Sat - April 5, 2008

Gurrumul: Indigenous Music/Mainstream Media 


If you've read my previous posts on Indigenous music, you'll know that I favor loud guitars, am intrigued by Aboriginal adaptations of hip-hop, and admit to a seemingly incongruous affection for the Pigram Brothers. "The old folkie days" as Neil Young styled them are well and truly ancient history in my musical tastes. Maybe that explains why I've resisted the blandishments of friends in Darwin to check out the new album by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu for several months now. But this week, in the wake of the Sydney Morning Herald's profile and review of Gurrumul ("Aboriginal music gets an angelic new voice," March 31, 2008), I decided I ought to find out what all the fuss was about.

I was blown away. It's been twenty years since Tracy Chapman's self-titled debut hit me this hard with just an acoustic guitar behind a voice, and maybe another twenty before that when Joni Mitchell first left me stunned by a similar subtlety. Frank Yamma's early acoustic tunes failed to engage me; it wasn't until I heard his collaborations with Piranpa that I began to appreciate his talents as a songwriter. (And I'll confess it wasn't until more recently that I knew that Yamma led the Ulpanyali Band, although their hit "History" is one of the rock 'n' roll standouts on the second volume of the CAAMA 25 Years collection.)

But back to Gurrumul. Although noting the singer's connections to Yothu Yindi, the SMH article paints him as a relative newcomer, discovered and shepherded into the spotlight by producer Michael Hohnen. In fact, Gurrumul has been around for over a decade as songwriter, singer, and lead guitarist for the Saltwater Band, and three songs on the new solo album have appeared on that group's earlier albums ("Gurrumul History" on Gapu Damurrung, along with "Bapa (Father)" and "Galupa" on Djarridjarri/Blue Flag).

Those songs were among the most lyrical pieces in the Saltwater Band's catalog, to be sure. But the versions included on Gurrumul justify the "angelic" hype that's being accorded to their author these days, especially when an understated cello enters the accompaniment on "Bapa." The gentle guitar figures and the softness of Gurrumul's voice, sometimes double-tracked to provide harmonies, had already quite relaxed me by the time the slow bowing of the deep voice of the strings urged me to let go completely and float along with the music. In contrast, the piano accompaniment on the Saltwater Band's (still gentle and quiet) version sounds percussive and clangorous by comparison.

Liner notes on Djarridjarri state that "The songs by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu incorporate words and concepts, images and sensations which are celebrated in the ancestral songs of the Gumatj people." Occasionally the musical phrasings echo these traditional songs, for example in the opening bars of Gurrumul's song "Galiku." On other songs, like the closer "Wukun," the Yolngu and Western idioms are so tightly interwoven than you could carry water in them. On many of the other tracks, you would be hard pressed to identify the singer as Aboriginal, were it not for the fact that the songs are sung in Gumatj.

I find the SMH's claims that this album contains "authentically traditional Aboriginal music" a bit overblown, as wrong as the notion that such traditional music is "characterised mostly by simple and repetitive chanting" and has been of "little interest outside ceremonies and dances in Aboriginal communities." (It's the notion of "traditional" I'm uncomfortable with, not the "authentic.") Still, I'd be overjoyed if Gurrumul convinced neophyte listeners that Aboriginal music had more to offer than clapsticks and yidaki.

Almost as exciting as the discovery of this album was the fact that I was able to buy it on iTunes. Even better, I discovered that Apple has now firmly latched on to contemporary Indigenous music. A year ago there wasn't much on offer beyond CAAMA's 25 Years set. Now they appear to have picked up a great deal of the Skinnyfish Music catalog as well as other bands distributed by CAAMA.

A quick check the other day revealed albums by all of the following artists (in alphabetical order): Christine Anu, Blekbela Mujik, Sammy Butcher, Coloured Stone, Jagit, Chris Jones, Daryl Kantawara, Lajamanu Teenage Band, Late Lazy Boys, Letterstick Band, Tom E Lewis, Ltyentye Apurte Band, Nabarlek, Nangu, North Tanami Band, Rising Wind Band, Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter, George Rrurrambu, Saltwater Band, Seaman Dan, Spin.FX, Stiff Gins, Tjupi Band, Warumpi Band, Baydon Williams, Warren H. Williams, Bart Willoughby, Wirrynga Band, Frank Yamma, Yilila, Yothu Yindi, and Yugul.

Some of this music had been available earlier on the Australian iTunes store. But licensing restrictions don't allow one to buy iTunes internationally. Now I'm happy to report that all of those are available in the USA, and spot checks showed every one I looked for also available in France, Germany, Spain, and the UK.

Now, if you want to hear more than just the thirty-second snippets that iTunes offers, you can always try your luck on YouTube, and if it's Gurrumul you're interested in now, you are in luck. He's posted six videos recently, including a couple of performances with the Saltwater Band, who are among the best represented Indigenous stars on YouTube. There are several performances captured by fans from their appearance at the 2007 Telstra Art Awards, although these seem to come and go over time: I once added several of them to my favorites, only to find them unavailable a few months later. Now many of those performances are back online.

I've had similar troubles with a band whose music is very hard to track down these days, Bart Willoughby's legendary No Fixed Address. There were some wonderful television clips up once, featuring a very, very young Chris Jones on rhythm guitar, but they've disappeared now, perhaps for reasons of copyright infringement. There are some old clips of Coloured Stone available, lots of Yothu Yindi and Warumpi Band (mixed with Midnight Oil), along with stalwarts Christine Anu and Archie Roach.

The other option is to check out Gurrumul's MySpace page. Half a dozen songs from the album are available for listening here, along with everything else you can expect from MySpace. There's a link to iTunes, and a roster of upcoming performances, from Sydney and Cairns to the Woodford Dreaming Festival and the Tilburg World Festival in the Netherlands. There's also a ten-year old video of Gurrumul performing Yothu Yindi's song "Dots on the Shells" in a lovely acoustic version with Mandawuy Yunupingu and Neil Finn. And of course, there are Gurrumul's friends, whose links can start you on a long hyperadventure through the pages of the Saltwater Band, Nabarlek, T-Lynx, or David Blanasi. Which will, of course, lead you to dozens of other bands you might want to explore.

