Review by ALEC SMART 22/03/2021
Womadelaide 2021 music festival took place in Adelaide over the South Australian long weekend of 5-8 March with a significantly reduced format in its 29th year, due to the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic.
Covid-19 restrictions also prevented international artists from appearing, so the entire festival was downsized to a ‘Womad-lite’ with a single main stage featuring Australasian artists, one bar and a small selection of catering vendors.
In another concession to the pandemic’s power, the festival took place not in the familiar arboreal settings of the Botanic Gardens, but nearby in King Rodney Park / Ityamai-Itpina, a more open grassy sporting arena. And yet, despite the rows of socially-distanced seating enforced into separate zones by Covid marshals, the music was, as always, fantastic, with the large screens televising the onstage performance easily visible at the back.
The four nightly concerts became an unofficial memorial to Australian music industry legend Michael Gudinski, who died, aged 68, just a few days earlier. Several of the performers – including Archie Roach, Vika & Linda Bull, Peter Garret and Tash Sultana – paid tribute to the pioneering promoter who founded Mushroom Records in 1972, launched Frontier Touring Company, and nurtured the careers of Kylie Minogue, Cold Chisel, Hunters & Collectors, Nick Cave, Split Enz and ABBA as well as Indigenous artists Yothu Yindi, Christine Anu, Paul Kelly and Archie Roach.
Day One – Friday
Womadelaide opened on Friday night with another icon of Australian music, the Gunditjmara and Bundjalung Aboriginal singer-songwriter Archie Roach, making his seventh – and sadly, final – appearance at Womadelaide.
Roach’s set was dominated by his 1990 debut album, Charcoal Lane, which featured the soulful and harrowing song Took the Children Away, which brought tears to his (and my) eyes. The Human Rights Achievement Award-winning ballad is an autobiographical account of his and other Indigenous Australian children of the ‘Stolen Generation’, who were abducted from their families by government agents and forced into orphanages and foster care.
Adelaide is where Roach met his late-lamented wife and musical partner Ruby Hunter – also of the Stolen Generation – whilst teenagers at the Salvation Army-run ‘People’s Palace’ drop-in centre (now the Darlington House offices in Pirie St, Adelaide CBD).
Murray was also an award-winning Aboriginal singer-songwriter who graced several Womadelaide stages before she tragically passed away in 2010.
Roach is retiring from performing live music due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that requires oxygen tubes in his nose and the need to remain seated. Just seeing this great man perform, albeit unable to play his guitar, was heart-wrenching as his once-smooth voice, now notably gravelly, strained through his timeless narrative songs. After finishing his closing number, Summer of my Life, he was taken from the stage in a wheelchair to a standing ovation.
Archie Roach
In 2012, Lior (Israeli-Australian singer-songwriter Lior Attar) and classical composer Nigel Westlake created Compassion, a symphony of sentimental songs, which ABC Music described as: “draws from the rich worlds of Islam and Judaism to present a collection of profound and poetic insights into the practice of compassion and its ability to transform our relationships as human beings.”
At Womadelaide, Lior and Westlake performed their symphony accompanied by the 54-piece Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Lior alternated Arabic and Hebrew lyrics, much of it in his distinctive counter-tenor voice.
Near the end of his performance, Lior announced the seventh wedding anniversary of a couple in the audience, who had actually married at the 2014 Womadelaide Festival, his song We’ll Grow Old Together playing as they formed their union. Lior reprised his romantic ballad for the couple, accompanied by deft fingerwork on his acoustic guitar.
Sarah Blasko finalised Friday night’s concert with the 10th anniversary performance of her third album, As Day Follows Night, her first album on which she composed all the songs herself (apart from Over and Over – co-written with Talking Head’s David Byrne).
The album, nominated for several ARIA awards, was distinguished at number 19 in the book 100 Best Australian Albums the year after its release.
