My host brother was very into this aussie band named The Herd. It sounds very hip hop and, a little reggae and sometimes they even mix with some samba. The latest album, Summerland, has some brazilian influence, like in the song "freedom samba". The way the vocal girl sings really reminds me a little of Vanessa da Mata, even though it’s in english. Super cool. They played twice(at the metro) when I was there, but unfortunately I couldn't see them in concert.
I didn't like the band immediately, actually. I only started paying attention on it after listening "77%", a song with very controversial lyrics which state "77% of aussies are racist". That did catch my attention right away and I googled the lyrics to understand what the song was about. Found out it referred to the number of australians announced in a survey that agreed with the Australian Federal Government's responde to the Tampa affair, which means, according to the song, that 77% of the aussies didn't want to accept a group of refugees to enter in Australia.
I didn’t know much about Australia before living there. Many aussies themselves told me Australia was considered a very racist country. I believe the Cronulla riots of 2005 contributed somehow to develop a little of this negative image of Australia, where Aussies and Lebanese people were part of this violent confront which happened around this beach suburb named Cronulla.
The media covered the case and featured Australian as a very racist country. I know OZ has problems with racism, but I don’t believe it’s not worse than anywhere else in the world. A very small group of people participated of this confrontation and I believe a whole nation cannot be labeled racist when only a small specific group of inconsequent young people were part of it.
Racism is an international problem.It happens in Australia, in every multicultural country and it doesn’t happen only in first world countries. Even Brazil, where people have different types of background and is well-known for its mixture of races, still is a very racist country.
As a foreigner in Australian, I felt very comfortable and welcome. I saw different ethnicities and had the feeling people respected each other(specially young people) and were willing to share their point of view and learn more about their differences. Even though the racism exists, I prefer to think that,in theory, the thing is much worse than in “real life”.
