still can, ‘cause all good things must die,” it’s from frontline experience.
Smith, 53, isn’t your typical singer-songwriter; nor is he your typical Australian diplomat – but he has a dusty boot in each camp. After spending his younger years gigging in Canberra pubs, he got himself a day job – joining the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 1996. It wasn’t exactly out of the blue. His father, Ric Smith, was a career diplomat who served as Australian ambassador to China and Indonesia.
The younger Smith’s postings have included Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Bougainville and Afghanistan. He’s also released a dozen albums and written a book about his time in the Afghan province of Uruzgan.
“I’m a diplomat with a songwriting problem,” is how he describes his career, “This problem got so bad, my employers started sending me to places where I might get shot.”
Performing for – and sometimes with – troops and local people has given him a point of difference from other diplomats.
Two years ago, Smith witnessed the chaos and terror at Kabul International Airport (KIA) as thousands fled the advancing Taliban. That contributed to his show Sparrows of Kabul, which combines music, spoken word and multimedia to tell a story about Western intervention in Afghanistan. Smith was there, on and off, between 2009 and 2021. The dust of Uruzgan, he says, got under his skin.
“You get to know the people and they’re amazing people with a great sense of humour and a lot of courage. You get to know them and you develop a lot of sympathy for their story. But also, I felt I was uniquely placed to play a role in following and telling the story of what happened in Afghanistan.
“My experience of touring the show is that people really want to understand what happened there … It’s something they want to come to terms with, but it was never adequately explained in the Australian media. People have said they learned more from my two-hour show then they did in 20 years of television.”
His songs also allow him to work through his own feelings. The Gates of KIA is an explanation to his then 7-year-old daughter of his fragile mental state when he returned from Afghanistan: “I’ve seen the remnants of the Roman fleet; sifted embers from the February fires; I’ve read of Carthage and the Fall of Crete. Nothing surprised me until the Gates of KIA …”
Smith is visiting New Zealand for two performances, including a show at the Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival. Its director, Pitsch Leiser, says Sparrows is one of the most beautiful shows he has seen; others say it’s affirming, insightful and funny. Humour, says Smith, “lightens the journey” to make it more palatable for an audience. “But it’s also accurate. When you’re in a place like Afghanistan, with a lot of people trying to do difficult things, it is prime ground for comedy in a funny sort of way.”
Gallows humour? Smith doesn’t disagree but even with some well-placed lighter moments, he says performing Sparrows of Kabul takes him back there every time and he can do only a couple of shows a week because too many take a toll.
Because the show doesn’t tell people what to think, he says he can perform to disparate audiences – peaceniks, politicians and troops alike.
“I think it’s important for us not to be didactic. The Afghanistan intervention was a complex thing … I try to keep my accounts factual and non-judgmental so people will come to their own conclusions. That’s why I think it’s universally appealing.”
That doesn’t mean avoiding difficult subjects – such as allegations Australian soldiers murdered innocent civilians in Afghanistan, detailed in the Brereton Report. One song, This I Know, was based on the experiences of Dusty Miller, an SAS medic who gave testimony to the Brereton inquiry.
Smith admits to being troubled that he didn’t know more about it at the time: “I felt that a lot of people in Australia were confused about this and the community was quite divided between those who were appalled that these unlawful killings might have taken place – they were only allegations at that stage, but I don’t think the people making these allegations are lying – and those who think we should not prosecute our own soldiers for fighting dirty against an enemy that clearly wasn’t fighting by Queensberry rules.
“There are some on the right of politics who think it’s all been a beat-up by the national broadcaster and the left-wing media, but what’s happened here is that one group of soldiers witnessed things that they couldn’t keep secret. That’s the point of the song and I wanted to make that clear.” l
Fred Smith is performing at Ohau Community Hall, Levin; Thursday October 19 and Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival, Saturday, October 21.
