Arabic version: دفتر الأغاني الوطني يضم أول 10 أغانٍ أسترالية

According to The Guardian, 10 songs have become the first entries in Australia’s National Songbook, a digital archive intended to celebrate and preserve music that has shaped the country’s cultural identity.

The initiative was launched at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra and is a joint project of the NFSA and music rights organisation Apra Amcos. A panel of 11 music experts selected the inaugural songs, with Apra chair Jenny Morris and NFSA chair Annette Shun Wah facilitating what NFSA chief curator Meagan Loader described as a “very robust conversation”.

The list spans more than a century, from the 1927 recording of Waltzing Matilda, written by Andrew “Banjo” Paterson and later composed by Christina Macpherson, to the Presets’ My People. The panel recognised Yothu Yindi’s Treaty as a “landmark protest anthem”, while Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning was included alongside Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman, the Easybeats’ Friday on My Mind and Ruby Hunter’s Down City Streets.

Other inductees are Peter Sculthorpe’s Earth Cry, featuring William Barton playing the yidaki (didgeridoo); Neil Murray’s My Island Home, released by Warumpi Band and later covered by Christine Anu; and the Necks’ score for the 1998 film The Boys. The songbook also includes Treaty, written by Dr M Yunupingu, Stuart Kellaway, Witiyana Marika, M Mununggurr, Cal Williams, G Yunupingu, Peter Garrett and Paul Kelly.

The archive will add 10 songs each year through a newly appointed panel. Eligible works must have been written or co-written by an Australian Apra member, be at least a decade old and demonstrate cultural impact. Loader said the first list was intended as a “great conversation starter” and that the songbook would grow and evolve over time.