Franklyn B Paverty plays music in a mixture of styles. Much of our music fits the descriptions of "bush ballads", "bush songs" and "bush music" (see below), but the band plays some country music and other types of folk music. Paverty adapts its performance to the occasion.
The people first brought to Australia to displace the indigenous population were English and Irish pick-pockets, poachers and other social misfits. They brought their traditional folk-music with them. And they adapted to their new circumstance.
In 1964, John Manifold compiled a popular collection of Australian fold music as The Penguin Australian Song Book. In it, he groups the songs under the headings: Seamen and Transport, Immigrants and Diggers, The Bushrangers, Pastoral Australia, The Nomads and The Poets.
in 1980, Bill Scott compiled The Second Penguin Australian Songbook. Bill's book also groups the songs ... this time under the subjects: Toilers of the Bush, From Sydney and the Bush, With Malice Aforethought, Immigrants, Tragedies and Deaths, Songs Out of Uniform and Recent Arrangements and Compositions.
There are numerous other collections and compilations of Australian folk songs.
A bush band is a small group of musicians singing Australian folk songs, and playing (predominantly Irish) tunes for Australian country dances.
The instruments usually comprise a mixture of portable instruments used for accompanying western folk song such as guitar, fiddle/violin, flute/whistle/recorder, concertina/melodeon/accordion, banjo and mandolin. Since then 1960s, bush bands can include piano, electric bass guitar and/or drum kit.
Bush bands usually include one or more improvised instruments such as spoons/bones, bush (tea chest) bass, lagerphone, gum-leaf or a saw.
The bush band is a romantic ideal. Perhaps the bush bands of today owe more to the music used for the first productions of the 1953 folk revival play Reedy River than to historical accuracy. There is little evidence of roving bands of musicians tramping across the Australian outback carrying elegant instruments and entertaining crowds with collections of traditional songs, music and dances from across the nation and its short history.
The modern Australian bush dance is version of the country dance revival that exploded in the 1970s. Many of the dances are derived from Irish and UK country dances, though they vary to suit the Australian culture.
Typically, bands use music based closely on Irish polkas, jigs, reels, hornpipes and airs.
Since Australian audiences do not know the dance steps, a "caller" walks those who want to dance through all the steps of the dance before the music starts.