YOTHU YINDI isn’t nearly as obscure as some of the ...

Yothu Yindi isn't nearly as obscure as some of the artists/groups I've dredged up here. This Aboriginal rock band, based in the Arnhem Land peninsula of Australia's Northern Territory, has won international awards, had Australian chart-topping songs in the early 90s and toured with the likes of Midnight Oil, Tracy Chapman and Santana. So I'm always a little surprised to see how few people I run into know them. They're unique (at least from a U.S. perspective) for a number of reasons. First, they present an invigorating fusion of Aboriginal and Western personnel and music. Second, they spring from a true cultural base?their songs are vetted by tribal elders, and band leader Mandawuy Yunupingu is not only a hell of a singer but has been a Yolngu tribal school principal. Finally, compared to American protest music, their main message, in both sound and lyrics, is one of tradition, peace and cooperation, rather than "pay me what you owe me." This is particularly striking when you consider the studied extermination practiced by Australian whites in the 19th century.

When I picked up my first (their third) album, Freedom, I was initially disappointed. Somehow I wanted it to sound more "native." But I just wasn't listening carefully enough. By rock standards, it's a rollicking chase ("Freedom," "Back to Culture") with a few drifts into near ballads ("Dots on the Shells"). But behind it all lies the woofing whoop of the didgeridoo (made from a hollowed log), sometimes a powerful statement in itself?more so than on the Australian field recordings I've heard?sometimes a quiet rhythm that functions like a washtub bass. Yunupingu's heavy, digging voice is the land talking, a guttural stomp, raw but intensely musical.

Their second album, Tribal Voice, made the biggest noise. The tracks "Treaty" and "Djapana" received awards for both song and music video. I've never seen those videos but I'd like to, because my teenage daughter, Caitlin, without any prompting from me, made a video from Tribal Voice. For "Dharpa," our pug is making a mad, serpentine dash around the yard in perfect time to the music. Earlier, she had picked up on the native-West blending, pairing green fire with a flowing stream.

Many Yothu Yindi lyrics are in Yolngu, but that makes little difference when you're listening. What comes through in main measure is the intense musicality and good-heartedness of the band, a group that extols peace and coexistence without making it the least bit lame?"The planting of the Union Jack/Never changed our law at all/Now two rivers run their course/Separated for so long/I'm dreaming of a brighter day/When the waters will be one" (from "Treaty").

If you didn't mind noisy neighbors, you'd want these people living next door. And if you get a chance to watch them perform, looks from the CD photos like you'd have a visual treat, with those brilliantly painted faces and bodies.

Speaking of Australia and its natives?and traveling outside music for a moment?the study of Aboriginal life produced one of the finest stylists in the English language: University of Colorado anthropologist John Greenway. Greenway didn't much like the natives, but then he didn't much like anybody beyond tough-as-nails explorers and the few anthropologists who knew almost as much as he did.

But even if you find his deliberately self-aggrandizing pronouncements grating, Down Among the Wild Men (1972 and long out of print) reads like the best of H.L. Mencken. Actually, it's a step beyond Mencken, a superb example of beautifully provocative prose. Many a current slinger of billingsgate could learn a good deal from Greenway's polymathic vituperation and vicious grace?and also learn an astonishing amount about the Australian Outback.