Day Two – Saturday
Saturday’s Womadelaide launched with collaborative duo MRLN x RKM – Marlon Motlop and Rulla Kelly-Mansell – and their 4-piece band, fusing RKM’s soulful singing and acoustic guitar with MRLN’s rapping rhymes. Their songwriting is antipodean, but connects; RKM tends to favour emotive, personal subjects whilst MRLN hits hard with social observations.
RKM revealed how their creative partnership strengthened when MRLN drove him to chemo treatment every day during his 2020 bout with cancer.
The highlight of their set was the formidable finale, Black Swan, about Indigenous empowerment, which name-checked Archie Roach in the opening line.
Vika & Linda Bull’s distinctive harmonies grace recordings by Hunters & Collectors, John Farnham and Deborah Conway, and the aforementioned Archie Roach’s debut album, among others.
The Melbourne-born Tongan sisters first achieved recognition singing in Joe Camilleri’s band The Black Sorrows after several stints in other bands, including their own: The Honeymooners. Paul Kelly encouraged them to pursue a career as a singing duo instead of backing vocalists, producing their 1994 debut album and he has continued working with them.
Vika & Linda Bull
At Womadelaide they performed highlights from their career, plus songs from their sixth and latest album, Sunday (The Gospel According to Iso), featuring gospel songs that were recorded on a series of Sundays in mid 2020 while in isolation from the coronavirus pandemic.
The sisters also featured a never before performed live song, My Heart is in the Wrong Place, scheduled to appear soon on a new album. Older sibling Vika introduced it as: “We’ve not made a record of new songs in 18 years – I know, it’s because we’re Tongan!”
They finished their set with a soaring rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s hit Bridge over Troubled Water in dedication to the recently expired Michael Gudinski, which showcased their incredible vocal talents..
Midnight Oil made two appearances at Womadelaide. The first, on Saturday night, was a retrospective, performing career-defining tracks from their 1972-2002 three decades of intelligent, socio-political rock. The second, titled The Makaratta Project and named after their new mini album, was an Indigenous-themed event to promote the Uluru Statement. More on that later.
Midnight Oil
Aided intermittently by vocalist Leah Flanagan and singer-guitarist Liz Stringer, the Oils’ 20-song set spanned their best and best-loved material from 13 studio albums, with only one of the new numbers performed, First Nation (the rest scheduled for Monday night’s show).
Among the night’s musical highlights was an extended drum solo by Rob Hirst on Power & The Passion and Jim Mogine wringing psychedelic sounds out of his guitar during No Time for Games.
The shadow of bass guitarist Bones Hillman, who died of terminal cancer on 7 November 2020, hung over the Oils’ Womad appearance, memorialised in their encore One Country – Bones’ pleasant singing voice always carried the refrain.
New bassist Adam Ventoura, who played with former Cold Chisel guitarist-songwriter Ian Moss’s band, wasn’t introduced until the penultimate song but by then he was settled in and part of the furniture.
Day Three – Sunday
On female-friendly Sunday night, dominated by three talented women songwriters, first on stage was the 21-year-old Anangu and Torres Strait Islander singer, Miiesha Young, who draws upon soul, rhythm & blues, hip-hop and gospel.
Winner of New Talent of the Year at the National Indigenous Music Awards 2020, she released her debut album, Nyaaringu, (‘what happened?’ in Pitjantjatjara language), a collection of biographical songs interwoven with her grandmother’s spoken voice, just 10 months ago.
Next up was Kaiit (pronounced ‘ky-eet’), a tattooed Pacific Islander with a two-tone red and black fuzzy Mohican and long dreadlocked hair trailing down her back, making her third Womadelaide appearance.
With a giggly between-song banter, Kaiit has a mature singing voice that effortlessly criss-crosses scales and genres. Combining elements of hip-hop lyrics and soulful crooning, she was accompanied by infectious rhythms from her very competent jazzy backing band (one member playing trumpet and keyboard simultaneously!).
