Kev Carmody

Australian singer songwriter

Kevin Daniel Carmody (born 1946), better known by his stage name Kev Carmody, is an Aboriginal Australian singer songwriter and musician, a Murri man from northern Queensland. He is best known for the song "From Little Things Big Things Grow", which was recorded with co writer Paul Kelly for their 1993 single. It was covered by the Get Up Mob (including guest vocals by both Carmody and Kelly) in 2008 and peaked at number four on the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) singles charts. Carmody has won many awards, and in 2009 was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame as well as being a recipient of the Queensland Greats Awards. In 2019, Carmody was recipient of the JC Williamson Award at the Helpmann Awards. He is also known for his activism for Aboriginal rights.

Kevin Daniel Carmody was born in 1946 in Cairns, Queensland. His father, John "Jack" Carmody, was a second generation Irish descendant and his mother, Bonny, an Aboriginal woman of Lama Lama and Bundjalung descent, were not allowed to get married because she was Aboriginal, and they went to Cairns because "the rules were a lot slacker there" due to the large number of migrants working in the cane fields. Jack (also known as "Bull"), had been a member of the red beret parachute commando unit in World War II, and had sustained a back injury during training. They lived in a hut with a dirt floor, after Jack and Bonny were given the choice of sending the boys to school, or Bonny and the boys being sent permanently to live on Great Palm Island. The school was housed in an old army barracks on about and run by nuns. Carmody said that the boys did not do much schoolwork, but spent their time feeding chickens, collecting eggs, "hauling in coal for the kitchen stoves and buttering bread for the nuns". They were allowed to visit their parents twice a year. He did not learn to read until he was 11 years old. including droving, shearing, bag lumping, wool pressing and welding. The family all pooled their earnings into the same bank account, and lived mostly off the land. Due to his limited schooling, Carmody's reading and writing skills were not up to required university standard. Undeterred, he suggested to the history tutor that until his writing was suitable he would present his research in a musical format accompanied by guitar. At university, Carmody had used music as a means of implementing oral history in tutorials, which led to his later career.