Archibald William Roach AM (8 January 1956 – 30 July 2022) was an Australian singer, songwriter and Aboriginal activist. Often referred to as "Uncle Archie."
Born in Mooroopna, north Victoria, and brought up in Framlingham mission near Warrnambool, in south-west Victoria, he was taken from his parents, Nellie Austin and Archie Roach Sr, at the age of “three or four”, along with his two sisters, and raised in Melbourne by a white family, Alex and Dulcie Cox, who had moved to Australia from Scotland. They were told that his parents had died in a house fire.
Growing up as a member of the Cox family, Roach listened to his foster father’s record collection, which included albums by the Ink Spots, Nat King Cole and Mahalia Jackson. He went to church, and here he heard a woman playing a Hank Williams song on the guitar. Roach decided that he too would become a guitarist. His life changed dramatically when he was 15, when he received a letter from a blood sister, Myrtle, then living in Sydney, whom he had never heard of until then. She told him that his real mother, Nellie, had just died, and that he was one of seven siblings. A few months later he left home in a quest to track them down, taking his guitar with him.
He was lucky to survive. It took time for him to find his sister, and as he explained in his memoir, he spent years as an alcoholic, drinking in the parks and “empties” (the vacant buildings) of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. He suffered from epilepsy, spent time in hospital and in prison, charged with vagrancy, and attempted suicide, after a failed bid to dry out. But at 17, at a Salvation Army centre in Adelaide, he met another homeless Indigenous Australian teenager with a similar history to his own, who would change his life.
Kelly invited Roach to open for him at Melbourne Concert Hall, where Took the Children Away startled an audience that had never heard of Roach. It was at first greeted by silence, said Roach, “and then the clapping started. It sounded like rain that starts with a pitter-patter and builds up and becomes a downpour. It was the most amazing experience I had ever had.”
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| Archie with Slim Dusty |
Soon afterwards, Roach was offered a recording contract. His first solo album, Charcoal Lane (1990), was produced by Kelly and Steve Connolly, and won Aria awards for best new talent and best Indigenous album. It included Took the Children Away and a powerful song written by Hunter, Down City Streets, which described her time as a homeless alcoholic. This brought her to national attention, and four years later she recorded her own solo album.
Roach went on to record a series of solo albums, including Jamu Dreaming (1993) and Looking for Butter Boy (1997). In 2008 he sang Took the Children Away, with Hunter joining him on backing vocals, when the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, gave a public apology to the stolen generations.
Roach and Hunter also performed with the Black Arm Band, a political multimedia project involving white and Indigenous performers, who made a powerful appearance at the British Womad festival in 2009. They both spent time teaching music and performing in remote Indigenous communities, and offered an open house to homeless and disadvantaged young people. She died in 2010, the start of a sad and difficult era for Roach. Later that year he suffered a stroke, and the following year – after returning to live performance – he was diagnosed with lung cancer and had a lung removed. Announcing that he “wanted to write about coming through pain in a positive way”, he recorded his 2012 album Into the Bloodstream “with an oxygen bottle on standby”.
In 2015 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his “significant service to the performing arts as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, and to the community as a spokesman for social justice. In November 2020, he was inducted into the Aria hall of fame later that month. Roach, who lived with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for years, was taken from Warrnambool base hospital in an ambulance to accept the award via a broadcast from the nearby Lighthouse theatre. He performed Took the Children Away in the theatre while breathing through a nasal cannula and while an ambulance waited outside.
He died on 30 July 2022 at Warrnambool Base Hospital.
(Edited from Guardian article by Robin Denselow)