Welcome to Country

It was with great anticipation that we commenced our rhythm program at Ltyentye Apurte Catholic School again this year. This time our program was integrated into the curriculum of term 2 as we taught all of the kids for two full days per week for 11 weeks. After four weeks we had a select group ready to perform at the Wide Open Spaces Festival 2011. Given that many of these kids’ families originate from this eastern Arrente region, it was an honour to offer their opening performance as a ‘welcome to country’ and how warmly received this welcome was to a memorable festival weekend for many.

Performing

Returning the following week to the high spirits of the success of that gig (and excursion, almost a 400km return journey), we focused our next goal, for four weeks later, on performing in the 2011 Centralian Eistedfodd at the Araluen Theatre. This was to be a new experience for us all, never before having attended, let alone entered an inter-school performance ‘competition’. We seriously took on the challenge, determined to knock peoples’ socks off with the power of the Ltyentye Apurte Drummers’ sound!

Rehearsal

The kids worked hard every class, every week, during and after school, and dedicated themselves to the goal of performing their pieces unassisted, with Shon’s ‘lead drummer’ role handed over to the group to execute themselves, as she took up conducting and Svet took a back seat in the shakers & bells section. We had two entries: one in the under 12 percussion section and the other in the open percussion section, although all 18 band members were between the ages of 10-12. The atmosphere was very formal and unfamiliar however, the kids respectfully observed the protocol and went on to deliver their performances with confidence and style. The judges happily awarded the group first prize in the open section and commended them on their strong sense of beat and entertaining presentation. They judges also expressed their appreciation for the appearance of more ‘exotic’ percussion ensembles in the Eistedfodd!

Djun Djun power

Rokiah, band leader

The restraint shown in the auditorium was relaxed in the back-stage dressing rooms with the glamorous festooned mirror lighting dazzling and exciting the kids. They could play at being stars, which in our eyes and in those of their teachers, parents and community, they really were. Many of the drummers will perform in the dance category at the same venue next week, affording us another opportunity to get the Ltyentye Apurte Drummers out for a couple more public performances in Alice Springs, while we’re still hot!

Backstage Araluen Theatre

Eistedfodd band

Every week when we drive back to Alice from Santa Teresa, we are thoroughly exhilarated and exhausted from the passion and intensity of the kids’ enjoyment of ensemble drumming with us. They have all come so far in their understanding of playing these African instruments well and are able to enjoy playing well

together. We are so grateful for having this opportunity to develop these skills in these young people and to receive so much wonderful testimony from the teachers on what positive changes they have been able to observe in them along the way.

Making their drums sing

Many great possibilities exist as to where to go next. We still dream of taking the Ltyentye Apurte Drummers to The Dreaming Festival however, they were severely affected by the QLD floods earlier this year and have had to forgo their planned festival for 2011. Other sights are set on securing festival appearances in Darwin, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney.. anywhere! To get there however, will take funding and support, and that’s what we will be looking at generating in the meantime.

Warming up

Over the 2010/11 summer we were recruited by CAYLUS to spend two  months in the remote Barkly community of Ampilatawatja , about 350km north east of Alice springs. It’s on the way to Mt Isa if you take the back roads from Alice.

It was an extended stay. Previously, we would  only be assigned to do our youth development programs over just the school holiday periods in various communities of the Pitjantjatjara lands. This time, we decided to take a break from there to explore new relationships and possibilities in different country and indeed, a different indigenous nation. Shon had previously spent two weeks teaching drumming in the Ampilatwatja  school with the CAAMA M.A.D for life project in 2007, so a connection had already been established.

The opportunity of working beyond the school holiday period really appealed to us as we  were able to help make the transition to school a little easier for the kids by being there for them. We counted down the days till school started and encouraged the kids to go and grow their young minds and continue to learn new and wonderful things about our world . Then, as the school year began, we continued our drumming and general  music workshops at school and ran games and sports after school. School attendance , so far, this year has been good!

The  Alyawarra  youth are gentle and enthusiastic. During the summer holiday period, however,  we focused on providing a holistic program incorporating structured educational activities; arts and craft, reading, sport and games,  cooking and nutrition programs, fun community events, group drumming, band rehearsals and music tuition, movie nights and of course the much loved weekly disco!

