Crossing Musical Boundaries
Review of Crossing Roper Bar
Paul Grabowsky and The Australian Art Orchestra explore fresh terrain in Northern Territory
Attempts to promote reconciliation with Aboriginal Australia have taken myriad shapes and forms. Last year three deadly, diverse musical projects made a significant contribution to the cause. First came the release of Liyarn Ngarn, a DVD/documentary exploring the impact of racism on Aboriginal people, and a series of live shows featuring the players involved, notably Archie Roach.
Then The Black Arm Band, a travelling showcase for contemporary indigenous talent also largely generated by Shane Howard, spread its wings with show-stopping appearances at major festivals in Australia and overseas. The third enterprise may have slipped under the radar somewhat and yet, for a variety of reasons, it could arguably represent the most meaningful dialogue to date between black and white Australian musicians.
Simply put, Crossing Roper Bar is a fusion of contemporary jazz and traditional indigenous music – a project that brings together the Wagilak Gujarra/Nyilapidgi people of Ngukurr in eastern Arnhem Land and one of white Australia’s most respected musicians and ensembles. On another level, this remarkable cross-cultural collaboration tacitly acknowledges the importance of maintaining and protecting one of the world’s oldest musical performative traditions, the so-called Manikay or song cycles.
The Australian Art Orchestra’s founder, leader and pianist, all-round musical mover and shaker, Paul Grabowsky, hatched the idea in 2004. *Crossing Roper Bar * bore fruit in 2008 with a three-week tour that saw the project travel from Darwin to Perth via Broome, conducting performances, workshops and community collaborations in outback locations such as Katherine, Kununurra, Warmun, Wangkatjungka and Beagle Bay, and giving concerts in the start-finish cities.
Crossing Roper Bar, which is currently being converted into a studio album, will be performed at Victoria’s Apollo Bay Festival at the end of this month, and at the magnificent new Melbourne Recital Centre in August, before possibly being aimed overseas.
The project has already surpassed Grabowsky’s original aspirations. “I wanted to have a great group of contemporary improvisers working with traditional songmen,” he reveals, “but it’s happened on a scale that I could not possibly have dreamt of. I never thought we would be on the road from Darwin down to Perth playing all those wonderful places. It was way beyond my expectations. That was due to a very fortuitous set of circumstances and the hard work of a few people.”
The AAO’s collaboration with the Wagilak clan was facilitated by one of Grabowsky’s students and prompted by the master musician’s own on-going fascination with Aboriginal culture. “I was introduced to that community by Steve Teakle,” says Grabowsky.
“He had done quite a bit of work in the top end in the contemporary music area through Charles Darwin University’s Remote Music Delivery Unit. I was teaching him piano and when I found out that he was involved with remote communities up north I was really intrigued. He promised to take me somewhere where I might be able to meet traditional people. That’s how I got to arrive at Ngukurr.”
From 2005 to 2008, Grabowsky and other members of the AAO made four or five forays to Ngukurr to work with the local musicians.* “Julien Wilson, one of our saxophone players, ran with the project for a couple of years, so a lot of the groundwork was done by him.” *
The leader equally tips his hat to members of the Wilfred family, who comprised the backbone of the indigenous element and were pivotal in the process – especially Benjamin Wilfred. “Benjamin’s a very important young man. He’s taken on the mantle of being the senior songman of the Wagilak group. The Wilfreds are a very well known family in that part of the world. They all paint, dance and make music. Benjamin’s responsible for ceremony across a lot of that area, not just in Ngukurr itself but also in the surrounding country as far as Groote Island. He’s called upon to perform various ceremonial acts, making music for ceremony, and he takes it all very seriously, as you would expect. Roy Wilfred is a most extraordinary singer. I think he’s one of the great voices of this country. People will be absolutely blown away by Roy. He’s an elder of the Wagilak clan and an extremely fine vocalist in a traditional vein.”
Grabowsky also acknowledges the part played by singer-songwriter Ruby Hunter, whom he had previously worked with on Kura Tungar, Ruby’s Story and Passion.
“It was great to have Ruby on the tour because she represents another aspect of indigenous music making. She was able to sing about her own life and tell her own story, and that was wonderful, particularly in regards to reaching out to younger people. She’s a person of great status in indigenous Australia and we were feted everywhere we took her.” * The performance of Crossing Roper Bar* scheduled for Apollo Bay will not include Ruby Hunter, but will involve the same musicians from Ngukurr and Melbourne who took part in the NT/WA tour last August/September.
The line-up will be: Grabowsky (piano), the AAO’s Tony Hicks (reeds), Stephen Magnusson (guitar) and Chris Bekker (bass), Rajiv Jayaweera (percussion), plus a viola/violinist, and the songmen Roy and Benjamin Wilfred and didgeridoo players David Wilfred and Johnston Hall.
