For the Butchulla folks of the Fraser Coast area of south-east Queensland, the phrase yirinda means “now”. It’s derived from the endangered Badjala language, spoken by fewer than 25 folks. Yirinda can be the identify given to a Brisbane-based challenge between Fred Leone – one in every of simply three Butchulla songmen – and famend contrabass participant and producer Samuel Pankhurst. Their first, self-titled album has simply been launched.
However “now” has been a very long time coming. An earlier model of the album, recorded late in 2020, was scrapped. “You placed on a chunk of music that’s an iconic recording, you then put in your music and go, is that this giving me the identical factor? And it wasn’t,” Pankhurst says.
It’s been well worth the wait. After improvisational beginnings, Yirinda presents 9 taut, tightly written songs, superficially much like Gurrumul’s ultimate experimental fusion with classical minimalist composition earlier than his dying in 2017.
“It’s taking a minimal 65,000 years of language, track, melodies, and marrying it with this type of music that’s been round for not very lengthy,” Leone says. “It’s acknowledging the previous, however residing within the now and leaving one thing for the longer term.”
The colonisation of the Fraser Coast was notably harsh for the Butchulla folks, whose inhabitants was decreased to a couple hundred; their language was rendered functionally extinct.
In dialog, Leone continuously slips into track, together with startlingly correct birdsong mimicry, from which many conventional songs are drawn. “It’s simply placing these residing reminiscences within the songs, very similar to what we do with the songlines,” he says.
He tells a narrative concerning the coastal migration of the diamond-scaled mullet, topic of the track Guyu (Fish).
“When the black wattle goes into flower, that’s when you may go right down to the water, and also you search for wuruma, the brahminy kite-hawk. You look ahead to them to drop, and it’s telling you the place you may hunt the fish. However in the event you don’t take heed to the track correctly and hunt appropriately, you then’re going to go hungry for a number of seasons.”
Trent Dalton says Fred Leone was a beacon of hope when he was rising up in Brisbane.Credit score: Jamila Toderas
One in all Leone’s childhood neighbours was Boy Swallows Universe writer Trent Dalton, who says Leone’s place was “a chip kick from my entrance yard rising up”, on a housing fee property within the northern Brisbane suburb of Bracken Ridge.
For Dalton, Leone’s optimism was a beacon. They performed in the identical native rugby league group, the Brighton Roosters. “His wit was as sharp as his sidestep and his coronary heart was larger than the Steeden [football] underneath his arm,” he says.
I bear in mind strolling previous his home and he’d give me essentially the most heartening, hopeful look.
Trent Dalton
“I distinctly bear in mind strolling previous his home on a couple of event feeling genuinely depressing about some darkish and painful shit that may have been taking place in my home, and he’d look out his entrance window and provides me essentially the most heartening, hopeful look.”
Pankhurst, who amongst different issues is the dialogue editor for the ABC’s runaway hit Bluey, has labored with an array of composers and musicians together with Paul Grabowsky, the Solar Ra Arkestra and the Brodsky Quartet. He’s synaesthetic, and says he wanted to “see” songs corresponding to Guyu as a way to discover the music for them. “Not everyone’s going to be talking Butchulla language, so we thought we needed to put some extra stuff across the music to fill out the visible expertise.”
The pair have been launched by Mona Foma curator (and Violent Femmes bassist) Brian Ritchie in 2018 for a efficiency on the Bleach pageant on the Gold Coast, as a part of town’s Commonwealth Video games arts program that 12 months.
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“They determined to begin enjoying as a duo, which I assumed was very attention-grabbing,” Ritchie says. “I’ve all the time been within the mixture of Aboriginal music and improvised music, as a result of to me that looks as if a pure mixture.
“A number of Aboriginal musicians do rap, nation music, mainly grafting a few of their themes and perhaps among the vocalisation or language onto international types of music, whereas improvisation is common. It’s not a style, it’s a follow.”
One in all their early gigs was with improvisational masters the Necks at Hamer Corridor on the Supersense pageant in 2019 – a efficiency that stretched out for 3 hours, with musicians from each ensembles wandering on and off stage.
Samuel Pankhurst (left) and Fred Leone: “We needed to discover the goosebumps key,” says Pankhurst.Credit score: Mark Crannitch
Slowly they advanced, making a fusion of totally scored new and conventional songs. After the primary failed try at making the album, they reached for the celebrities, enlisting mixer Jake Miller (Björk; Frank Ocean), with mastering by Alex Wharton (the Beatles, My Bloody Valentine).
“The metric was what number of goosebumps you get, so we needed to discover the goosebumps key, the goosebumps tempos,” Pankhurst says. “If folks hear this, it ought to convey them to tears with how lovely it’s.”
For Leone, Yirinda is a method of maintaining his language alive. His aunt, Jeanie Bell, is an Indigenous linguist. In a brutal irony, she is now in care with Alzheimer’s illness: Yirinda is a method of preserving the language she ensured wouldn’t be forgotten.
Fred Leone says elders are joyful for the language ″to be alive and doing one thing″.Credit score: Getty Photos
Her legacy, Leone says, has rippled down. “I’ve seen up at Maryborough, they’re speaking a mixture of 30 per cent lingo, 70 per cent English, in comparison with once I was a child, the place you’d hear perhaps three or 4 phrases each every so often.”
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Leone, too, is a instructor, passing on the language and the songs. “I’ll ask somebody in a few months – do not forget that track, do not forget that story? And in the event that they’re capable of inform it again to me as shut as I advised them, then I’ll give them a bit extra data.”
Yirinda had cultural sensitivities to think about too – a problem Yothu Yindi handled of their inclusions of conventional songs on their early recordings. Leone consulted with elders, together with Aunty Joyce Bonner, one other linguist from the Butchulla Aboriginal Company.
“They’re simply joyful for [the language] to be alive and doing one thing,” Leone says. “A few songs are previous recordings – Yuangan [Dugong] was first recorded in 1959 by an anthropologist. I believe I’m the one individual that sings it now.”
Yirinda is out now. A promotional tour contains Melbourne Recital Centre on March 2; Brunswick Music Pageant on March 3; Sydney Biennale on March 10; Byron Bay on March 23 and Brisbane on April 30.
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