After some thought and an excessively long period of inactivity, I've decided to put this blog out to pasture. Any future blogging will occur at my new website (still under construction at present) at oliverdownes.moonfruit.com
Thanks for visiting and feel free to enjoy the archived posts!
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Saturday, January 7, 2012
I Am Eora
Wesley Enoch is a busy chap. Taking the time to chat from Sydney Airport before heading back home to Brisbane, the first Indigenous Artistic Director of the Queensland Theatre Company has spent his morning in meetings, finalising the creative details of I Am Eora, the musical show that has bubbled away at the back of his mind for the last four years, set to premiere at the upcoming Sydney Festival.
I Am Eora seems set to extend what is seen to be possible in Indigenous theatre, incorporating music (including that of desert balladeer Frank Yamma, jazz singer Wilma Reading and hip-hop poet Radical Son), performance and large-scale projections to suggest a story without relying too much on overt narrative. Enoch, who contributed to the opening ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, describes it as being “like an opening ceremony to a big athletics event”, which although celebratory looks “at the underbelly of things, trying to tell another kind of story, not just the obvious stuff.”
Taking as its point of departure the biographies of three historical figures, Barangaroo, Pemulwuy and Bennelong, the show promises to use their stories to explore the predominant responses of Indigenous people to contact with Australia's colonizers: hostile resistance, a quiet refusal to conform as well as active assistance. “The dominant narrative is that Aboriginal people just rolled over and let it happen,” says Enoch, “but Pemulwuy resisted and there's been a huge resistance in this country since the very beginning... What the[se] figures represent is still manifesting today, the warrior, the nurturer and the interpreter. Many Indigenous Australians experience those three spirits, those archetypes, really in who we are in this country today.”
Although speaking passionately of the ongoing continuities with the deep historical past, Enoch is quick to argue that Indigenous culture is not static but is dynamic and constantly evolving. “The people who have a vested interest in creating an image of Aboriginal culture as static or authentic thing from hundreds of years ago are people who cannot deal with the fluidity of even the Multicultural Australia... in a pluralist society like Australia, we deserve and should have a pluralist perspective on what Aboriginality is.”
With the show's title, Enoch, who confesses to having a 'tortured relationship' with Sydney, has sought to excavate the meaning of the name traditionally given to the peoples around Sydney Harbour ('Eora' translates as 'people of this place') has traditionally referred to the Indigenous peoples of Sydney Harbour, interrogating what it may mean to say 'I Am Eora' in 2011.
“I think it's actually the people who live in Sydney who are the Eora,” says Enoch. “That's contentious ... The proposition I'm trying to put forward is that this country can only go forward when we can all say, I am a person of this place, I belong here ... I'll get some flack for it, but I love the idea of art being a little bit contentious … There are lots of different ways of being here and ultimately to be true to an Aboriginal spirit of being of a place, people must feel ownership for a place, care for it, feel responsibility for it as well.”
First published in The Brag
I Am Eora seems set to extend what is seen to be possible in Indigenous theatre, incorporating music (including that of desert balladeer Frank Yamma, jazz singer Wilma Reading and hip-hop poet Radical Son), performance and large-scale projections to suggest a story without relying too much on overt narrative. Enoch, who contributed to the opening ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, describes it as being “like an opening ceremony to a big athletics event”, which although celebratory looks “at the underbelly of things, trying to tell another kind of story, not just the obvious stuff.”
Taking as its point of departure the biographies of three historical figures, Barangaroo, Pemulwuy and Bennelong, the show promises to use their stories to explore the predominant responses of Indigenous people to contact with Australia's colonizers: hostile resistance, a quiet refusal to conform as well as active assistance. “The dominant narrative is that Aboriginal people just rolled over and let it happen,” says Enoch, “but Pemulwuy resisted and there's been a huge resistance in this country since the very beginning... What the[se] figures represent is still manifesting today, the warrior, the nurturer and the interpreter. Many Indigenous Australians experience those three spirits, those archetypes, really in who we are in this country today.”
Although speaking passionately of the ongoing continuities with the deep historical past, Enoch is quick to argue that Indigenous culture is not static but is dynamic and constantly evolving. “The people who have a vested interest in creating an image of Aboriginal culture as static or authentic thing from hundreds of years ago are people who cannot deal with the fluidity of even the Multicultural Australia... in a pluralist society like Australia, we deserve and should have a pluralist perspective on what Aboriginality is.”
With the show's title, Enoch, who confesses to having a 'tortured relationship' with Sydney, has sought to excavate the meaning of the name traditionally given to the peoples around Sydney Harbour ('Eora' translates as 'people of this place') has traditionally referred to the Indigenous peoples of Sydney Harbour, interrogating what it may mean to say 'I Am Eora' in 2011.
“I think it's actually the people who live in Sydney who are the Eora,” says Enoch. “That's contentious ... The proposition I'm trying to put forward is that this country can only go forward when we can all say, I am a person of this place, I belong here ... I'll get some flack for it, but I love the idea of art being a little bit contentious … There are lots of different ways of being here and ultimately to be true to an Aboriginal spirit of being of a place, people must feel ownership for a place, care for it, feel responsibility for it as well.”
