Glynis O’Hara
`EVERYONE thinks Australia has been conquered, but it hasn’t been conquered. It’s only 200 years ago that the white man came. They think they did it, but they didn’t. The roots of this country are just starting to speak.”
The person talking is Mandawuy Yunupingu, leader of Yothu Yindi, the Aboriginal group that’s broken through both local prejudices and international barriers to take their music into places as diverse as Birmingham, Berlin, Boston and Bloemfontein.
Part of a new wave of modern Aboriginal music at home, they’re simultaneously exponents of one of the oldest musics on the planet, a music that commands a sacred respect for nature and spirituality through, for one, the profoundly deep resonances of the didgeridoo (yidski is its ethnic name).
The Aborigines, who have endured such practices as being driven off their ancestral land and hunted and killed like animals, were also subject to “assimilation”, a euphemism for seizing children of mixed race from their parents and raising them in white foster homes or institutions, a policy also practised on some Native Americans. Many children were told their parents were dead.
But now, 200 years on, the roots are indeed beginning to speak as modern Aboriginal music, frequently linked to political and social issues, has taken off, with acts like Ruby Hunter, Kev Carmody, Archie Roach and Blek Bela Mujik as well as Yothu Yindi.
It was their second album, Tribal Voice, that really took off, featuring the track Treaty. It spent 22 weeks in the charts, the first song by a predominantly Aboriginal band to chart in Australia and the first sung in an Aboriginal language to gain extensive airplay and international recognition. This after it had been remixed for the dancefloor, “the filthy lucre mix” as the band named it.
It called for land rights and reconciliation – and became part of the struggle that has subsequently seen the original ownership of Aboriginal land being recognised in principle by a ground-breaking court case, the Mabo decision.
Mandawuy Yunupingu won the Australian of the Year award in 1992, as did his older brother, Galarrwuy, now chairman of the Northern Land Council, in 1978. “It was a proud moment for me,” says Mandawuy, “for my family and tribe, especially as my brother, from the same mother and father, had won it too.” He was also the first Aborigine from Arnhem Land in the northeast to gain a tertiary degree when he gained his B.Ed in 1988. He was appointed principal of the Yirrkala Community School, performing with the band in school holidays.
“I wanted to get the same qualification as any white man … Imagine how hard it was for me in the white man’s system! I did it to prove my knowledge is equal and I came out laughing with the same qualification. I went home to the community and applied all the teaching, but differently. I used white man knowledge as well as traditional knowledge. I said: You have to know about our culture, it’s as equal as yours. The system did acknowledge it in the end.
“That was the influence behind the band – to try to get people to understand our culture. Music is a powerful medium in all cultures. Being Aborigine means having a fundamental spirituality. Right now we’re saying to white people: you can’t judge us, because you can’t. People who try to oppress us have got no idea about us. Music is not politics, but it can be acknowledged as politics.”
A big problem in the Aborigine community is alcohol and there have been campaigns against it, with names such as Beat The Grog. But Yunupingu is clearly a bit tired of all this: “Grog’s a problem in the whole world, isn’t it? It’s nothing unusual here. So the attitude is, let’s try and fix it up together. Everyone in the world is looking for an answer to this one.”
The band consists of both Balanda (Europeans) and Yolngu (Aboriginal) people, combining the sounds and instruments of Western pop with songs and performances that date back tens of thousands of years. But, in respect for their culture, all traditional material, usually highly spiritual, is only performed in public after consultation with clan leaders.
There are nine people in the band and the live act is, by all accounts, quite something, what with body-painted dancers and ethnic instruments like the yidski and bilma (clapsticks).
Yunupingo reckons they’ll be in the country for about 10 days, a major departure from the usual whistle-stop visits. Part of the reason is that the band will be promoting the Fred Hollows Foundation, a charity that gives sight back to blind people through cataract surgery. Started in Australia, the charity has spread to Nepal, Eritrea, Vietnam and much of southern, central and eastern Africa.
Now it is to be launched here too. “It started in central Australia with Aboriginal people,” says Yunupingu, who expects to visit hospitals and organisations connected to it. “I have no itinerary as yet, but I’m hoping to visit schools and talk to young people as well. I’d like to stick around for a bit and see some African music too.”
Yothu Yindi will share the main stage at 5fm’s 21st birthday concert on October 26 at Kyalami race track in Johannesburg and in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, on October 29 and Harare on October 30