One final musical note for today. I just learned today that Midnight Oil has released a limited, twentieth-anniversary CD/DVD edition of Diesel and Dust. The brilliant news is that the DVD contains the concert documentary Black Fella/White Fella, the record of the band's trip through the Central Desert and the Top End in the company of the Warumpi Band. Black Fella/White Fella has only been available in the past on videocassette, and for many years only if you were very persistent and tracked its second-hand availability on sites like half.com or Alibris. The new edition is only available at the moment in the US as an import from Amazon, but here's hoping that it will receive wide distribution soon. (There's no indication of region coding for the DVD, but with region-free players available for about US$50, the hardware investment would be well worth it.) Both bands are in top form, and the sight of kids from Kintore to Wadeye bouncing in the firelight to this top-flight rock 'n' roll will make you believe, if just for a minute, that art might really be able to save the world. Or at least make it dance.


Postscript: A reader has written, rightly taking exception to a line in my review above, "that Aboriginal music had more to offer than clapsticks and yidaki." He writes: "What 'traditional' means may require defining but when it means genres and styles used in corroborees and ceremonies then it is complex and fascinating."

Although I voiced my disagreement with the SMH's characterization of Yolngu ceremonial music as "simple and repetitive," the thought that did not make the transition from my mind to the page was that, too often still, the yidaki represents the extent of Aboriginal music in the mainstream media. Aborgines approaching? Cue the didjeridu!

I hope for a day when Anangu singing provides the soundtrack for sunrise at Uluru, when troopies bounce over corrugated roads to the rhythm of the North Tanami Band, when the sun sets into the Arafura Sea to the notes of Geoffrey Gurrumul's guitar. (One of the joys of watching the television series The Circuit was hearing the Pigram Brothers so often as the camera panned across the Kimberley on its way back to Broome.)

My correspondent pointed me to Sally Treloyn's 2006 thesis from the University of Sydney, Songs that pull: jadmi junba from the Kimberley region of northwest Australia as a good place to start reading more about traditional music. Another book readers may want to explore in Allan Marett's Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts: the wangga of North Australia (Wesleyan University Presss, 2005), which won the Stanner Prize in 2006. The classic musical ethnography of the desert is Richard Moyle's Songs of the Pintupi: musical life in a central Australian society (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1979. 

Posted at 04:10 PM    

Sun - March 23, 2008

Red Flag Music 


Every time I think I've discovered a hot new band, I turn around and find out that they've been around for at least a couple of years. Such was the case with Yilila , who hail from Numbulwar and are making some of the most interesting music I've heard coming out of the Australian Indigenous scene in a while. Why didn't someone turn me on to these guys back in 2005, when their music started getting released on CD and, even better, on iTunes?

The influence of Macassan sailors on the culture of Australia's northern coast has been well documented, and shows up in paintings from Elcho Island, in the tamarind trees on the coast of Arnhem Land, and now, in a big way, in the music of Yilila. The band's most identifiable symbol is the triangular Macassan red flag, or jamajama, that features large in their songs and videos. Other versions exist, like the manilamanila, the same red flag with a blue stripe that gives its name to the band's first full-length release. These blokes aren't Yolngu, though. They come from farther south, on the coast opposite Groote Eylandt, and sing in a mixture of Nunggubuyu, Anindilyakwa, and English.

If the first song you hear from Yilila is the favorite "Dhararri," you might be forgiven for suspecting them of being a Yothu Yindi clone. This slow, melancholy song, a lament for a faraway home, puts strong, sad vocal harmonies that are highly evocative of Yothu Yindi's sound, over a familiar didjeridu growl. Likewise, their first release, Manila Manila, contains a few, short traditional songs. They seem to have learned some chops in stagecraft, as well, as have acts like Saltwater Band. Yilila, though, integrates the imagery of the red flag and the fascination of the dance in a way that makes for an expressive whole. (I base these comments on the photos and videos available on their website.) The Red Flag Dancers are a performance group in their own right, and look to be an exciting act. Certainly the short films (scroll all the way to the bottom of the page at that link) of members of the band and the dancers demonstrating traditional dances on the beach display an athleticism and excitement that's beyond what you normally see on the confines of a rock 'n' roll stage.

But the band's sound is uniquely their own, and this is due in large part to the skills of guitarist and bassist Rodrick Nundhirribala. On songs like "Rharrarharra" his acoustic Spanish guitar stylings give Yilila bragging rights to a new kind of "world music." Instead of the usual formula of Western artists like David Byrne layering Afro-Luso-Caribe funk on top of rock 'n' roll basics, Yilila starts from the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, mixes the music up with Indonesian influences, and then brings the sparkle of flamenco to bear on the whole. It's a dizzying mix, and it works in part because I don't think anyone has ever tried to make the frenetic runs of Spanish guitar picking carry the job of adding shimmer and spin to the beat of the funk before.

The guitar works similarly to create a spinning rhythm, set atop singing drumbeats at the opening of "Dhamalu Lharrmani," and when the vocals enter after a few bars, the liquid syllables of the lyrics swirl in a vortex that somehow manages to evoke the sounds of the Middle East in all its frenzy and languor. I was reminded of the truly international flavor of the Hispano-Iranian duo Strunz & Farah. And then the songs ends, and a bluesy guitar intro to the next tune, "Dhumbala" sails across the Atlantic, promising R&B for a moment before bubbling up into one of the band's experiments with the bounce of reggae. And then, at the song's conclusion, the reggae beat gives way suddenly to a final six-note descending figure that takes you right back into the realm of American soul. The next song is "Dhararri," and we're suddenly back in the land of Yolngu lament.

