Because my house exploded #2

Carl Ecke
I said goodbye to you
from across an abyss
literally
I stood in the doorway
on solid ground
and you crouched, crookedly
in your hole in the sub-floor
on bare earth, covered in dust and soot
you were cold and silent
silent is not how you were meant to be
not when you were with me
I hadn't known it would be goodbye
that the chasm
opened up when my house exploded
was to be your grave
I didn't realise you could no longer sing
ivory jammed with rubble
broken strings

Field diary fragment: some time in June, 2015

Later, in Brisbane, an afternoon off before a one-day workshop at the State Library tomorrow.

I wandered along South Bank, the “cultural precinct” and visited the Gallery of Modern Art, Indigenous collection. Somehow more moving than my usual trips to gallery – why? Felt so humbled and sort of … connected…. Seeing names of languages, places and people I have known/worked with/been to. Gija-Warmun-Galpu-Gumatj-Amata-Pipalyatjarra-Palawa-Ngarrindjeri-Gunjinku…  Like a mantra of defiance, belonging, history.  Not to mention stunning weavings and paintings and string things..

What will happen to this art, so grounded in place, in Country, if the government succeeds in driving people off their land?  Where will it go, what will it look like, what stories will it tell?

Why is it all making me so sad this week?

July travel log

We've not really been keeping this blog up to date, you might have noticed. I am trying to find a way to write about my work in a way that doesn't identify the people I work with or tell stories that aren't necessarily mine to tell. More on that when I get my head around how to do it.

In the meantime, one thing that is fairly certain and non-controversial about my job is that I spend a lot of time travelling. Maybe a fun/interesting/useful thing to do is to start trying to log that. So here I go, see how this works and I'll try to do it each month.

July travel log:

Number of nights away from home: 17
Number of hotels: 4
Number of flights (including connector flights): 6
Places visited: Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart
Number of Australian languages worked on/with: 10

Future trips
This is a suggestion from fellow travellers and friends across the country who I might run into at an airport or in transit somewhere. Obviously I'm not going to advertise my movements too specifically but if you have trips planned and think we could cross paths, get in touch and maybe we can organise to be at the same place and the same time, somewhere…. :)

Late August - Geraldton via Perth

Mid September - Cape York & Cairns

Late October - Mt Gambier via Adelaide

November - Melbourne.

That looks pretty respectable really! So - shall we do  coffee at an airport somewhere? Let me know!

Because my house exploded #1

[Here's my first piece of writing about a thing that happened in 2007. I feel there's more to come, but here's this.]

Because my house exploded
I flew through the air
Burnt hands and face and feet
The smell of singed hair

I flew into the doorway
Front door slammed on my head
A child I heard screaming
Thinking we were dead

Because my neighbour held me
Cold water bathed my skin
Wet blankets embraced me
His arms I stayed within

Because my house exploded
I lost a lot of stuff
My piano, oldest,dearest friend,
Losing it was rough

My confidence, I think, not gone,
But fairly bruised and battered
Everything I thought was safe
Was burned or lost or shattered

Home is where the heart is
It holds us, safe and warm
But when my house exploded
My whole world was torn

That was 8 years ago now
Wounds are healed and old
But still the stories surface
Wanting to be told

Because my house exploded
And that won't go away
And so I must remember
What I went through that day

A tribute to Gurrumul and his uncle, Mr Yunupingu

On June 2, Dr M. Yunupingu, former Yothu Yindi front man and Gumatj clan member, passed away at his home community of Yirrkala, in North-East Arnhem Land.

It’s often the case that we learn more about somebody’s life only after they die. As it happened, the week Yunupingu died, I had bought a copy of a beautiful new biography of his nephew, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, known more commonly just as Gurrumul.

Reading the biography, and seeing the tributes flow for Yunupingu when he died, I became acutely more aware of the role musicians such as these, bands such as Yothu Yindi, have played in the struggle for recognition, appreciation and respect for Aboriginal people, and their languages and cultures.

