Ngunya Jarjum

The Northern Rivers Aboriginal Child and Family Network

Ngunya Jarjum was established in 1995 by Bundjalung elders and community to address a crisis in need for more Aboriginal kinship and foster carers. Striving to keep Aboriginal children in family, on Country and immersed in culture, Ngunya Jarjum provides culturally appropriate care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in statutory out of home care.

The organisation works within the Bundjalung Nation encompassing the Clarence, Richmond and Tweed Valley areas to support over 140 Aboriginal children and young people in statutory out of home care. In recent years Ngunya Jarjum has sharpened its focus on family led decision making, targeting early intervention and family preservation services, as well as developing projects and programs that complement the cultural fabric of Aboriginal families and communities.

This year, Splendour In The Grass has donated $50 to Ngunya Jarjum from every Gold industry ticket sold, to support their valuable work.

If you’d also like to donate, or to find out more about Ngunya Jarjum, scan the QR code below

Where are you? Are you in Sydney at the moment?

Pete Mayes: No I’m in LA in my studio, which is a bit of a mess to be honest… I won’t show it to you haha Do you miss Australia?

I mean I do but you know what, I get to come all the time, so it’s good you know and I have a few shows then I have time off in the week and I see my family, so yeah its good! Obviously there are always things you miss about home but luckily we still do shows there so often so.

You’re always home.

Yeah I mean I don’t always get the best weather, I’m about to come out in July so I’m not going to be going the beach or anything.

Yeah I know, it’s probably the worst time to come out to Australia while the rest of the world is in peak summer.

Yeah but we just love Splendour. There’s something magical about Splendour.

The first question I would like to know is as a kid did you ever imagine yourself collaborating with Elton John?

Definitely not! I mean who would you know, like it’s… Certainly not as a kid growing up in Australia you don’t really imagine anything like that’s gonna happen, you don’t even imagine yourself collaborating with, you know, Jimmy Barnes! You know what I mean, whoever else was a big star when I was a kid. No definitely not and to think about it like that is just surreal really. So we were lucky that he just came across our album at the time I guess it was about 2007 or something, 2006 sometime around there, so we were just lucky that he somehow likes our weird music [laughs]. Love that. Do you have an artist, aside from Elton John, that you would like to collaborate with? Dead or alive you know if you could pick anyone at all. It’s hard to pick one, but I mean David Bowie would be amazing. Oh god yeah.

I mean that would be incredible. There was talk of a Stevie Wonder thing, but I don’t know if Stevie knows about it.

Just manifesting it though. I don’t know if he will want to do it but anyway, yeah there’s so many, we could be here for a while! But nah yeah I never even imagined I’d get the opportunity to even meet Elton John let alone be given all of his tapes, you know, what a gift! What a beautiful thing! We’re just very lucky. I’d also like to know because obviously you guys are quite futuristic in sound I would say and incorporate a lot of digital aspects as part of your music - what is your take on AI and music at the moment?

I’ve only just looked into a few things that interest me like a website where you can put in a drum sound, like a snare drum and it’ll give you four variations of that sound based on how much variation you set and I’m like okay thats interesting I could really use that. In terms of making complete records I havent heard many of them and I guess in many ways I don’t want to. But you know I think there’s been many new technologies over the years that have threatened the livelyhood of people, unlike certain other technologies that have been designed to help take out the grunt work this is something that could affect the livelihoods of creative people. Let’s not beat around the bush but at the same time you can’t write down how to create music that affects you emotionally. I don’t know I think there’s a human element to music that is an intangible thing. Absolutely.

We’ve done a couple of videos utilizing AI, I mean the latest single ‘Stars’ with Bebe Rexha is an example. So many people reacted very negatively to that and in some ways I guess you can’t blame people as lot of people do feel threatened by it, but as far as I’m aware we’re not putting anyone out of work doing that, I mean there’s still so many people involved in the process. Of course.

Sorry rambling a lot. What is your take on the Australian music scene, dance scene in particular. Apparently Australia is talked about in a very positive light overseas and that we’re kinda considered cool, I was just wondering is that still true? I mean you’re living in LA so you’ve got the outside insider scoop.

I think it is, especially in America where Australians are very liked for whatever reason. I mean there’s Tame Impala, Flume. There’s just so many, I mean they’re just the big ones, but there’s so many people who’ve come out of Australia in the last, I don’t know ten - twenty years particularly in electronic music that are very iconic. When you think of electronic music you think of New York, London, Chicago, Detroit, Germany, Berlin, Belgium but I feel like Australia has become one of those places. You’ve also got bands like Amyl And The Sniffers who are doing such interesting things with a very Australian feel. How important it is for you to nurture up and coming talent with your record label, Loud 78? It’s really important for us, I mean that’s the whole reason we started it. It is very time consuming and it’s difficult balancing PNAU which is like a full time thing and that but yeah we’ve put out a lot of records and have quite a few to come, and obviously we’ve been doing this for a while and it’s something we really believe in. What can we expect to see at Splendour?

Splendour I mean, I can’t really give it all away but we’re going to be doing something extra special for Splendour. I don’t really want to say what that is or it won’t be a surprise, but I guess, more of everything!

Words by James Royce

You only have to get halfway through saying King Gizzard

And The Lizard Wizard’s name out loud before most people’s eyes glow up. They know who you’re talking about. Maybe you know them as the Melbourne outfit that’ve released 24 albums in just over a decade, with five in the last year alone, spanning every genre you know. They know who you’re talking about. Maybe you came across them like I did when you were that particular kind of zoned out that only happens when you come in from a long surf and someone hands you something that’s small, lit and goes in your left hand before saying, ‘Hey, have you heard of King Gizz?’ and they fire up one of their older Turkish psych rock style records (or is it psychedelic garage rock?), you get one listen and go: Oh, I get it now. Or, maybe you’re just here and reading this and now you’re interested. Either way, they’re hitting the Splendour stage on Saturday after a huge USA tour, and we talked with bassist Lucas Skinner to see just how he, and the rest of the band, do it all.

Photo by Dougal Gorman