As well as her catchy hits Miss Shiney and OG Luv Kush pts 1-2, she introduced two new songs, Little Mama Theme Song and Dumb Bitch Blues, that combine street slang with social observations.
Sunday night’s much-anticipated headliner was the hugely talented, multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Tash Sultana, who drew a predominantly young female crowd.
As well as a captivating vocalist, Sultana is a mesmerising performer, switching instruments constantly – synthesiser, electric guitar, trumpet, saxophone, bass guitar, drums, mandolin and more – all of which she plays to a very high standard.
Her music might best be described as atmospheric symphonica incorporating electro-beats and synchronised loops, ever-changing and danceable, albeit mostly relaxing.
Sultana’s programming skills are second-to-none – deftly weaving improvised scales and flourishes from multiple instruments with computer-enhanced rhythm patterns and swirling keyboards without a glitch.
Tash Sultana
A swirling, psychedelic video backdrop accompanied her solo performance, accentuating the other-wordly feel of her compositions, whilst Sultana skipped back and forth between unseen foot pedals and switches that she employed adroitly to perfectly synchronise with her seemingly random selections of instruments.
“I feel like I’m in my living room, having a jam, and you’re all watching me,” she announced mid-show, which made me realise the skill of the on-stage sound technicians who set up her complicated array of synths, computers and musical instruments in the relatively short time slot allocated for changeover between Kaiit and Tash.
Day four – Monday
On the final night of Womadelaide 2021, opening act Siberian Tiger, an Adelaide folk duo and winners of the 2020 South Australian Music Award for Best New Artist, played a selection of relaxing, eclectic compositions to warm the crowd up for the night ahead.
Supplemented by local string quartet The Aurora Strings, Siberian Tiger feature musical and life partners Bree Tranter, Chris Panousakis who both have pedigrees in previous influential bands The Middle East and Timberwolf, respectively.
Second last from the big finale, The Teskey Brothers arrived to rapturous applause. A blues-rock four-piece built around brothers Josh and Sam Teskey from Melbourne, they feature a singer with vocal chords that pack a punch, a dexterous lead guitarist, and a rhythm section that can hold a crowd spellbound.
With three albums, several foreign tours and multiple awards on their mantle, this band is in its ascendancy.
The Teskey Brothers
Midnight Oil’s official launch of their Makaratta Live tour brought Womadelaide 2021 to a climax and neatly rounded off a weekend of diverse and brilliant artists.
Initially beginning their set with a few old faithful songs, albeit those following the Indigenous-themed aspect of the concert, such as Jimmy Sharman’s Boxers, Truganini and Redneck Wonderland, the band paused as the Uluru Statement from the Heart was then read out in full and projected on the giant screen behind.
Originally released on 26 May 2017 by delegates at the First Nations National Constitutional Convention near Uluru, the Uluru Statement seeks a ‘First Nations Voice’ in government, protected by the Australian Constitution, to supervise a process of ‘agreement making’.
The Statement also demands a Makarrata Commission; ‘makarrata’ means ‘treaty in Yolngu language, so the Makaratta Commission effectively calls for treaties between the Australian Government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to oversee future negotiations on land rights, cultural issues and other important issues affecting Indigenous Australians.
Midnight Oil – The Makaratta Live
For the live aspect of the Oils’ 2020 comeback mini-album, The Makarrata Project, the veteran band brought onstage key performers from Australia’s Indigenous music scene, including Dan Sultan, Tasman Keith, Frank Yamma, Leah Flanagan, Troy Cassar-Daley and Bunna Lawrie, to collaborate in songs.
The band and various collaborators then performed songs from the number one best-selling record, with Alice Skye singing Terror Australia, followed by Frank Yarra singing Desert Man.
The Oils then closed their set with more of their old material, again using songs that focused on Indigenous issues, before finalising the concert with an extended version of their international hit, Beds are Burning, featuring additional rapping by Tasman Keith.
The audience rose to their feet in a standing ovation, reassured they’d seen a truly momentous event in history.