There is, of course, the obvious. “Treaty”, for example, catapulted the demand for recognition to an international stage. As Robert Hillman writes in the new Gurrumul – his life and music, “All these issues had been spoken of in a politely insistent way for a long time, but the Yothu Yindi people were different – louder, ruder more exuberant than anyone who’d come before them.”

But an Aboriginal musician reaching international fame, singing songs in his own language – like uncle and nephew both – that has had an impact on Aboriginal audiences that is perhaps not obvious to not-Aboriginal, English-speaking fans. Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr, another relative and Yothu Yindi band member, says that Yothu Yindi paved the way for Gurrumul’s acceptance by an international audience as a solo performer.

In Yothu Yindi, he played the drums and then the guitar and keyboards (all of which he taught himself). He was never the front man like his uncle, but widely recognised as the musical strength of the band.

When he went solo, Ganambarr explains the impact his music (performed in a number of his native Yolngu languages, with smatterings of English) had on her, and presumably not just her: “When that first solo album of his came out, I cried. [He sings in a way] that makes them appeal to a white audience. But the expressions he uses in those songs, they’re the expressions we use in traditional songs … People don’t have to know what the words mean. All that they listen to is the voice, and the impression the voice conveys. And when Yolngu listen to it, we understand every word, and the meaning of every word. It’s so powerful.”

Indeed, there is something very powerful and poignant about the international accolades being showered on a Gumatj man, singing in Galpu, Gumatj and Djambarrpuyngu – three languages that, compared to other Australian Aboriginal languages are probably quite healthy, but are still considered critically endangered.

Hillman writes that Gurrumul’s songs don’t touch on politics much – quite unlike his uncle, for example, who when he wasn’t singing “Treaty” was advocating for bilingual education and becoming the Northern Territory’s first Aboriginal principal.

But perhaps there is something inherently political about an Aboriginal musician – from the strong, proud people who famously sent the bark petition to Canberra 50 years ago -- taking his language and culture to Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, to Paris and London. Writing of Gurrumul’s performance with Sting, in France 2010, Hillman writes: “The Gumatj language, the sacred repository of a culture and history older by far than that of France or any country in Europe, older than the entirety of Western civilisation, [was] about to be plaited with the younger, mongrel language of English.”

But mixed up with Hillman’s sublime observations of language and culture are light-hearted sketches of Gurrumul, down-to-earth, irreverent, utterly uninterested in fame.  The song he was meant to perform with Sting was Every Breath you Take, but “Gurrumul, relishing the swanky hotels booked for the tour … is having too much of a good time to commit himself to a whispery song with lyrics that deal ambiguously with love and longing.”

He did, in the end, do the duet, after a few frantic email exchanges between Paris and the far north Australian Elcho Island, where Gurrumul’s relatives translated Sting’s lyrics into first one, then another, of his languages, until they came up with something he was satisfied with.

Gurrumul grew up on Elcho Island, in the community of Galiwin’ku. While in recent years there has been much media focus on the conditions in Aboriginal communities, and particularly the experience of Aboriginal children there, there is something to be said for Aboriginal’s people’s approach to what the rest of us think of as disability. Gurrumul was born blind, but it didn’t hold him back: as a young one, he would ride his bike down Elcho’s famously steep hill, with family members lining the road yelling “go left! Right! Watch the pot holes!”

His family took it as given that his lack of sight would be made up for with other skills, and were not surprised when he taught himself a variety of instruments at a young age. As a left-hander, he famously plays the guitar upside-down, presumably because he had never seen it be played, so just took it as he found it and adapted to suit himself.

 His was a life seeped in an ancient language and tradition – which comes out in his music and continues to move audiences around the world to tears, although they don’t understand a word he is saying. “We come away from listening to Gurrumul with the word ‘beautiful’ on our lips”, Hillman writes, “but where that beauty comes from, its richness and complexity – that’s the wonder…

“The languages of Indigenous Australians, once numbering in the hundred, have roots in even more ancient languages … What listeners to Gurrumul’s voice and music hear is not simply ‘beauty’ but something that is the sound of life itself being honoured.” And surely, that honour is deserved, given the tenacity with which Gurrumul’s languages have survived, against the odds.

