Waltzing Matilda

The unofficial national anthem of Australia (see AustraliaCountry). The current official anthem of Australia is Advance Australia Fair.

A very anti-establishment song about a wandering sheep thief that is willing to kill himself by jumping into a billabong rather than submit to the authority of the police.... I can see why the government wasn't too fussed on having those ideas pumped into the heads of our children.

Still often sung in place of our national anthem at many international sporting events and wherever people have enough musical taste to realize how horrible Advance Australia Fair is.

There is a rather good explanation of WaltzingMatilda, including the meaning of any Australian words in the song at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/index.html.

The song WaltzingMatilda should not be confused with the song And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, 'bout the tribulations of Australian soldiers - sent to war by the British - at Gallipoli during WorldWarOne?

Nor should it be confused with the Tom Waits classic Tom Traubert's Blues. The Waits song includes the chorus of WaltzingMatilda.

The Australian Government offered to send, equipped, and sent Australian troops to WW1. Men volunteered in their thousands in 1914. The Australian Imperial Force was all-volunteer throughout the entire war, so no coercion there. "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' has a number of factual inaccuracies regarding Gallipoli, and in one section relates how the song encouraged men to go to war ('But the band played Waltzing Matilda, and the old men they answered the call').

I don't understand the strong "patriotism" that drew so many volunteers from so many western countries to fight in WWI. Insight would be appreciated, here or on any relevant page.

I wonder whether it is better to fold this page into the AustraliaCountry or AustralianCulturalAssumption page. Meanwhile keep as CategoryMusic entry, I suppose.

Although I'm not Australian, I disagree. WaltzingMatilda seems to outsiders to somehow represent some difficult-to-fully-explain part of Australian history and culture, in a large way, not a small way, not least because of the above comments about musical aesthetics, and sheer degree of fame, as well.
Who outside of Australia can understand the lyrics (or any of the uniquely Australian terminology) without an explanation? That's a signifier of a cultural idiom, I think.
So to suggest it should be folded into some more primary page, is to suggest that it is too small a topic to deserve its own page, and that is far from clear to me. Besides, it's interesting in its own right.

The rest of the world also remembers Australia by Rolf Harris's "Tie me kangaroo down, sport" pop hit from 1960, 1962, 1963 (I actually like it, despite all the criticisms), but it's hardly a cultural icon. For lyrics, see http://users.durge.org/~rich/rolf/kangaroo.html.

CategoryMusic, OffTopic