BY MADELINE ROYCROFT
Australia will acknowledge its mistreatment of the Indigenous peoples as part of the 2016 National Reconciliation Week between 27 May and 3 June.
To launch the occasion this Friday, the University of Sydney will host a discussion on the topic Music and Contemporary Indigenous Identities. A panel of experts in the field will explore the question: How do Indigenous musicians and researchers view their work in contemporary Australia?
If you’re in one of the remaining states or territories, never fear – right here, we honour five inspiring and influential Indigenous musicians in Australia, both past and present.
5. Maroochy Barambah
In October 1989, 10 years after graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts, mezzo-soprano Maroochy Barambah began a string of firsts. Becoming the first Indigenous woman to take to the Australian operatic stage, Maroochy took the lead in Black River, a one-act opera by musical siblings Andrew and Julianne Schultz which tells the grizzly story of Aboriginal people dying in custody. In 1993, Maroochy performed in New York to honour the United Nations’ first International Year for the World’s Indigenous Peoples. She also starred in a 1995 production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, becoming the first Indigenous Australian to perform at the Sydney Opera House.
4. Ntaria Ladies Choir
The Ntaria Choir of Hermannsburg originated from the singing traditions of Lutheran pastors who arrived in Central Australia in 1877, and became open to women only from 1970 onwards. The women sing in both English and Arrente, a language native to the Alice Springs region. In May 2003, the choir partnered with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for a recorded performance of Andrew Schultz’s contemporary cantata Journey to Horseshoe Bend. In his work, Schultz and librettist Gordon Williams tell the story of Pastor Carl Strehlow, a past choirmaster of the Ntaria Ladies who tragically died at Horseshoe Bend while on the way to see a doctor. The project is the subject of the 2006 documentary Cantata Journey, which follows the choir from rehearsals at home in Hermannsburg to the urban centre of Sydney. The Ntaria Ladies Choir has released several recordings and tour interstate regularly – also travelling to Germany for the 2015 Kirchentag Festival in Stuttgart, where they sang Arrarnte translations of traditional Baroque hymns.
3. William Barton
One of Australia’s leading players of traditional didjeridu (didgeridoo), William Barton has made an unrivalled name for himself in the world of classical music, both at home and internationally. In 1998, his’s successful premiere with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra when he was just 17 led to him becoming the first resident didjeridu player of a symphony orchestra. In 2004, he performed alongside the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of Peter Sculthorpe’s Requiem, the first large-scale orchestral work to feature didjeridu. William also collaborated with Australian composer Matthew Hindson on Kalkadungu (2012), an ARIA-winning, internationally performed composition, which just last year saw William become the first Indigenous Australian to perform in Russia. Of his career, William has said: “I’m doing what I love… I want to take the oldest culture in the world and blend it with Europe’s rich musical legacy”. And that, he does.
2. Harold Blair AM
In 1924, Harold Blair was born to an Aboriginal mother in Cherbourg, a remote town of Southern Queensland. Against all odds, Harold forged an extraordinary career for himself as Australia’s first Indigenous opera singer, an inspiring teacher, a prominent Aboriginal rights activist and a Member of the Order of Australia. After leaving school at 16 years old to work as a farm labourer, Harold’s professional start came at age 21 when he won Australia’s Amateur Hour, a radio talent quest. His performances gained sponsorship from members of the trade union, academics and musicians, forming the Harold Blair Trust. Overcoming rejections from major conservatoriums in Melbourne and Sydney (due to an alleged lack of education, an assumption it seems many in Australia still can’t abandon), the trailblazing young tenor would finally attain his Diploma of Music from the Melba Conservatorium in Melbourne, attending from 1945-1949. After graduating, leading African-American baritone Todd Duncan invited Harold to study at the Juilliard School in New York. Harold dedicated the rest of his life to fighting for Aboriginal rights. His legacy lives on in the work of the Melba Opera Trust, where the Harold Blair Opera Scholarship provides young Indigenous classical singers with professional mentorship and financial support.
1. Deborah Cheetham AO
Australia’s foremost Indigenous soprano Deborah Cheetham rose to prominence in 1997 with the premiere of her one-woman, autobiographical play White Baptist Abba Fan. She has since founded the not-for-profit Short Black Opera company and composed Australia’s first Indigenous opera Pecan Summer. Amongst incredible achievements – such as singing at the 2000 Summer Olympics, being appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2014, and receiving recognition on the 2015 Victorian Honour Roll of women – Deborah also caused a much-needed stir when she politely declined to sing the national anthem at the 2015 AFL Grand Final. The reason? She was unable to replace the repressive and historically inaccurate line ‘for we are young and free’ with the infinitely more inclusive ‘in peace and harmony’. Advocating for a contemporary set of lyrics, Deborah wrote:
Our national anthem tells us that we are young and free. Blindly, many Australians continue to accept this. But it’s not true. Setting aside for a moment 70,000 years of Indigenous cultures, 114 years on from Federation and 227 years into colonisation, at the very least, those words don’t reflect who we are. As Australians, can we aspire to be young forever? If we are ever to mature we simply cannot cling to this desperate premise.
You can read the proposed new lyrics to Advance Australia Fair (co-written by The Seekers star Judith Durham and Indigenous singer-songwriter Kutcha Edwards) in this article.
Learn more about National Reconciliation Week in the video below.
Image generously supplied by Reconciliation Australia. Credit: Wayne Quilliam.