Gurrumul – his life and work, takes the reader on a whirlwind rock star tour of hotels and concert halls across Australia, Europe and the United states, as experienced by a blind man from a remote community, from one of the oldest living cultures on Earth. The story is often told from the point of view of his non-Yolngu band members and friends (as Gurrumul does not talk to journalists), who act as his some-time carers, some time cross-cultural guides.

At times verging on hilarity (he may be blind, but he adamantly refuses to wear white socks, leading to some last-minute panics), Hillman’s narrative is broken up with well-researched short essays on aspects of Yolngu language and culture, and stunning photography.

Poignantly, describing a time in 2010 when Gurrumul was dangerously ill, Hillman writes: “Any black Australian who becomes seriously ill in his late thirties has a very remote chance of reaching his late forties. A frightening number of black Australians – both men and women – lose their lives to renal failure, heart disease and liver disorders at about the age Gurrumul is now – almost thirty-nine – and many who are spared succumb ten or twenty years later.”

And so it was for Gurrumul’s uncle, fellow Gumatj, fellow trailblazer.  Mr Yunupingu was 56 years old, and he died of kidney failure.

In her June 5 obituary on The Drum, Tracy Hutchinson wrote: “I doubt there has been a more profoundly moving induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame than Yothu Yindi's last year.

And I doubt there is a more shameful indictment on us all that Mr Yunupingu died from a treatable illness in Australia in 2013. There are no cheap words to describe the magnitude of that.”

There are no words to describe it, and of course, Aboriginal people don't need words - they are living it. 

And the grieving for this particular man will last a long time. But thanks to his work, and also to technology, Aboriginal people from Arnhem Land and across the country can still watch him, painted up in ways that only they fully understand , singing "Treaty" to the world. Yunupingu's legacy is the voice and pride he gave to his people, and that legacy lives on in Gurrumul and others.

World Refugee Day Darwin

About 40 people gathered in Raintree Park, Darwin, to mark World Refugee Day on June 20.

Larrikiah woman June Mills opened the gathering with a rendition of Arafura Pearl, and an explanation of the Aboriginal practice of welcoming strangers to their land. Other speaker included Greens councillor Robin Knox, Tamil-Australian lawyer Kajaliny Ranjithkuma and Reverend Basil Schild.

A minute’s silence was held for the 62-year-old refugee from Afghanistan who was found dead at Darwin’s Wickham Point detention centre on June 15.

The rally was organised by the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network.

Alcohol. Enshrine it in Territory life! but only in pubs - not parks!

At the Australian Hotels Association award night on May 22, Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles said said  the NT's drinking culture was a "core social value", The ABC reported on May 23 that Giles said "'having a coldie' in a pub should be 'enshrined' as part of Territory life."

Alcohol indeed is a disturbingly  central part of life for many Territorians. The NT has the second-highest alcohol consumption rate in the world, and the highest rate of alcohol-related deaths in Australia.

Alcohol is a serious public health issue, and should be treated as such. International evidence consistently shows that the most effective policy approach to alcohol-related harm involves taking on the powerful liquor lobby: introducing price controls, limiting  take-away opening hours and licensing.

But the NT government has recently taken retrograde steps that will instead punish people who have alcohol addictions, effectively criminalising drinking by allowing police to ban people from drinking for three months at a time.

The new policy, announced on May 10 (and outlined in last week's Green Left) has been roundly condemned by health and Aboriginal justice experts.

So has the CLP done an about  face on how it views alcohol consumption in the NT? Is it a problem, or a fundamental human right?

The answer may lie in the different drinking patterns and places of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. Because of complex historical and cultural factors, Aboriginal people in  the NT are more likely to drink outside, such as in parks or on the beach. than in hotels.

So, while a "coldie in a pub" might be an important part of NT life, according to the CLP, its tough-on-crime, clean-up-the-streets approach to alcohol means Aboriginal people will overwhelmingly be targeted by its harsh new measures.

In case there  was doubt about where the CLP stands in the debate about alcohol supply measures, the ABC reported that Giles told the awards night "the Government would do its best to support the liquor industry".