This adventuresome, around-the-world-in-180-seconds strategy goes into stratospheric orbit on the band's EP, Aeroplane. The title track features a guest appearance by Fremantle slide guitar legend John Butler. But things start to get really interesting on the second track, "Manila." It opens with a dreamy tambura prelude, foreshadowing the Indian classical vocals of Raka Mukherjee that steer the song's path through a series of slow changes and add a deeper dimension to lead singer Grant Nundhirribala's mournful, soulful exercises. The two singers trade licks, slowly, almost as if they were performing on separate stages, reaching out to one another across continents. In the song's final minute the vocals fade into one another, and sink behind another repeating, irregular riff for acoustic guitar and congas.

"Mijiyanga (World Remix)" opens with more Spanish guitar, backed by a plaintive violin, before a bouncing duet for drums and--what is it? a concertina? a melodica?--picks up the beat; then the vocals, sung in English, evoke the return of the old sailing ship. This is a theme from the northern coast, for sure, the people waiting for the return of the monsoon and the Macassans: "I see the old sailing boat/In my dreams/It was floating towards me/Across the sea." Before you can sort out the mixture, the whole ensemble stops on a dime as drums and didj duet at center stage for a few bars; vocals are backed by guitar and strings for a few more bars, and then the drum and didj theme comes back under classic call and response ceremonial singing from the Carpentaria sands--and that concertina slips in again underneath it all. At this point, the song isn't even half over; yet what's amazing is that it doesn't come off as a self-conscious patchwork. The players somehow manage to craft enough connections in phrasing and instrumentation to take you through these changes without jarring your loose.

In truth, they'd tried this before: the song appears on Manila Manila, but the different elements are somehow more homogenized, more tightly streamed into one another so that the exotic and the diverse are de-emphasized. The version on Aeroplane foregrounds the mash-up, to spectacular effect. They try the same strategy in the gentler "E Dhumbula," letting the drone of the tambura weave together a different tapestry of instruments and electronic effects.

Unfortunately, the rest of Aeroplane is mostly recycling: two tracks from the earlier album, re-released without modifications, and a "radio mix" version of "Mijiyanga" that adds no substance to the EP. If you already own Manila Manila, buy the new tracks from Aeroplane from iTunes individually and save a couple of dollars. But don't miss those new tracks; they promise great things for the future.

The future should include a performance at this year's Darwin Festival with Sanggar Bliran Sina, an Indonesian musical cooperative from Watublapi. According to a story in The Australian ("Neighbourly swapping of notes," January 3, 2008), a CD born of the collaboration is due later this year as well. Who knows how this partnership will stretch the imaginations of Yilila? I'm eager to find out.
 

Posted at 12:50 PM    

Wed - January 16, 2008

Nathan B and the HipHop Mulka 


Check out this excellent slice of Mulka Project hiphop, performed by Nathan B and filmed at Yirrkala. Lots of the action was shot inside the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre and down at Yirrkala Creek just across the road.

Yolngu Land


 

Posted at 07:57 PM    

Tue - December 18, 2007

Got Holiday Cheer? Get Music Outback Foundation! 


A few weeks ago while I was trawling YouTube for Aboriginal music videos I stumbled across a couple of short films from the Music Outback Foundation. Tonight, I received mail from Maura Dawes, who pointed me to the Foundation's website, just in time for Christmas.

Not that you'll find many reindeer or elves there. But if the holidays are about feeling good and being grateful for good things, then you'll want to spend some time browsing this site that features two full albums of songs composed and performed by the children of the Ti Tree and Utopia community schools and enough good cheer to keep you smiling all the way to 2008.

The Music Outback Foundation was started in 2001 by Steve Berry. Steve has worked with community teachers, professional musicians and, most of all, kids across the Northern Territory to use muscial education as a means of encouraging school attendance, teaching literacy and numeracy skills, and judging from the results, having a grand old time picking and playing. Check out the videos for details.

If you'll be at the Woodford Folk Festival over the weekend between Christmas and New Year's, you can catch performers from Ti Tree live at the Dingo Shed Friday night at 10:00, Sunday at 6:30, or Monday, New Year's Eve, at 9:00.

But whether you catch them at Woodford or just on the web, get into the holiday spirit by making a donation to support the work of the Music Outback Foundation: all donations over $2 are tax deductible, and it's almost the end of the year, so don't hesitate--do it today!

Update and Correction: The Ti Tree Mob will not be at Woodford this year. The MOF's website indicated that it was there in 2006. I looked up the program for this year at he WFF's website, and found MOF listed, but apparently that listing is an inaccurate holdover. My apologies for leading you astray.

 

Posted at 08:56 PM    

Sat - July 14, 2007

Smash A Kangaroo 


As I've recounted in the stories of my travels around the Ngaanyatjara lands in Western Australia lately, the music scene there is alive and well, thanks to some dedicated guys equipped with Macintosh computers, Garageband, and the desire to show the young men of these communities how to record and distribute their own music. I'll have a full report on some new CD's coming out of that part of the country later on, but today I want to share news of another initiative that's resulted in a lively new single called "Smash A Kangaroo."

The inspiration this time comes from an American DJ and hip-hop artist who goes by the tag Diplo, which I understand is a shortened form of Diplodocus. Diplo toured extensively in Australia earlier in 2007, and was impressed and intrigued by the prevalence of hip-hop in indigenous communities that he visited along the way. I'll admit to feeling the same way on my first visit to Maningrida a couple of years ago when I head 50 Cent blaring from boomboxes around the town and kept meeting kids with Tupac t-shirts to complement their Sydney Swans caps.

While he was in Australia, Diplo started working at two ends of the country, in the "jungle" of Maningrida (remember, he's a white boy from Philadelphia) and at a juvenile justice facility in Sydney. Interested in finding ways to promote regional variations of hip-hop around the world, Diplo set up a recording studio in Sydney, and used his time in Maningrida to record the first single for his new "Heaps Decent" project. Proceeds from the sale of "Smash a Kangaroo" will go to support the Sydney recording facility, so I'd urge you to head straight to iTunes and purchase a copy for the low, low price of only $0.99 (US$--it's similarly priced and available from every other national iTunes stored I've checked, including Australia, the UK, France, and Germany). The song is a mix of rapping, scratching, sampled didj, and bush tucker--you haven't heard anything like it before.

