Fred Smith & Sparrows of Kabul 20 May; Songwriting Workshop Sunday 21 May

On the plane to Afghanistan in 2009, Fred Smith wrote himself a kind of manifesto.  Having just landed a job as an Australian diplomat, he diarised  ‘Write that you may see and see that you may write’. Staying true to the brief, Smith has written a lot about Afghanistan and its tenuous relationship with democracy, his observations as a diplomat inspiring him to pen songs such as ‘Live Like an Afghan’.

Whilst diplomat and songwriter seem an unusual combination, for Fred Smith, ‘both roles involve reporting on what one observes and sees’.  And Smith has seen a lot. 

Speaking with the SMOTA Year 10 Journalism crew in a phone interview on the 12th of May, he talked about his work in 1996 with the diplomatic core in The Solomon Islands and Bougainville.  Whilst most diplomats ‘take jobs in capital cities around the world, I developed an interest in conflict zones.’ Smith told us.

In 2009, the international community felt that Afghanistan needed to employ diplomats to help deepen the understanding of the Afghanistan context and to facilitate cooperation with the provisional governments.  Sent to Uruzgan province, alongside a contingent of 1100 Australian troops, Smith was charged with the job of talking to the tribal warlords and provincial government officials to try and understand what was going on with the people there. The challenges were significant, with illiteracy levels at 95% and a very conservative population.

This experience has contributed to a collection of songs that capture the beauty of a place that poets have immortalised in words.  Contrasting the former glory of Kabul, where ‘one could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs nor the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls’ with the destructiveness of war, Smith wonders ‘, Why did this struggle begin, when will this war ever end?’ 

As a modern-day war poet, Smith’s lyrics have a dirge-like quality, recurrent ramp ceremonies an unsettling backdrop to a land where the dust becomes a metaphor for life.  You just have to listen to tracks such as ‘The Dust of Uruzgan’, (also the title of his memoir) to understand the cost of war.  The grittiness of the lyrics relays the experience of a member of the Battalion of the Big 1 RAR and the ever-present danger of IED devices and anti-personnel mines.  The legacy of service reverberates in each verse, and having a foot blown off is only one of the many immeasurable costs of war.   

For the uninitiated Smith, ‘The first thing I did when I arrived was attend a ramp ceremony for Ben Ranaudo who had been killed by an IED’. Deeply moved by the experience, Smith told us of the ramp funeral he attended on the  27th of August 2010.  Thinking ‘I should write a song about this guy’, Smith sat with the idea for two years until he received an email from Crash’s friend who explained the story. 

Finally, Smith had his song. ‘I realised I had a pair of eyes from which to write the song.’ he said.  The result was ‘Derapet’.  Asked about his songwriting, Smith explained that the voices of those who appear in his songs are sometimes fictional, sometimes the voices of people he has encountered or known about, and sometimes his own. The song ‘Christmas in Kandahar’ is very evidently autobiographical.  As you listen to the lyrics, you can feel the loneliness of the ex-pat who hears ‘Planes take off in the night, on missions unknown.’ and turns away to ‘face the night all alone.’  

Touring with his show ‘Sparrows of Kabul’, Smith and his band will be playing at the Uniting Church Hall in Nathalia on Saturday 20th May.  You can get your tickets at the GRAIN Store or through Trybooking.com