We conduct each of these activities with  a structure that leads to outcomes. For instance, we made a giant compass and explored geometric design on a large piece of calico. This became a giant painted mandala in which many young people contributed their designs and painting skills. Young people are encouraged by us to follow through on projects and to try to stay focused for as long as they can. Over time, the benefits and outcomes become apparent both to the youth and the wider community, and are enjoyed and appreciated. Quiet painting time during the heat of the day proved popular. Without a youth shed as such and no air-con on searing hot summer days, this activity, set up in the shade of the basketball court, offered us time to hang out, share stories and develop our creative  minds.

Our cooking and nutrition afternoons once a week were very popular. The aim of this activity is to teach  a team of young women  and kids how to prepare healthy food for large groups of people. We cater to feed approximately 60 people for each session. We make sure that all of the ingredients are readily available  from the community store and we try to introduce new and exciting dishes (African chicken stew!) as well as teach old favourites (spaghetti bolognaise). Once the dishes are prepared, we sell the meals for a token price at our movie nights in order to buy ingredients for the next weeks’ cooking program. One day, we hope that some of these young women  with this experience may be able to gain employment cooking for the Aged and Disabled Care Centre and/or be able to cook for large family occasions.

Our drumming sessions are always popular and we would set up under a shady on the side of the oval in the late afternoons while all sorts of sport would be happening at the same time. This created  a festival atmosphere and we discovered some very talented young women who displayed a very natural aptitude for rhythm! This is unusual for us as we mostly attract young males to our drumming sessions on other communities.

All in all, we had a wonderful summer. We made some great relationships with the youth and community of Ampilatwatja  and we were very happy to return for another period only 4 weeks later. We taught rhythm in the school every day and continued our general sport and games sessions after school and into the evenings.

The enthusiasm for drumming was so great that we organized a community concert on our last Friday evening with a BBQ cook-up and disco to follow. Parents and family were invited to come and watch  the kids perform, and we had about a hundred people come to celebrate these young kids’ achievements,  enjoy home-made burgers with them and stay for a rollicking good disco!

Having had an absolutely eventful year to date, (and it’s only september!) we are currently ‘dreaming up’ ways to take the Ltyentye Apurte Drummers to Australia’s largest indigenous culture festival, The Dreaming Festival in Woodford, QLD in 2011. Our drummers have shown themselves to be committed and professional and deserve to have their performances celebrated by wider audiences across the country and indeed, the world.

To get to The Dreaming Festival will take a lot of fundraising to transport the kids and their support to and from Alice Springs. If you can suggest any ways to support with this mission we would love to hear from you.

contact@ba-boom.com.au

dreaming, dreaming…

The aim of our second visit to Santa Teresa was to train up a specific drumming group and develop a performance piece to be featured in the youth arts showcase, ‘Generate’, which is the opening event of the Alice Springs Desert Festival 2010.

In the space of one week, we got a band of 12 boys and girls up and ready for their debut performance on the big festival stage experience! The Ltyente Apurte Drummers performed with excellence and radiated like stars in front of an adoring crowd of two thousand people who attended the festival opening night.

Due to their success last year, the Ikuntji Drummers were invited for a return performance at the same event this year. With only a week to prepare, all of the kids drummed with us at school and after school everyday, resulting in a performing group that was double in size to last year. These kids were most enthusiastic and excitable with the experienced few exuding a sense of knowing and confidence. We watched these Ikuntji Drummers shine before the same adoring crowds.

Our rhythm program was well supported by the Ikuntji School and the MacDonnell Shire. Without their support these kids would not have been able to accept the honourable invitation of an encore performance, so we sincerely thank the principals and the Shire for getting behind us to help make this happen.

The second school visit of the year, was by the invitation of a teacher at the Ltyentye Apurte School in Santa Teresa, 80km south-east of Alice Springs. Having observed the kids’ tendencies to beat out a rhythm on anything with anything, the teacher tracked us down to bring our African rhythm program to their school. We appreciated her opinion that a rhythm program would have educational and therapeutic benefits for their school, and we were keen to provide it!

Over a two week intensive period, we worked with every grade class at least four times each. The transitions and grade ones didn’t miss out either as we entertained them with simple songs, dances and rhythm accompaniments. All one hundred and twenty of the enrolled kids had an opportunity to learn rhythm with us in that fortnight and the response was most enthusiastic.

