Australian Masculinities and Popular Song: The Songs of Sentimental Blokes 1900–1930s

Abstract

Songs in which male protagonists expressed tender sentiments about mothers or sweethearts were everywhere in early twentieth-century Australia. They could be heard in vaudeville shows, home sing-songs, neighbourhood parties and amateur concerts—even those held for or by servicemen during the First World War. In this article I explore the implications of this for Australian masculinities between 1900 and the 1930s, paying particular attention to ‘rough’ and/or working-class masculinities in the First World War era. Drawing on oral histories and a case-study of the vaudevillian, Harry Clay, I challenge the idea that Australians had ‘lost their taste for the sentimental’ in the early 1900s. While men were coming under increasing pressure to be stoic or tough I argue that this made sentimental songs more important rather than less, as a forum in which men could voice feelings considered unacceptable at other times in their lives.