Grabowsky sees the AAO’s collaboration with the Wilfreds as an organic, evolving process, a mix of ancient and modern, and a genuine dialogue between the cultures.
- “We’re learning a lot about a body of music which has been around for a very long time and has very specific kinds of structural and melodic characteristics, and the more we play it, the more we interact with these wonderful musicians, the more the music grows.”* He is all too aware of the fragility of traditional Aboriginal culture and the need for prudence in any collaboration.
“In the same way that our intervention in eco-systems brings about their undoing in many cases, we have to look at indigenous traditional structures as being similarly under threat. Luckily, there are some communities that are very strong in lore and are doing everything they can to maintain that. In Ngukurr, we’re hoping in a small way that we are playing a role in helping to maintain what we consider to be very important and precious cultural artifacts. In terms of the actual people, some of the most important aspects of their lives are enshrined in their music.”
Marrying the complexities and sophistication of Western jazz with the musical tradition of Arnhem Land song cycles (Manikay) that are rarely heard outside of tribal land, Grabowsky indicates, came about through rehearsal and through familiarity. * “The songs are recognisable structures. They have melodies and rhythmic cycles. Really it was just about getting to understand the relationship between these different components. One could say about this music that a lot happens in a very short time because the songs happen in bursts, and between the bursts are long silences in which people might have a smoke, have a walk around or have a chat, and then the song will start up again. I’m really intrigued by that kind of stop-start structure. It was something that Miles was kind of playing around with a bit in the 1970s. If there’s a model for me in terms of how I’m approaching this, it’s probably that period of Miles Davis – the sort of On The Corner [c. 1972] area, which I think was beautifully open in its concept and yet welded an exploration of groove and multi-layering of all kinds of musical materials on top. This is very electric and very colourful, layered music that we’re making, and we’re really exploring the rhythms and structures of the music. I’m really getting a lot out of it, and I’m sure it’s creeping into my own music too.”*
While Grabowsky views didgeridoo, or yidaki in Arnhem Land vernacular, as a vital component of the collaboration, he seems to approach the ancient droning instrument from a different angle than most.
“I think a lot of people see yidaki as the fundamental of everything that you’re playing harmonically. I don’t really see it like that any more. I see it as a very important sound, something that is happening at the bottom end of the music. The most extraordinary thing about the yidaki is the rhythms that it plays. It very much is the rhythm section of the music and while the clapsticks [bilma] keep a pulse going, the polyrhythm of the yidakis are performing something else. It’s that kind of complexity that fascinates me about traditional Aboriginal music and always has. It’s what we’re able to derive from that in terms of applying the rhythmic concepts of yidaki playing to kit drums, to our music, that makes it a very exciting journey.”
In Crossing Roper Bar, AAO members provide subtle accompaniment during the short bursts of singing and passages of high-energy improvisation as instrumental bridges. The effect is mesmerising and meditative and bears no resemblance at all to the glib new age whitefella-meets-blackfella music albums that can be found in racks at tourist outlets and the like.
Grabowsky says the indigenous musicians applaud what he and his AAO colleagues are striving to achieve.
“They’re appreciative of what we’re doing and I think they’re getting to know what the instruments can do. As we’re learning about their music, they’re learning more about what we do as well. They certainly tell us what works from their perspective and what isn’t working. As in any kind of situation like this, we massage it and change things, try new things out over time. So it’s a perpetually evolving kind of work. I don’t think this project will ever have a final form. The stage show is largely improvised. The songs themselves also can change; they might add verses to an existing song. I never really know what’s going to happen. It’s never the same twice – not even remotely. It’s completely different every time we play.”
Grabowsky says the title itself stands as a metaphor. “Roper Bar is a place where you can cross over the Roper River in the dry season to come into the community. We’ve used it as metaphor for bridging the two languages that we speak. From that, you can read many things – it’s a bridge between our cultures, but also a way of establishing an on-going link between these different ways of expressing ourselves, towards achieving a common goal. An important part of Crossing Roper Bar* is that the crossing is both ways and exchange visits between Ngukurr and Melbourne are a feature of the project. There are no preconceived ideas about how the work should go and from the beginning it has been a case of sitting down, learning the Manikay and working things through.” * Grabowsky doesn’t believe the cultural divide between white and black Australia is as great as some might maintain.
“Obviously there are things which are very specific to black Australia, particularly in terms of their traditions and beliefs and the very sacred relationship they have with their land, which is deep and binding. But they are very generous people and they are always happy to share whatever knowledge they’re able to share with us, and through that willingness to share I’ve learned that there are many, many opportunities for black and white Australians to come to understand much more about each other. I think that if we spent more time working with these people and trying to understand their lives in a more meaningful way, then it could make all kinds of difference both to white and black Australia.”
Crossing Roper Bar will be performed at the Apollo Bay Festival (March 27-29).
- Rhythms Magazine (Tony Hillier), Thursday, February 26, 2009
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