You can find out more from the Heaps Decent website and from their MySpace page. The latter lets you listen to "Kangaroo" for free (but don't let that stop you from making a contribution to the cause at iTunes). There's also a wonderful, funny video that shows footage from the Maningrida workshops. The second half of the video is an inspired mashup of shots of young indigenous kids dancing layered over the surf classic "Wipeout." It's a hoot and a half.
Check out Heaps Decent on MySpace
Diplo brainstorming with the Maningrida mob

 

Posted at 01:26 PM    

Fri - June 15, 2007

Sad news from Elcho Island 


When I was in Alice Springs I had the chance to catch up with Daphne Williams for an hour or so one afternoon. It was wonderful to see her, but she had the sad news for me that the lead singer of the Warumpi Band, the son of artist Charlie Matjuwi and brother of Peter Datjin, was terminally ill with bone cancer. "I was always fond of him," Daphne said, "even if he was a real hellraiser when he was young." News reached me this week from Chips Mackinolty that the hellraiser had passed away at home on Elcho Island. He was 50 years old. A full Gumatj ceremony is to be held to mark his passing, and the family have requested that the music of the Warumpi Band and from his later solo career not be played on local radio.

John Donne wrote "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." This line of poetry from the 17th century makes a fitting epitaph for the Top-End islander who became identified with the greatest Aboriginal Australian rock 'n' roll band from the Centre, and with Warumpi's most famous song, "My Island Home." And after the band split up, Burrarrawanga (as he's identified in the press today out of respect for his family) translated the great hit into Gumatj and made it uniquely his own, recording it on his 2004 solo album Nerbu Message. After years on the road, struggles with the grog, and (I guess) all the hell-raising that went along with those things, Burrarrawanga settled down to engage with life on Elcho Island. And while I don't want to diminish the uniqueness of his life and his contributions to culture overall, I hope that there is a message here for all people who predict that the wildness of today's youth is a sign that traditional culture is being lost: Burrarrawanga showed us that roots of all sorts run deep.

I guess I'll now have to give up forever the hope that I would catch one of the seemingly inevitable Warumpi Band reunions, that one day I would get the chance to bounce in front of the stage to the blasts of "Kintorelakutu" or "Koori Man." But my heart will still skip a beat every time the clapsticks kick in at the beginning of "Waru," and I can rejoice at home to watch clips of the band performing in the ABC-TV documentary End of the Corrugated Road. Warumpi Band changed the face and the sound of Aboriginal rock 'n' roll; their inspiration will live on as long as kids have guitars, which is to say forever. 

Posted at 08:05 PM    

Sat - January 20, 2007

More Indigenous Music Sites 


Thanks to the readers who responded to my requests for leads on acquiring more indigenous music. Mary Durack of Art contemporain aborigene d'Australie in Paris pointed me to Chinatown Music Broome, a good source for music (in general) from the Kimberleys.

Kim Christen, an anthropologist from Washington State University in the northwest USA and author of the blog Long Road, sent me a link to the Barkly Region Arts website. there's lots of interesting stuff to be found on this site, ranging from pictures of the Borroloola Rodeo in 2005 and the Tennant Creek Battle of the Bands to the Podomatic broadcasts from the Winajjikarri Music Centre, where you can hear interviews with Brian Murphy from the band Nomadic and Joe Davey from the Tableland Drifters. Winajjikarri's coordinator, Jeff McLaughlin also provides some samples of his own music, performed under the nom-de-jeu of Dr Fluoride and his Cavity Search.

I've also discovered that the Australian iTunes store is searchable from the US. (Way at the bottom of the store is a button that allows you to select any one of the worldwide stores--something that had always been obscured by a window that I had sized too small on my screen!) Sadly, in order to purchase from the Australian store one must have a credit card with an Australian address, so I can't avail myself of what's on view. But at least I can listen to the clips and decide whether to continue searching for CD's. (The restriction on purchasing has to do with the record labels' contracts with Apple and concerns about copyright in the world market.) So, good news, bad news.

***

I should not leave without backtracking a step and urging you to check out Christen's Long Road. It's a great gateway to some exciting and interesting anthropology on the web and in the digital domain. I'd especially recommend that you have a look at Christen's paper "Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix and the Cultural Commons" and then check out the project Christen has been working on with Christopher Cooney, Digital Dynamics Across Cultures. It is described as "an interactive project focusing on cultural protocols of the Warumungu people from Central Australia," more particularly in the Tennant Creek region. Great video interviews with women from the region, historical photographs, and more. I'll be back with another look at this work in another post, but in the meantime, explore it for yourself. 

Posted at 02:48 PM    

Sun - January 14, 2007

It's Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me 


While the internet has proven to be a grand way of keeping up with the art scene, politics and news, to date it's proven a less than ideal way to stay on top of what's happening musically in Aboriginal Australia. I haven't really found satisfactory tools for exploring indigenous music on the web, even though the CAAMA shop is online, and Skinnyfish Music's website offers tiny sample clips of some of the bands they stock. (I was knocked out to discover that the iTunes store here in the USA now sells the four-CD set produced to celebrate CAAMA's 25th anniversary.) But by and large I still haven't unlocked the secret of learning about and hearing new Aboriginal bands from this side of the ocean. So this week I thought I'd offer up a few short reviews of some of the indigenous musicians who are "in heavy rotation" on my iPod these days in the hope that some of you will have recommendations of your own.

When I was in Darwin in August 2005, Nabarlek's second album, Munwurrk (Bushfire), was everywhere I turned. Nabarlek hails from the tiny settlement of Manmoyi in Central Arnhem Land and is billed as "the garage band that never had a garage." They've been around for a long time--over twenty years' progression from acoustic guitars and flours tins, through a stint not as a rock band but as a dance troupe, and back to the making of music with electric guitars. On the strength of that reputation, I plunked down the money for the CD. Of course, when I think "garage band" I think three or four guys with beat up amplifiers that make the walls vibrate in time with the drummer's snare drum attacks. This is not at all the sound of Munwurrk, or its predecessor, Bininj Manborlh (Blackfella Road). For starters, Nabarlek looks more like an orchestra than a rock band, with eleven members and three main singers. Their songs are heavy with rhythm guitars and percussion, rounded out with keyboards and margoh (didjeridu) So the first thing you notice about them is the richness of the sound: the incessant growl of the didj amidst a synthesized background chorus of bells playing against the beat of clapsticks is my earliest memory of their music.

