GLEN TOMASETTI

Glenys Ann Tomasetti was born in Melbourne in 1929. She bought a guitar in 1956 and set up the Emerald Hill folk concert sessions in South Melbourne in the 1960s. Folk singer Phyl Lobyl recalls ''Glen was a fine singer, an assured and authoritative performer with considerable understanding of the cultural and historical aspects of Folk Music. She always acknowledged the strong influence of Manning Clark on this area of her work. In the early sixties she hosted concerts at Emerald Hill Theatre started by Tom Lazar who also owned the Reata and Little Reata restaurants, which were other venues for folk music. It was at Emerald Hill that I first saw her perform with Martyn Wyndham-Read and Brian Mooney. Later Glen began guitar accompaniment classes in a room above Traynors coffee lounge, another folk music venue in Melbourne''. By the late '60s she had cut a few albums and EPs and had become a household name with a spot-on Channel Seven each week in which she performed a song on such topical issues as equal pay for women.

Australia entered the war in Vietnam in 1962 in support of the USA, and in 1965 began sending conscripted servicemen to Vietnam. Tomasetti became involved in the Save Our Sons organisation, a group of women opposed to military conscription, and in December 1965 she helped to organise the "Songs of Peace and Love" protest concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, described as "the first major response of the folk scene" to Australia's military involvement in Vietnam. 

Another excellent song Glen wrote and recorded in 1966 was ''The Future Is In Your Hands''. Glen stated ''it was written for uni students and owes everything to many speakers who say just that to generations younger than themselves. Those people who try to discredit the word 'protest' wish to ignore the fact that it affirms aspects of life at the other extreme from the thing opposed; I mean smiling babies, flowers, crops, dancing, skies empty of all but clouds and work whose end is neither deception or death''. 

She made headlines in 1967 when she was taken to court after withholding one-sixth of her tax on the grounds that a sixth of the federal budget was used to finance Australia's role in the Vietnam War. Former Victorian premier Joan Kirner met Tomasetti when she was singing at Vietnam War protests. "She became a real figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Her songs against the war, and Eric Bogle's, were the music of the movement," Mrs Kirner said. ''Tomasetti was a great promoter of women's rights and her song written about the first equal pay case in 1969 is still sung by the trade union choir'', Mrs Kirner said. 

In her multi-faceted career Glen was musical adviser for the Mick Jagger Ned Kelly film, original cast member of 'Lola Montez' and producer of an ABC Radio series on Folk Music. In 1976 her first novel, Thoroughly Decent People, was published. It dealt with "typical Australianness". It was the first book handled by local publishers McPhee Gribble. Melbourne University academic and poet Chris Wallace-Crabb said ''Tomasetti was a woman of extraordinary diversity and originality." Her novel was one of the break-through novels in portraying ordinary suburban life without a supercilious sneer," he said. "It entered the life of middle Australia with a generosity and imagination." Tomasetti's other published works included Man of Letters and poems, and she had a number of recordings released. She died in 2003 aged 74.

SINGLES

''The Ballad Of Bill White / Do Not Sing The Old Songs / The Army's Appeal To Mothers'' 1968

EPs

'Songs For Christmas' 1963 W&G
'Nursery Rhymes Sung By Glen Tomasetti' 1966 W&G
'The Future Is In Your Hands' 1966 W&G

ALBUMS

'Folk Songs With Guitar' 1963 W&G
'Glen Tomasetti Sings' 1964 East
' Will Ye Go Lassie Go?' [with Brian Mooney and Martyn Wyndham-Read] 1965 W&G
'Gold Rush Songs' 1975 Science Museum Of Victoria
'Labels for Ladies' date unknown WEL

References

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/30/1056825338016.html