https://the.song.company/reviews/songs-from-the-heart-2022

The Song Company’s upcoming Songs from the Heart tour in September-October 2022, with commissioned music by Sonya Holowell and myself, and two co-composed pieces from Anmatjere Arrernte singer singwriter Rhubee Neale, is designed as a musical interface between Australia’s 252 years of 1770-2022 colonialism, and the nationally affirmed, powerful contemporary Voice of Australia’s diverse Aboriginal First Nations, the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. Songs from the Heart will be premiered at Newcastle’s Christ Church Cathedral on 29 September 2022, and is then scheduled to tour to Parramatta (Riverside Theatres Oct 2), Canberra (Larry Sitsky Room, ANU School of Music Oct 4), Sydney (Cell Block Theatre, Darlinghurst Oct 7 and 9) and Wollongong (Wollongong Art Gallery Oct 8). With consideration for unavoidable Covid-induced performance cancellations and rehearsal disruptions during 2020-2021, the Australian Arts Council has granted The Song Company $25,000 to fund an additional Australian regional tour of Songs from the Heart in 2023 or 2024.

Proclaimed by lawyer Dr. Megan Davis, the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart was gifted to all Australians, who have honoured, acclaimed and responded to it in many affirmative ways. My commissioned music for Songs from the Heart is my heartfelt response to the Uluru Statement: it echoes Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s in full affirmation of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart.

https://the.song.company/songs-from-the-heart

The Uluru Statement was gifted to the Australian people by the 250 government authorised Australian First Nations Delegates to the 2017 Australian National Constitutional Convention, and distributed online, so every Australian has a opportunity, and an obligation, to read it fully, come to an accurate understanding of the whole text and the significant Anangu art that surrounds it, and respond to it in some meaningful way. Vigorous community based debates have surrounded the Uluru Statement. Different opinions (excluding racist hate speech and vilification) can and should be teased out and thoroughly and explored, as the Australian Minister for Indigenous Affairs Linda Burney, and Australia’s Special Envoy for Implementation of the Uluru Statement, Senator Patrick Dodson, have noted.

Many Australians, conscious of Australia’s conflicted history, find engaging with the Uluru Statement difficult, but a wholehearted response is needed from all Australians, to enable Australia to move forward beyond Sorry, to the lasting Agreement between Australia’s First Nations and its non-Aboriginal peoples, that the Uluru Statement proposed. One way of approaching a personal and community response, is to meditate on the content of the Uluru Statement, through making, performing and listening to music about it. The Song Company’s Songs from the Heart production, undertaken in consultation with Indigenous Australian composers, performers and communities, echoes and reinforces the Uluru Statement Delegates’ 2017 intentions, as one small step forward in the ongoing movement of the Australian people that was initiated by the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart.

My music for Songs from the Heart is conceived on a liturgical / oratorical scale that honours the full 2017 Uluru Statement as a sacred, uncensored text, an undeniable affirmation of Australian First Nations presence and authority. This approach reflects my lifelong musical training and intercultural experience as an Australian Indigenous scholar and accredited Cathedral Cantor. As The Song Company performs my songs, a mix of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal singers humbly walk with, attend to, echo and explore how to understand and enact this practical, forward looking roadmap for Australia. The words, written by 250 accredited Aboriginal Australian National Constitutional Convention Delegates, are surrounded by Anangu artwork from the Uluru Tjukurrpa site itself, that the Anangu artists painted to support the Uluru Statement with the cultural power of Uluru. No other document has communicated the wishes of all Australian First Nations so clearly, to the whole Australian people, and no other document has gained such acclamation and consent from all Australians, at local, regional and national levels.

Besides Prime Minister Albanese’s endorsement of the full Uluru Statement, local Councils, regional bodies and corporations all over Australia have formally endorsed the full 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. In my own local area, Parramatta NSW, in December 2021 I moved a motion, as a Member of the 2021 Aboriginal Advisory Committee of Parramatta Council, to recommend that Parramatta Council endorse the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart in full. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Councillor Phillip Russo seconded my motion. Our Advisory Committee passed the motion unanimously, and we forwarded our recommendation to Parramatta Council. Parramatta Council endorsed and passed this motion in July 2022. So my seventeen Songs from the Heart compositions are not merely artistic works; they engaged deeply with, reflected, and became the outcome, of a real Australian grass roots struggle to reach conciliatory consensus at local level at Parramatta. As all Australians are obliged to do, we engaged in a challenging, creative process with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal residents, accepting the guidance provided by the 2017 Uluru Statement and its Makaratta truth telling model, to arrive at an Agreement.

Songs from the Heart seeks to focus deeper audience attention on the clearly written, beautifully painted 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart that was gifted to all Australians. The Australian First Nations composers and singers invite consideration of the Uluru Statement, as The Song Company walks respectfully and attentively through the document. As the singers engage with the Statement physically, intellectually and spiritually, they model how to walk respectfully and rigorously, as committed colleagues and allies, alongside Australia’s First Nations, by reflecting truthfully and empathetically in song on Australia’s past, present and future. As Australians we are living through troubled times, but we all share hopes for a better future, and The Song Company’s realistic hope, tempered by discipline and skill, shines through.

Since learning the Australian First Nations way of walking on Country properly is a slow, gradual process, and since everyone is at a different stage of this process, neither The Song Company nor the composers make any claim that the Songs from the Heart music is perfect, culturally expert from all points of view, comprehensive, or definitive. The music simply invokes and enables audience responses to the Uluru Statement, opening the way to this, without undue demands. Due to Australia’s unresolved cultural dilemmas, responses to the Uluru Statement are necessarily diverse, volatile, dynamic, and ongoing. As in all projects with Australian First Nations themes, ongoing consultation with Australian First Nations communities was required, and The Song Company engaged in cultural consultation with Elders, early in the project. Songs from the Heart is a beginning – one genuinely heartfelt engagement among many ongoing intercultural dialogues. May all music that honours the Uluru Statement completely and honestly, remain dynamically open to the inspired vision of a better Australia, that is offered to all Australians in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart.

https://the.song.company/songs-from-the-heart