Many of the songs themselves are contemporary musical settings of traditional stories, like "Najorrkon (Rock Possum)" with its familiar warning to a younger brother not mess with his older brother's wife. "Najorrkon" opens both of the first two albums, and the different arrangements show the band's increasing sophistication--the first version relies heavily on the margoh and percussion; the second uses the band's electric guitars to create a denser sound and to add to the rhythmic variety of the arrangement. Other songs address more contemporary themes, like "Namayamayameh (I Am Lost)," which tells the story of a man ejected from a club for "being drunk and causing humbug." "Wonderer" from Munwurrk reminds me that the band owes a debt to Coloured Stone, as so many others do. But overall, I think that Nabarlek is making some of the most unusual and original music around these days. Almost every other band could be slotted comfortably into one or another (and sometimes a third) genre, be it reggae, country, hard rock, or folk. Nabarlek's sound is most often all their own.

Nabarlek recently released a third recording, Live, in conjunction with a DVD called Nabarlek on Tour. The CD shows off the band's chops, as the best live recordings should. Most of the songs on Live appeared on one of the two previous albums, but the treatments are often quite different, and surprisingly, sometimes gentler, performed on acoustic instruments and showing off the vocal harmonies to greater advantage: "Bushfire" is a standout in this regard. Live also shows the growing influence of reggae on the band in recent years. Given the dance party atmosphere of much of this album, I was a bit disappointed by the Nabarlek on Tour DVD. It's aptly titled, as much of the film chronicles the band's tour around Western Australia, but personally I was disappointed that far more time was given over to the story of life on the road and, for my money, far too little to footage of the actual performances. I don't think you get to see a single song performed in its entirety, and in the end the DVD left me longing to spend a few hours in Nabarlek's garage.

If your tastes run to genuine, no-frills, guitar-bass-and-drums three-man garage bands, then you can't do much better than Onslaught's 4 Real. The band came out of Adelaide in 2001, and their music is all gritty urban defiance ("There's something wrong with the program/There's nothing wrong with me"). Musically, the songs are simple and short, the guitar is heavy on fuzz, the vocal styles stay just on the rock 'n' roll side of rap, and the drumming often sounds like machine guns in slow motion. It's great stuff.

Lajamanu Teenage Band released their first album, Dreamtime Hero, shortly after their blowout performance at the 1996 at the Barunga Festival, and followed up a couple of years later with Vision. What I like best about these two recordings is the fact that I can't really pigeonhole the music. When I've got my iPod on shuffle and a tune comes up that I can't immediately place, odds are it's going to turn out to be the Teenage Band. There's reggae bounce in "Echo Voices" and "Wiyappa Wanti Jula," their bilingual warning against drinking and driving, while "Please Come Home," despite its English-language title, is Warlpiri gospel styling. Many of the other songs are pure pop--the closest thing to 1960s-inspired British larking, feel-good tunes that I've ever heard from an indigenous band. Like Nabarlek, they showed a great deal of musical growth between the first album and the second. I haven't heard last year's Prisoner yet; but the CAAMA site says that it is dedicated to the memory of Darren Penn, the band's original bassist, so I expect there will be changes to discover.

Despite the incredible variety in indigenous popular music these days, reggae seems to be the lingua franca that can be heard in almost any band's repertoire. Among the pioneers who brought the black Caribbean rhythms to Australian shores a quarter century ago was No Fixed Address, whose "We Have Survived" is still an anthem to be reckoned with. Chris Jones was guitarist for the band in the those days and one of his songs from the film Wrong Side of the Road (which featured No Fixed Address and Us Mob) appeared in a new version on the CAAMA 25th anthology: "Get A Grip." It has been years since I saw the film, and I didn't remember the song at all, which is pretty amazing, because once I heard the version on the CAAMA set, I couldn't get it out of my head. Incredibly, the new album it appears on, Lake Victoria, is available on the American iTunes store. Or maybe it's not so incredible, because the Lake Victoria is one hell of an album. From the opening track, "Vision," with its spooky devil-devil imagery, through the mining protest song "Stand Up" and the spinning, inescapable rhythm riff of "Pigs" ("You gotta watch yourself/You gotta protect yourself"), right up through the bouncy, unstoppable "Get A Grip," every song is the work of a master. The concluding track, "Dope Blues" is a classic twelve-bar that any American white-boy blues band would kill to have written: it's funny and desperate at the same time.

The reggae backbeat is the backbone of the Tjupi Band's Kuunyi (Poor Thing), yet another album that demonstrates that Sammy Butcher, one of the founders of the Warumpi Band, ought to be presiding as the patron saint of the Indigenous Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, were such a thing to exist. Butcher's solo instrumental album, Desert Surf Guitar is one of my all time favorites. It's an album that captures just about every mood a guitar is capable of, whether it's the 1950s ballroom slow dance rock 'n' roll of "Dry River Waltz" or the country stomp of "Footy Fever," the wistful elegance of "Misty Morning Rain" or the electric glide of "Dancing Brumbies." Kuunyi is more of an ensemble effort, but Butcher's brilliance is the only explanation for its subtle eclecticism: take for instance how the sweet, dreamy reggae seduction of "Ngayulu Nyinanyi (I Was Sitting Alone)" is suddenly graced by Butcher's country-picking guitar solo. Indeed, many of the songs on Kuunyi would be undistinguished, even bland, were it not for the sweetness of the guitar bridges. The standout tune is the lead-off "Petola Wanti (Leave Petrola Alone)," which is by turns plaintive and insistent; "Kungkangkuni Wanikatingu (My Girl Left Me)" is lovely and plaintive, and Butcher's genius shines--listen to the single, ringing note that punctuates the end of each chorus.