First published in The Brag
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Yum Yum Tree Records Launch
Bellyache Ben and the Steamgrass Boys
with The MFW and The Noise, launching Yum Yum Tree Records
@ Caravan, 9th December 2011
Sydney is now one record label the wealthier with beguillingly named Yum Yum Tree being launched at Caravan last week. Aiming to support the disparate breeds of music cropping around the warehouses of the Inner West, from the jazz-hued pop of the Elana Stone Band to the kitsch retro of The Cope Street Parade, the label seems set to wreak havoc. Or make a talented group of friends very happy in any case.
Tucked behind the carwash on Addison Road (smokers hurriedly scattering every time a vehicle rolls through), ceilings adorned with spaceman-costume alum, Caravan certainly provided an appropriate atmosphere of roaches (both kinds) 'n rollerdoors for the evening's entertainments. First up was experimental jazz / alt-rock trio The MFW (an acronym of the artists surnames, or the descriptive phrase 'motherfucking wankers' depending who you ask) launching their album Sus Scrofa. Aaron Flower (guitar), Evan Mannell (drums) and Ben Waples (bass) seem to have a habit of establishing rather laid-back indie pop song riffs that are then systematically dismantled into strangely funky blues-influenced improvisations.
Less funky though piling on the experimentalism were second support The Noise, a string quartet (tonight trio) refreshingly unreliant on covers of metal songs, instead ultilising their extreme instrumental ability to create a series of shifting textures, elegant but laden with primitive foreboding. Delivered at all times with immaculate control, this was improvisatory string playing at its unconpromising best.
For the last umpteen months, those in the know have been adjourning to Madame Fling Flongs of a Wednesday eve, to sip booze 'n Bourbon-based cocktails, lounge on the comfortingly mismatched comfortable lounges and listen to the angel-voiced neer-do-wells that form Bellyache Ben and the Steamgrass Boys. Having completed their case study investigating the "regular gigging is really the only way to really nail a sound" rule (turns out it's totally true), the fellas tonight moved into phase two with the launch of their self-titled debut album, a modest (7 track) selection from the dozens of traditional tunes and James Daley (mandolin) originals under their collective picks.
Highlights included Bellyache Ben's (otherwise known as Ben Daley) curmudgeonly rendition of unofficial theme-tune Willie Dixon's 'You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover', the fatalistic stomp of traditional 'O' Death' as well as the obligatory kazoo solo from bass player John Maddox. The Steamgrass Boys have come a long way in the year since coming together; aside from the thrashing they give their instruments, the real attraction here is their vocal chutzpah, the five producing harmonies of unwavering tunefulness and genuine soul – expect to see them hitting the folk festival circuit in the coming year.
with The MFW and The Noise, launching Yum Yum Tree Records
@ Caravan, 9th December 2011
Sydney is now one record label the wealthier with beguillingly named Yum Yum Tree being launched at Caravan last week. Aiming to support the disparate breeds of music cropping around the warehouses of the Inner West, from the jazz-hued pop of the Elana Stone Band to the kitsch retro of The Cope Street Parade, the label seems set to wreak havoc. Or make a talented group of friends very happy in any case.
Tucked behind the carwash on Addison Road (smokers hurriedly scattering every time a vehicle rolls through), ceilings adorned with spaceman-costume alum, Caravan certainly provided an appropriate atmosphere of roaches (both kinds) 'n rollerdoors for the evening's entertainments. First up was experimental jazz / alt-rock trio The MFW (an acronym of the artists surnames, or the descriptive phrase 'motherfucking wankers' depending who you ask) launching their album Sus Scrofa. Aaron Flower (guitar), Evan Mannell (drums) and Ben Waples (bass) seem to have a habit of establishing rather laid-back indie pop song riffs that are then systematically dismantled into strangely funky blues-influenced improvisations.
Less funky though piling on the experimentalism were second support The Noise, a string quartet (tonight trio) refreshingly unreliant on covers of metal songs, instead ultilising their extreme instrumental ability to create a series of shifting textures, elegant but laden with primitive foreboding. Delivered at all times with immaculate control, this was improvisatory string playing at its unconpromising best.
For the last umpteen months, those in the know have been adjourning to Madame Fling Flongs of a Wednesday eve, to sip booze 'n Bourbon-based cocktails, lounge on the comfortingly mismatched comfortable lounges and listen to the angel-voiced neer-do-wells that form Bellyache Ben and the Steamgrass Boys. Having completed their case study investigating the "regular gigging is really the only way to really nail a sound" rule (turns out it's totally true), the fellas tonight moved into phase two with the launch of their self-titled debut album, a modest (7 track) selection from the dozens of traditional tunes and James Daley (mandolin) originals under their collective picks.
Highlights included Bellyache Ben's (otherwise known as Ben Daley) curmudgeonly rendition of unofficial theme-tune Willie Dixon's 'You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover', the fatalistic stomp of traditional 'O' Death' as well as the obligatory kazoo solo from bass player John Maddox. The Steamgrass Boys have come a long way in the year since coming together; aside from the thrashing they give their instruments, the real attraction here is their vocal chutzpah, the five producing harmonies of unwavering tunefulness and genuine soul – expect to see them hitting the folk festival circuit in the coming year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)