Of course, the experience of learning ensemble drumming takes a lot of  concentration on many things at once; technique, listening, playing and listening, polyrhythms, etc. To begin each class, we would take the students through warm-up and cross-core exercises to limber up their bodies and their brains, in order to able to focus on ‘the pulse’ and recognize group cohesion.

As the fortnight progressed, we developed and practiced unique rhythm arrangements specific to each class, according to their skill development. These pieces were performed by each grade class at school assembly on our last day, giving them the experience of performing for an audience, which in this case was their wider school community. Having a performance outcome helps to develop individual and group confidence, which inevitably extends to a becoming sense of pride and empowerment for the whole community. Everyone was so happy with the results and the experience that we were invited back to the school in August.

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In between doing our youth holiday programs, we keep busy with specially commissioned school projects. Earlier this year, we were invited to come to Marree Aboriginal School, on the southern edge of the Oodnadatta Track, to write a song that would focus on the strengths of their community.

Historically, Marree has seen inter-community/family challenges that sometimes seeps into the school environs. We were honoured to not only offer a direct, hands-on, musical experience for all the students in the school, but to look at the community’s cultural assets as seen through the eyes of the youth and convey this in song.

We asked the teachers to work with their classes, prior to our arrival, in order to establish a foundation for the song. The kids were asked to think about their town, what makes them feel good about it, what brings a smile to their faces and what gets them excited. By the time we arrived, we were enthusiastically greeted with three pages of key words and impressions that best described all of the above.

Over at the youth shed, we were delighted to discover that the community had been given a bunch of new, still in-the-box, instruments, p.a. system, amps, mics and hardware. We swiftly unpacked these, set them up and put them into the hands of the kids. Everyone had a chance to play and learn on an instrument.

First, we came up with the rhythmic structure in the context of West African ensemble music, where everyone played djembes, dun-duns, shakers & bells. Over this, some of the kids played along on guitar, bass and keyboard. Once we established the groove, inspiration for the melody of the song emerged, and we were on our way!

In the week of our visit we made a recording and arranged to perform the song for the community at the end of the week. The band consisted of an ample african rhythm section lead by Shon, four female vocalists, Lee (a musical teacher) on time-keeping duty playing hi-hats and Svet on bass, keys and real marimba! It was like an orchestra, as all the kids from school were involved except for the wee young ones. Our song was titled, “Culture Keeps Us Strong”. The community came together to support their children, the tune was catchy and the whole journey was a success.

In continuation of the song project since our visit, Marree Aboriginal School have been making a book about the song to accompany a CD of the tune which they aim to publish and sell at the local shop. Thanks Marree, we had a great time, go forth and sing!

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Throughout the past year, during each of the school holiday periods, Ba-Boom! have dedicated their energies to returning to and working with the youth in two Pitjantjatjarra/Yankunytjatjara communities; Fregon and Indulkana.

As always, we rock up with our ever-expanding, trailer-full of fun. Aside from the drums, instruments, art & craft gear, books, music, movies, projector & P.A., hair & beauty and cooking kits, we have added circus gear (stilts, hula hoops, juggling balls), power tools (for making polypipe bracelets), a softball kit and a bumper-sized camp-stove for cooking over the fire on cold winter nights. No kid could possibly get bored with us.

Returning as we have to these places, the kids know us, as do their families and wider community. They cheer when they see us arrive, hang out with us and enjoy the variety, routine and surprises we offer. The deepening sense of familiarity is rewarding and we constantly find new things to make and do together.

In Fregon we have continued to make animations and soundtracks, we’ve painted up a fantastical aquatic mural (inspired by postcards left by a visitor from cairns country) and have actively mentored the community youth worker, which has kick-started a vibrant and operational space for youth of all ages to come and enjoy.

There is at least twice as many youth in Indulkana, and it is here that we all greatly enjoy African drumming, organized sport & games and big cook-ups. Indulkana is a very musical community. Local talent, The Iwantja Band, are building  up a national profile for their unique blend of desert reggae, blues and heavy metal styles. Band leader, Jeremy, often accompanies his father, Pastor Henry, on keyboards for weekly outdoor sermons which brings peace to the whole village at night with it’s long, warm, inclusive embrace. Indulkana kids are dynamic, energetic, interactive and lots of fun!