I'm not much of a country fan; the closest I come to it in indigenous music today are the Pigram Brothers, whose credits include being the backup band for the musical Bran Nue Dae. Maybe it's because lead vocalist Steve Pigram's voice reminds me a bit of Arlo Guthrie's timbre, or because the toe-tapping rhythms and the occasional mandolin give the music a bit of a bluegrass feel that I find their songs enjoyable. Maybe it's that they bring back memories of Broome and Roy Wiggan's diatribes against the Brothers for selling out and selling their spiritual health to the devils of whitefella's instruments. The simple nostalgia for childhood of a song like "Poinciana Sword Fight" from Saltwater Country plays off against the longing for lost country on Jiir's "Where I B'long." And there's something lazy and wonderful about watching the constellations whirl across the sky in the chorus of "Maysong." The Brothers have recently released their own concert DVD, Live at the Pearl Lugger's, Broome, but I haven't had the pleasure yet.

If there's a theme that underlies all of the diversity in this music, I don't think anything sums it up better than the words that appear to be painted across a sheet of corrugated iron on the inside of the jewel box lay-in for Onslaught's 4 Real: Hope, Strength, Survival. What amazes me is all the various ways these artists find to express those themes. The recordings I've chosen to highlight here are just a sample of what I've collected so far. New (at least to me) albums from the Late Lazy Boys, Blackstorm, and Rising Wind Band are still working themselves into my mental repertoire, and I'm giving Arnhem Land classics Wirrinyga Band, Letterstick Band, and Blekbala Mujik a bit of a rest these days. But if you've got recommendations for me, or tips about where to find stuff out of CAAMA's back catalog or the latest releases from bands I haven't heard about yet, please let me hear from you.
Nabarlek
Munwurrk (Bushfire)
Onslaught
4 Real
Lajamanu Teenage Band
Vision
Chris Jones
Lake Victoria
Tjupi Band
Kuunyi (Poor Thing)
Pigram Brothers
Jiir

 

Posted at 01:44 PM    

Sat - October 29, 2005

Blackfella/Whitefella: The Warumpi Band 


Until about five years ago, I was totally ignorant of Australian rock 'n' roll. Then I watched the closing ceremonies of the Sydney Olympics, and everything changed. I guess I'd heard of Midnight Oil, but didn't know anything about them, including the fact that they were Australian. But when they took the stage in black T-shirts and warmups emblazoned with the white word "SORRY," they caught my attention quickly. When they launched into "Beds are Burning," they knocked me over.

The time has come to say fair's fair
To pay the rent now, to pay our share
The time has come, a fact's a fact
It belongs to them, let's give it back.

I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. Was this band for real? Where were they coming from?

A quick search of the Internet confirmed the obvious: the Oils were a politically active band with a long history of engagement with Aboriginal issues. The songs on their album Diesel and Dust, including with the land rights anthem "Beds are Burning," repeatedly addressed themes of Aborginal land. There were songs with titles like "Warakurna" and "Bullroarer." And there was "The Dead Heart," commissioned by the Mutitjulu community for the celebration at the handover of Uluru to its traditional owners in 1985. To my surprise, Peter Garrett, the long bald singer of the band, had been invited to give the Australia Day Address in 1998, and he spoke passionately about the place of indigenous people in the Australian nation. And I also discovered that Diesel and Dust had emerged from a tour the band had taken through communities in the Western Desert and Arnhem Land with an Aboriginal rock 'n' roll group called the Warumpi Band.

Tracking down the Warumpi Band proved a little harder, and in fact it wasn't until we returned to Australia in 2001 that I found their CDs in a small shop in Brisbane. (They're also available now online from Skinnyfish Music, in the "Indigenous Roots "section.) But the search was definitely worth the wait, and the effort.

The Warumpi Band started life in Papunya and indeed were known for a long time simply as "that Papunya Band," or "Warumpinya band" in the local Kriol. Like most fledgling rock 'n' roll outfits, they were a cover band, performing songs by acts like Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, and indeed, those roots are as evident in their later recordings as the Aboriginal influences. The original line-up included Sammy Butcher Tjapanangka on guitar and bass, Neil Murray, a whitefella from western Victoria who'd gone to Papunya as a schoolteacher, on guitar and vocals, and George Rrurrambu in the lead singer/frontman slot. (Rrurrambu is the son of Gumatj artist Charlie Matjuwi from Elcho Island, and the brother of Peter Datjin.) The band's rhythm section changed personnel many times over the years, but originally included Sammy's brother Gordon Butcher on drums.

In 1983 the Warumpi Band made history of sorts by releasing the first rock record in an Aboriginal language. The A side was "Jailanguru Pakarnu" (Out from Jail), and it many ways it's a rock 'n' roll classic: a twelve-bar blues structure and the simple story of a young man who sings "Today I just got out from jail/I'm going to Papunya now/I'm going in a hurry for my girl is waiting/I'm gonna sit down good--no more fighting/Today I'll be together with my family." Except for the reference to Papunya and the fact that the lyrics are sung in Luritja, this could be the lament of any sorry Southerner in the USA: the jailhouse has been an icon of the blues as long as there's been blues to be had.

The flip side of the single stands, in my mind, as the best song the Warumpis ever recorded, "Kintorelakutu." If the homelands or outstation movement needed an anthem, the Warumpi Band gave it one with this song. A crisp chopping guitar riff opens the song, before the bass and drums rumble in underneath and propel the verse along like trucks racing westwards through the desert. The verses lament the lot of the Western Desert people at Papunya. "After drinking grog we always start fighting/At that place in the east we are becoming nothing/We are yearning for our own country." The chorus proposes the solution: we must go west to Kintore. After what's known in the trade as a "blistering guitar solo," the four-beats-to-the-measure pounding of guitar and bass snaps into a single staccato chop on the first downbeat, the drums roll on, and Rrurrambu's vocal goes into overdrive:

Anangu tjuta! Anangu tjuta!
Irritja nyinapayi ngurra panya Walangurru
Kuwarrilatju nyinanyilpi Kuwarrilatju nyinanyilpi
Tjamaku ngurrangka ngurra panya Kintorela
Arralaka! Wilurarra! Kintorelakutu!

