The Collection

Australian Tradition Magazine

Australian Tradition Magazine was the newsletter of the Folklore Society of Victoria from 1964 June 1971, and after that, the Victorian Folk Music Club.

Edited by Wendy Lowenstein, it became the national magazine for folklore collectors and folk music and dance followers. Between 1961 – 1964 the Victorian Bush Music Club (established in 1959 after the immense success of the theatrical show, ‘Reedy River’) joined with the newly established The Folklore Society of Victoria (1961) to publish a monthly journal, ‘Gumsucker’s Gazette’. In 1963 the Victorian Folklore Society changed its name to the Victorian Folk Music Club.

The entire series of Gumsucker Gazette and Australian Tradition Magazine is included in the following section. As a PDF they are searchable using keywords.

The magazine included traditional songs, contemporary songs in the folk style, dance instructions, tunes, yarns and stories relevant to the growing interest in folk music and folklore.

The Victorian Folk Music Club remains an active organisation and is a regular publisher of songbooks, dance books and journals. https://www.vfmc.org.au

(My thanks to Martie Lowenstein for supplying the scans.)

Other magazines that published folklore and songs include:

Singabout, the publication of the Bush Music Club (Sydney) from 1956.

This was the first magazine to publish ‘bush music’.

The magazine was replaced by a club newsletter, ‘Mulga Wire’.

Compilations of songs from Singabout were also published separately as songsters. Online copies appear below.

The Bush Music Club https://www.bushmusic.org.au maintains an excellent online archive. https://blog.bushmusic.org.au/

The BMC is the second oldest folk club in the English-speaking world (only San Francisco 1948 is older). This Mudcat thread is continuously being updated to celebrate the BMC’s 70th anniversary.

https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=136900&messages=104&page=1

(My thanks to the Bush Music Club and Sandra Nixon for supplying folders of the complete Singabout series.)

Northern Folk (later National Folk) – a publication by Ron Edwards.

Stringybark & Greenhide, published 1979 – 1986.

State folk associations also published journals. In NSW ‘Cornstalks’ was the Folk Federation of NSW journal. The Folk Federation’s online page is https://folkfednsw.org.au/

Information about Folk Clubs, Folk Festivals and State and Territory Folk Federations is available from Folk Alliance Australia. https://www.folkalliance.org.au

NB: To view the contents of Australian Tradition magazines – tap on issues covers.