BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
If you’ve ever studied anything at all, you’ll know how stressful it can be to think about what lies ahead after graduation. But what if you successfully finished your degree and started building up a name for yourself, only to face deportation? That’s exactly what happened to US composer Brian Wroten, who arrived in Tasmania in 2011 to study his Masters of Music Composition before being kicked out of the state two years later. He managed to complete his degree at the University of Tasmania and release his album Tasman before his departure – but he certainly didn’t leave without a fight. Brian takes some time to share with us the story of his deportation and those who helped him fight the law until the very end.
How did you find the experience of studying music in Australia as an international student?
I had lifetime full of experiences in just two short years. It was a great time, playing video games and laser tag with awesome new friends – most people were very welcoming to international students. It wasn’t all fun and games, though. While some key people were extremely supportive of my goals, others made it very difficult to get through all of the bureaucratic bulls**t, piling on the red-tape in regards to my visa and degree while I was trying to study and provide for myself. In some ways, I’m very lucky I had such great friends to help me cope through my destitution. Now it’s over and I’m back home in America. I’d come back and do it all over again without thinking twice.
Tell me about the process behind your deportation from Australia. Why were you forced to leave?
The Department of Immigration & Citizenship had a Skilled Occupations List, which was a list of occupations of people they were currently allowing to immigrate to Australia. ‘Musician’ was not on the list at the time. Since I had completed my studies, I wasn’t eligible to apply for another student visa. If I had found an employer to sponsor my employment for at least two years I could have stayed but I had not been able to do so in my two years of job-searching in Hobart. I am still seeking an employer in Hobart.
How did your friends and the local music community fight for you to stay?
The amount of people that reached out to help me in that time was really overwhelming. It made me feel like I really belonged in Tasmania. We mostly tried to petition the Department of Immigration & Citizenship, and get local politicians such as Andrew Wilkie to write letters on our behalf. But at the end of the day, the law said what the law said. None of us could help that, but I still hold a lot of hope for Tasmania. Eventually someone will stick up for artists trying to establish themselves in the state’s developing music culture, and we can get back our chance to really see how far our new music movement and record label can go.
You’ve said Tasman is like a requiem for what your life would have been like had you stayed – what were your dreams for Tasmanian life before you were forced to leave?
My dream in Tasmania was to start a new music collective and record label of Tasmanian artists. That’s exactly what I was starting to form with Jabra Latham before all the drama went down with my visa situation. The collective is now called Opus House (see: http://www.opushouse.com.au).
What else inspired Tasman?
Some of these ideas and songs I’ve been developing for years. There were many late nights and hours spent sitting at home trying out new riffs and ideas on my bass. As these concepts matured, I knew that I had to find a way to get them out there to show the world. Most of the songs are an abstract expression of my emotional self at the time of writing, but I knew someday I these songs would have to birth themselves into some tangible form. I also needed to record these pieces for the sakes of my peers and lecturers, too. I really wanted my peers to hear my music for what it is; not just see the pages of musical notation as some assignment I’d written, but hear its complexity and vision in space and time. If you’ve heard the music, you’d know how unique and unusual it is – it’s hard to describe in a brief way and even more so when you’re trying to explain the writing on the page to teachers or friends at university without the recordings. When you listen to the album, you are hearing the truest representation of my ideas yet – my labour of love that’s been years in the making.
The Tasmanian student musicians who featured alongside you on Tasman provided the sort of ensemble playing that one would expect from professionals. How did you go about crafting such a high quality release with most musicians involved still so young?
A few of the students actually do play at a professional level. For the more flawed performances, we did do some editing and several takes of each section so that we could pick the best from each player. Really, the credit goes to the players though for accepting the challenge with such success. When I first started writing the music, I didn’t have specific players in mind. But once I started becoming acquainted with some really good musicians such as Ben Price (saxophone), Alfred Jackson (drums), and Jacquie Liversidge (flute), I started to write music specifically for them to play.
What does the future hold for you as a young composer?
After I’m done being a young composer, I guess I’ll become an old composer. My plan is just to keep writing and recording music with my friends in Tasmania and to try and establish myself further as an artist. I’ve done the best music writing of my life in Hobart; I can’t wait to get back and see what else Tasmania has in store for me.
Check out Tasman at brianwroten.bandcamp.com.
Image supplied.
