“Remember Me” is the fourth CD in an excellent series produced by Simon MacDonald of Kimberley Stolen Generation Aboriginal Corporation featuring Aboriginal musicians and fellow travellers. Sales of these CDs provide part of the income stream that keeps KSG’s successful Link-Up service going.
Remember Me starts with a funky blues-rock piece by Mark Callaghan and takes a trip across a whole landscape of black and white lives, inter-related in 21st Century Australia. A wide variety of styles, all very well performed and produced, make this album an enjoyable experience. You may not have heard any of these songs elsewhere (at least I hadn’t) which is refreshing, and that’s important.
Here is an excerpt from ‘Reach Out’ by the Dave Mann Collective.
Brian Morley sounds like he’s been listening to Nick Cave, but he’s less professional, and more genuine, than that. Dave Mann’s piece is a tour de force with echoes of the Police and Pink Floyd, John Butler sounds like John Butler, and Naomi Pigram has a bitter edge. Everyone deserves a mention: Tjimba and the Yung Warriors, Dan Sultan, Pearl Smith, Monica Weightman and the backing musos, including Michael Manolis, Arnold Smith, Stephen Pigram and Aaron Panaia.
From a naively touching ballad to a light rap flavoured with soul this is a pleasant soundscape thats jumps around enough to keep up with the modern attention span deficit. You don’t always remember who is who, but you don’t get bored, and the whole family can listen, which still means something in Aboriginal music and culture.
There has long been a gap between the success (I mean artistic success, not the other kinds) of Aboriginal visual art and Aboriginal music. The latter had not shown signs of reaching the same heights as the visual arts until recently. With the emergence of a new generation of black musicians who have mastered various aspects of musical techniques there is a lot of creative new work coming out.
This generation of young artists is something like a third or fourth generation, building on the work of pioneers like Jimmy Little and Kev Carmody. Coloured Stone, No Fixed Address, the Broome sound with its Pacific influence from the pearling days, the Warumpi Band and later on Yothu Yindi, helped build a musical tradition that didn’t exist before. The technical transition from the didgeridoo to modern sounds was a bigger stretch than using canvas instead of wood, and getting your colours out of a tube instead of making them yourself, but the gap is getting narrower.
From the Chunes of Broome website, reviews section.