Antipodean Riffs - Essays on Australasian Jazz - Bruce Johnson
10. 'I Wouldn't Change Skins with Anybody': Dulcie Pitt/Georgia Lee, a Pioneering Indigenous Australian Jazz, Blues and Community Singer
Antipodean Riffs - Essays on Australasian Jazz - Bruce Johnson
Karl William Neuenfeldt [+]
Queensland Conservatory of Music, Griffith University
Description
This article explores the career and music of Indigenous Australian singer and musician Dulcie Pitt, also known as Georgia Lee, and how music, race and gender intersected in her career. She had a distinguished career as an internationally recognized jazz, blues and folk singer and versatile entertainer from the 1940s to the 1970s. She performed extensively in Australia and Britain at cabarets, dances, concerts, nightclubs and theatres, as well as participating in numerous radio and television broadcasts, and sound recordings. Although there are currently other Indigenous jazz and blues artists in Australia, Dulcie Pitt/Georgia Lee is unique because she was a pioneer at a time when Indigenous peoples in general were the objects of widespread, legislated race-based discrimination. She rose above them through hard work and talent to set an example for other Indigenous performers to follow.