(Mobs of people! Mobs of people!
Those olden times ones always lived at that same place--Kintore
Finally now we are sitting. Finally now we are sitting at our
Grandfather's camp in the same home at Kintore.
We must go! West! To Kintore!)

After four years of listening to this track, that coda still starts a chill in my scalp that runs right on down past my knees.

Their first album, Big Name, No Blankets, was released in 1985 without either of these songs. It did include four more songs in language, including "Nyuntu Nyaaltjirrku," a plea to beat the grog. Where the music video for "Jailanguru Pakarnu" featured the members of the band running joyously, instruments in hand, from the gates of the jail, "Nyuntu Nyaaltjirrku" offered documentary footage of Aboriginal men and women being herded into the back of police wagons. Neil Murray and Sammy Butcher contributed the jazzy complaints "Breadline" and "Sitdown Money" that addressed issues of welfare dependence and its demoralizing side effects in Papunya. But the mainstay of the album was 'Blackfella/Whitefella," the anthem of racial harmony and cooperation that lent its title to the tour of the Outback communities undertaken jointly by Midnight Oil and the Warumpi Band.

The Blackfella/Whitefella tour was documented in a film of the same name, and by journalist Andrew McMillan in his book Strict Rules (Hodder and Stoughton, 1988). In both cases the Oils are treated, understandably, as the star attraction. But the Warumpi Band shines. They are both at home in the environment and uncomfortable at the center of attention, while the Oils sometimes struggle against the unaccustomed venues and are sometimes liberated by the energy of the audience of kids dancing ten feet in front of them. One thing is certain, both bands emerged from the tour with the best albums of their careers in hand, Diesel and Dust and the Warumpi's Go Bush!

Go Bush! includes both "Jailanguru Pakarnu" and "Kintorelakutu" as well as the song that's probably done more to secure the band's reputation than any other (albeit via Christine Anu's cover version, which incidentally, she performed at the 2000 Olympics). "My Island Home" is emblematic of the Warumpi blackfella/whitefella collaboration: it is Rrurrambu's sung autobiography, written by Murray. The final and "title" track of the album, "From the Bush," is a passionate rebuke to opponents of land rights:

You can keep your Opera House and your MCG*
You can keep your company home it don't mean nothing to me
We're not trying to take away your suburban backyard
We won't be spearing any sheep down on your farm
My life is different to yours
What are you worried for
You got the money, you got the lot
You got it all but you still don't stop

(*Melbourne Cricket Ground to us Yanks in the audience)

True to the rock 'n' roll form, after the achievement of Go Bush! the band nearly fell apart. Neil Murray had major ambitions for the band, and pushed for national exposure and recognition. The Tjapanangka brothers had little interest in performing or traveling outside of Papunya, and indeed in the sections of Blackfella/Whitefella filmed in the Top End, Sammy Butcher has been replaced by Hilary Wirri. They and Rrurrambu also had family business that conflicted with the demands of touring and rock 'n' roll stardom. Rrurrambu developed problems with the grog that led to tensions between him and Murray, who by his own account demanded a kind of discipline that the other band members had little shared investment in.

For the next nine years the band re-united, toured, and broke up repeatedly, and it wasn't until 1996 that Murray, Rrurrambu, and Sammy Butcher rebuilt the core of the band and returned to the recording studio. Too Much Humbug (Murray claimed the title reflected his general opinion of the band's worth at the time) reflected the members' divergent musical interests and the decade-long gap. The songs were less elemental rock 'n' roll. Murray's contributions were more crafted, slicker, and to my ears, not as convincing. Rrurrambu had embraced his Yolngu heritage on the one hand in songs like "Wayathul" and his status as a cosmopolitan, urban rock hero on the other with "Koori Man." Even the closing reprise of "Blackfella/Whitefella" fell flat. By this time though the fans were, as they say, legion, and the band had a hard time giving it up once and for all. They played their last dates in 2000, including the opening of the Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

In 2001 ABC's Message Stick produced a half hour documentary tribute to the band, The End of the Corrugated Road, which featured excerpts from their videos, interviews, and concert footage. In 2002 Sammy Butcher released a solo album of guitar instrumentals called Desert Surf Guitar, which is one of the loveliest electric guitar records I know. It's a work of a truly individual guitar genius, unlike the music of the Warumpi Band, or indeed any other contemporary Aboriginal music that I'm familiar with. George Rrurrambu's solo, Nerbu Message, came out in 2004, a mix of reggae styles, Yolngu tones, and his familiar exhortative brand of rock, along with new treatments of two old Warumpi songs, "Mayalil" and "Ronu Wanga (My Island Home)." Neil Murray released his sixth solo album this year, a two-disc compilation of his work from the last 15 years.

Murray has also written an autobiographical novel, Sing For Me, Countryman (Hodder and Stoughton, 1993), long out of print, but now available again by direct purchase from Murray. (See his website for details.) To call the book "thinly disguised" would be something of an overstatement; the names have been changed but that's about it. I found the book to be a fascinating chronicle of the band's history, remarkable especially in its frankness. Murray himself isn't always a sympathetic character; he is driven by his own desire for fame as much as he is by his love of Aboriginal culture. He is warm-hearted and impatient, sentimental and self-absorbed, and I figure that if he can present himself in this manner, he can probably be trusted reasonably well in his depictions of his bandmates and their associates.