Last winter, we also got to go and work in a new place, Ali Curung, a little south of Tennant Creek. We were so warmly welcomed into this community and we had a great time doing ‘our thing’ with the new mob including organizing a big community camp-fire cook-up with malu wipu (kangaroo tail), damper, camp-fire songs, drumming and even fire-poi-twirling. We made a couple of new films, an animation and a girls’ story of country, which were enjoyed and celebrated by the kids and their families.

 

A highly-anticipated event in the Alice Desert Festival Program, The Midnight Carnivale, fondly referred to as the cabaret, was a whirl of a project that evolved into an event far bigger than anyone predicted.

The story of lost love, as told by a cigarette girl in a dusty old theatre-world, surrounded by a bunch of disenchanted characters, recalled the ancient greek story of persephone’s journey into the underground crossed with the surreality of alice in wonderland.

This thrilling theatrical tale was brought to life through a variety of mediums; dramatic choreographed dance (chorus-lines, ballet, tango, hip hop, bollywood to name a few) sideshow & aerial arts, chamber opera, stage magic, video projection, costumery, roller-boogie, mock-cowboy fighting and all with a live band to boot.

Svet relished her role as musical director, composing for and assembling an awesome 7-piece band, showcasing the talents and individuality of the Alice Springs music scene as well as roping in multi-instru-mental extraordinaire, from Melbourne, Mal Webb.

The show premiered, in all of its exciting production glory, at the Araluen Arts Centre, over two sell-out nights. It featured a committed cast & crew of 120 people, an incredibly dedicated and talented team of director/performers (Franca, Melissa, Miljika, Kerz, Lily) and two mentors (Svet and Lily).

For Svet, it was absolutely exciting to be a part of a professionally produced, large scale, boundlessly imaginative community event. The performances were superb, the audiences were in raptures and ideas are already in the pipeline for next year’s Cats Meow show.

 After the CAYLUS holiday program finished we were both exhausted. But there was no time to rest because the next mission had been organized months before and was to begin straight away. Shon went back to Ikuntji school and to the Finke River/Aputula community school on the edge of the Simpson Desert (8 hours from Ikuntji) to create her most exciting rhythmic arrangements yet. Svet temporarily anchored down in Alice Springs to be the Musical Director/Mentor for the annual Cats Meow Midnight Carnivale cabaret show. Both were to be key events in the Alice Desert Festival 2009.

                                                                     …and one and two 

Shon worked tirelessly for the next 6 weeks, teaching and preparing the youth from Finke and Ikuntji schools to perform their unique rhythm stories on the main stage for the opening of the Festival. It was a huge undertaking and very hard work! A lot of travel was involved. Shon blazed forth even despite coming down with swine flu during the process and having to be air lifted by the flying doctors out of Ikuntji at one point!

    tecahing at finke school

It was an unforgettable experience and an incredible success.

Remote community youth had never before been invited by the Festival to perform, let alone open the festival. Shon was the artistic director, co-ordinating and writing a finale piece for all of the acts involved in the event which included Ti-Tree school choir (Music Outback with Mal Webb and Steve Berry), Maori Youth dancers, Drum Atweme, Yirrara College Band, Ikintji School and Finke/Aputula School.

                                                                      shy but willing 

The finale parts were taught separately and only rehearsed all together for the first time the night before at RedHotArts space. Logistically, it was a huge job for everyone involved in this process, i.e; transportation and accomodation of the kids in town. Without the help, tireless work and enthusiasm of the teachers and the Festival programer, this unique event would not have happened.

Somehow it all came together beautifully. The crowd was in awe of the skills and abilities of these talented young people and showed it with their applause and appreciation!

There’s no greater thrill than your first ever big stage perfomance!

These kids performed with all the passion and intensity of seasoned artists!

Indigenous youth have hidden talents that only need recognition, encouragement and patience to bring forth. Fortunately, there are enough of us (teachers and artists) who recognize this and do not compare indigenous kids with english speaking non-indigenous kids. Indigenous kids are incredibly smart when given the space to show what they can achieve! Shon is deeply proud of the youth she has had the priviledge of working with so far.

                                                                post concert joy with the ikuntji kids