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Keela Dreaming Festival

by Robbo on 04/09/2009

The Keela Dreaming Festival was held earlier this year. It was the 6th biennial year of this successful Indigenous Festival held in Kellerberrin Western Australia.

Keela means ants in the Noongar language.

Even Mary G, the Black Queen of the Kimberley was there. You can see more of Mary G on YouTube

Keela Dreaming Festival 2009 from Community Arts Network WA on Vimeo.

The Department of Culture and the Arts seems to have removed all reference to the Keela Festival from their site. A bit pathetic but there you go.

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Welcome to another Pleasant Sunday Afternoon.

Last week Ngaanyatjarra Media came over and fixed the media room. As well as a plethora of digital pics being taken and stored on the PCs a couple of the young men recorded a few songs using the mixing desk.

Gosha Jackson

Gosha Jackson

Gosha Jackson is the singer while Basher Woods plays the instruments.

The song is titled I Miss My Home (click once on the link to play) and sung in the Ngaanyatjarra language.

it starts with:

I miss my home and my friends
What can I do when I’m alone
And all my people back at home
The place called Jameson

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The Wilcannia Mob

by Robbo on 17/03/2009

I have written about some largely aboriginal towns in New South Wales a couple of times now. One of these towns was Wilcannia. One of the quotes in this previous post read:

The image of Wilcannia that most travellers along the Barrier Highway have is of a town with a lot of Aborigines standing around in the main street. It is a very racist preconception but one which nearly everyone who has travelled through the town enunciates. It is also fuelled by the bigots of Broken Hill and Cobar who are only too eager to divert travellers to their own centres.

I tried to show a different side.

One group I alluded to only briefly was the Barkandji Boys. Wilcannia is home to the Barkandji people. The Boys consist of Wally, Buddy, Lendal, Colroy and Keithy. In 2002 they had an accidental Number #1 hit on Triple J with “Down River”. These were boys between the ages of 9 and 14 years old at the time and produced the song in a holiday workshop.

You can also listen to it on blip.fm here.

downriverThey even won a Deadly Award.

And now there is a book. Down River: The Wilcannia Mob Story

As well as the group’s story it looks at the role of their families and community in their life.

It is available from Kargaru Productions for only $23.95 (ISBN: 9780646484228)

If you want to know more the ANTAR blog also has an article and there is a one page website.

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