Wantok Musik Foundation has successfully produced and collaborated on several visual art and theatre projects, focusing on First Nations Australia and Melanesia.
A BIT NA TA
The Source of the Sea
2016
GEORGE TELEK (Musician, Rabaul, Papua New Guinea)
DR DAVID BRIDIE (Artistic Director, Music Producer, Melbourne, Australia)
GIDEON KAKABIN (Project Historian/Cultural Artist, Rabaul, PNG)
K. VERELL (Video Artist, Hobart, Australia)
Additional works by LISA HILLI (Visual Artist, Rabaul, Papua New Guinea/Melbourne, Australia)
A Bit na Ta is a project located in ples (place): Rabaul, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Specially commissioned for the exhibition No 1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016 at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, the project engages with the enormous changes that have washed over the century 1875-1975 from the perspective of the Tolai peoples who inhabit the lands surrounding it. Central to the Tolai community’s capacity to survive the disruptions of shifting colonial powers, war, volcanic eruptions and independence struggles, marking this period was the strength and importance of their Tubuan society. Perhaps best known to the uninitiated through the iconic birdlike Dukduk and Tubuans, the highly secretive and complex Tubuan society continues to play a significant role in Tolai spiritual and everyday life; its edicts governing relationships to land, resources and people (ancestral and present).
Music is also essential to Tolai life and ceremony and the a Bit na Ta story is presented via new recordings of Singsing Tumbuna (ceremonial song), String band, Lotu church choir style and Contemporary soundscapes supported with archival, cultural and landscape film. Extending on a thirty-year collaboration, celebrated Tolai musician George Telek and Australian musician, composer and producer David Bridie have drawn around them friends and family as well as those of Tolai historian and cultural artist Gideon Kakabin, to tell the a Bit na Ta story. This story is as intricate and rich as the Tubuan society, landscape, history, and people that inspires it.
The installation saw the resurfacing of a long-lost 1972 documentary, Mataungan. A film left incomplete for 44 years, it depicts the Tolai political movement and struggle for independence from the Australian colonial administration. Illustrated within the film’s narrative is the death of District Commissioner Jack Emanuel: the only political assassination in Australia’s history.
Accompanying the installation, a CD was released featuring a rich interweave of stringband, choirs, atmospheric soundscapes and contemporary PNG sounds that are central to the a Bit na Ta story. A natural extension of Not Drowning, Waving’s seminal 1990 release Tabaran, the CD touches upon the decades-long artistic relationship between David Bridie and George Telek, whilst featuring both established artists and rising stars of Melanesian music, including Anslom, Gilnata and Amidal stringbands, Pius Wasi (Sanguma, Tambaran Culure), and John Phillips (Not Drowning, Waving). The CD was released on the Wantok Musik record label in October 2016.
'No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016’ was presented at the Queensland Art Gallery, 15 October 2016 - 29 January 2017.
a Bit Na Ta was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Cultural Diplomacy Grants Program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
ULUMBARRA
Gather Together
2015
In April 2015, a collection of strong Indigenous performers, artists and musicians gathered together in collaboration to present a new work for the Gala Opening of the Ulumbarra Theatre in Bendigo. Musically directed by acclaimed producer/musician David Bridie, this was an exciting staged theatre concert dedicated to the Dja Dja Wurrung story and song. The show consisted of entirely original music, as well as spoken word and visual components to present a celebration of the way forward together plus a strong encapsulation of past and present Dja Dja Wurrung identity and presence.
The performance featured artists Uncle Jack Charles, Emma Donovan, Kutcha Edwards, Tjimba Possum Burns, Benny Walker, James Henry, and Jessie Lloyd, with backing from Dave Folley and the My Friend the Chocolate Cake string section, Helen Mountfort and Hope Csutoros.
BUNGALOW SONG
2013
"I’ve read stories of the Stolen Generation, I’ve heard the story sung… but this was something else. The Bungalow Song, part of the Mbantua Festival in Alice Springs 9-13 October, brought together people who had been stolen from their families and incarcerated in the Bungalow institution with 30 local children related to survivors to sing and tell their traumatic story in a rich and incredibly moving mix of testimony, song and visual theatre.
Set at the site of the Bungalow, just north of Alice Springs, in the open air on a warm and windy desert night, the production acknowledged the grief and trauma caused by the policy of stealing Indigenous children from the freedom and love of their families, communities and land and their life giving culture.
Using the outdoor location and darkness of night, the production projected black and white images onto the roof above the performance space – photographs of the children and communities then, of the men who enacted the policy, and letters and documents describing the inhuman legislation...
Hearing the direct testimonies, I was poleaxed by simple statements that conveyed, with such understatement and dignity, a mountain of suffering and indignity."
Karen Prout, via Social Ventures
BEHIND THE CANE
2011
Composed by David Bridie and Andree Greenwell with script and lyrics by Margery Forde and Michael Forde, Behind The Cane was community-driven music theatre, commissioned specially as the signature work the 2011 Queensland Music Festival.
Co-presented by the QMF and the Whitsunday Regional Council in association with QUT Creative Industries, Behind The Cane was created with and performed by over 180 Bowen residents and told the story of the South Sea Islanders who were brought to Australia to work in the cane fields in the 19 century and the journey of their descendants through the succeeding generations, through racial discrimination and economic hardship, to the present day.
The large-scale spectacle event was performed the Sound shell on the Bowen harbour foreshore to audiences of 8,000 over 3 performances and included many of the descendants in featured roles.