As the song says, I love rock 'n' roll, so I was a sucker for the Warumpi Band from the start. But the more I listened to their music, sought out the videos, and read about them, the more convinced I became that there was something extra-ordinary about them. In Sing For Me, Countryman, Murray recounts with some bitterness a time when he was trying to organize a second tour with Midnight Oil and was frustrated at every turn by the impossibility of getting the other members of the band committed to the effort it would take to make the dates and do the touring. Eventually, the project collapses on him; the Oils want the Warumpis aboard, but the logistics can't be conquered, and another Aboriginal band is recruited to take their place. Murray has nothing but scorn for this replacement bunch of "stage Aborigines" with their tribal costumes and paint. This sounds a lot like a caustic assessment of Yothu Yindi to me, and while it's generally agreed in the press that the Warumpi Band opened doors for many other Aboriginal rock 'n' rollers, including Yothu Yindi, it also sounds like sour grapes. But the pieces of the story are all familiar. There's the whitefella trying to organize his Aboriginal cohorts, who for their part don't really want the same thing that he does. There's' impatience on all sides. There's the implicit criticism that people "down South" don't really understand Aboriginal culture but are ready to snap up something that looks authentic, but only because it looks "primitive" or "tribal." But perhaps the importance of the Warumpi Band lies in the fact that they didn't try to sell traditional Aboriginal culture. Their authenticity lies rather in their melding of bush and city, black and white, electric guitars and clapsticks, Gumatj, Luritja, and Kriol. Big name, no blankets.

Murray caught a lot of flack for being the whitefella in an Aboriginal band. When the Warumpis came to Sydney, black activists tried to force him out, threatening to cancel dates if he played with the band. Other critics have claimed that he used the banner of Aboriginal rock to advance his own career, and that without his Pintupi friends, he'd still be busking on the Todd Mall. I don't think there's any denying that Murray brought a white Australian sensibility to the band in many ways. But I also think it's unfair to say that the man who could write "My Island Home" for Rrurrambu was a freeloader on the country's interest in Aboriginal culture. A pair of songs like "Breadline" and "Sitdown Money" work precisely because they tell the story of people down on their luck, out of work, with no prospects. Whether they're luckless pastoralists or dislocated Pintupi doesn't really matter to the spirit of the song. In The End of the Corrugated Road, Archie Roach calls them "the first reconciliators."

Murray's song "Fitzroy Crossing," a lament for a love left behind, sounds like a traditional lover's lament, but the story told in Sing For Me, Countryman reveals that the love he left behind is a son fathered on an Aboriginal woman, and the family places a distant second to Murray's aspirations to be a star. Here again, there's a story of modern Australia, of Aboriginal experience with the Anglo interloper. And yet, in "Mulga and Spinifex Plain," Murray's yearning for a return to the bush is made of equal parts of a romantic yearning for the country and his desire to sit down with a tjilpi, or old man, to whom he says

I'm a stranger to your life for a start
And I'm not sure if I can really play a part
Still I came to your country
Don't know what you're thinking of me
All I know is I can't forget these times here with you.

On another song from Big Name, No Blankets, "Falling Down," there's a small detail that rings true of bush courtship. Murray describes a lover's tryst at sunset. The man sets out to meet his woman; she slips out to meet him and as she walks along the road "she lets her footprints fall in his." The full import of this escaped me until one day in Broome, I listened to Roy Wiggan tell stories about the many ways in which boys and girls got in trouble out in the bush, especially boys. He talked about how jealous boyfriends would follow their girlfriend's footprints, and then watch for places where another man's footprints crossed or seemed to follow hers. If they went in the same direction too far, the jealous boyfriend would often come out with his boomerang.

In the film Blackfella/Whitefella, much of the screen time is given over to Rrurrambu, whose flamboyant stage presence led to his characterization as a "Aborginal Bon Scott" (Scott was the lead singer of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC). Murray, as the other frontman, gets his share of camera time as well, and this is all within the conventions of the rock documentary. But in the long shots that capture the whole band, Gordon and Sammy Butcher strike me as more than unusually retiring. Their faces are almost always averted from the crowd and they give the first impression of being distinctly uncomfortable on the stage. Gordon Butcher looks up at the camera only as if to check whether it has turned its focus away from him. I was reminded of the Pintupi concept of kunta, which is variously translated as "shame" or "embarrassment," and is an appropriate behavior to exhibit when one is the center of attention in a group of people. I wonder if the feeling of being, literally, in the spotlight, could account for the Tjapanangkas' stage affect.

So it isn't just the obvious homeland anthem or the songs in language that make the Warumpi Band so important to me and to their other diehard fans. Yes, language was immensely important, and I can only imagine what people felt when they turned on the radio and heard rock 'n' roll in their native tongue. My command of Pintupi is limited to about two dozen words at best, most of them picked up on trips to Uluru. Anangu. Kata tjuta. Stuff like that. But when Rrrurrambu shouted "Anangu tjuta" in the middle of "Kintorelakutu" and I understood what he was saying, if only for an instant, it was a pretty amazing thrill for me.

But it's the intimacy of detail, the way that living with the Warumpis' music in my head continually enriches my readings and my experiences in Australia. How stories I hear suddenly make sense out of something in a song lyric, and vice-versa, and how that process continues after years, is what makes them important to me. At the end of Painting Culture, after Fred Myers has traced the development of Papunya Tula painting through three decades, he describes a homecoming of sorts in Sydney at the opening of the Genesis and Genius show. Fred is re-united after many years with his friends from the days at Yayayi, especially with Bobby West Tjupurrula. It's a very emotional section of the book; there's a sense of triumph for all parties involved, and it climaxes at the opening gala in the Art Gallery with the Warumpi Band playing one of their last gigs. When I read this, all I could think of was the conclusion of many a Shakespearian comedy, say, As You Like It, where all parties are reconciled, dissension put aside, and the music plays and the ensemble joins in a dance of celebration. Reflecting on the performance and its significance in light of the success of Papunya Tula, Fred has this to say, in part:

In ... its music, culture, and personnel, Warumpi was an expression of the emergent mixing of indigenous and white counterculture, a rejection of the Anglophilic or even the middle class--and in this lay the band's appeal for a new Australia rather similar to the appeal of the dot paintings. Both represent forms of collaboration between white and black, mixings of sensibility, a shifting of Aboriginal specificity into terms more easily assimilated within the sensibilities of the broader population. (Myers, Painting Culture, 350)

Or, to let the Warumpis have the final word:

Blackfella, whitefella
Yellafella, any fella
It doesn't matter what your colour
As long as you are true fella
Are you the one who's gonna stand up and be counted? 

Posted at 11:26 PM    

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