With this year’s Red Ochre Festival fast approaching, The Country Outcasts are preparing for their fourth appearance at the event and say they look forward to returning to Dubbo and hearing from new performers.
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The Red Ochre Festival will this year take place at Victoria Park over the weekend of September 12 and 13.
It will bring together Aboriginal artists from around the State and interstate, who will perform for the enjoyment of spectators and visitors.
Organisers say fans will be in for a real treat from The Country Outcasts this year, with band members travelling from near and far to come to the festival.
Wilga (Williams) Munro and her sister Cheryl Blair front the reformed Country Outcasts along with Wilga’s daughters Arana and Nioka and sons Wayne and Michael.
The original line-up, which included the group’s founder Harry Williams, stopped performing publicly following Harry’s death in 1991.
The Country Outcasts have been icons in Australian Aboriginal country music for the past four decades.
Harry and Wilga Williams hosted Aboriginal talent quests on a weekly basis for several years in the 1970s at the Grand View Hotel in the Melbourne suburb of Fairfield.
The Country Outcasts recorded two highly popular albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s - the first with RCA and the second with Hadley Records in Tamworth.
Harry and Wilga’s desire to push Aboriginal music to the forefront of traditional Australian country and folk music has inspired the likes of today’s highly successful performers Troy Cassar-Daley and Archie Roach.
Wilga has rarely performed publicly since Harry’s death but has not stopped playing music and teaching her daughters and sons the craft of showmanship and the professional aspects of the entertainment industry.
Along with her sister Cheryl, Wilga has agreed to reform The Country Outcasts for a special performance at the Red Ochre Festival this year.
