It's almost twenty years since I saw Ruby for the first time, on commercial television. I was living in Sydney when the video of 'Down City Streets' was broadcast by a Sydney television station. The combination of the song and the spiritual presence of Ruby and her partner Archie Roach had an immediate impact.
Neither of them were ever the sort of people commercial television gave much space to. As I watched and listened, I couldn't help but wonder at how both of them had emerged intact from the experience that gave meaning to the song, and turned it into art.
Ruby's personal dress style (both regal and whimsical), and her numerous performances, were moments of reassurance, manifestations of a profound and deep Aboriginality which reached back to a distant past.
Listen to Archie's, 'From Paradise'
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