1967: Music in the Key of Yes program

1967: MUSIC IN THE KEY OF YES SECRET CHORD | AUSTRALIA

CO-PRESENTED WITH SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

1967: MUSIC IN THE KEY OF YES

SECRET CHORD | AUSTRALIA SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE CONCERT HALL 17 JANUARY 90 MINS

FEATURING Dan Sultan Leah Flanagan Ursula Yovich Emily Wurramara Radical Son Adalita Alice Skye Yirrmal Marika Thelma Plum

ARTISTIC TEAM Musical Arrangements Jordan Murray, James Henry & Iain Grandage

Vocal Supervision Leah Flanagan

BAND Trombone & Musical Direction Jordan Murray Piano and Keys Clio Renner Bass Phoebe Nielson Drums Kieran Rafferty Guitar Stephen Magnusson Violin Veronique Serret

SPECIAL THANKS Wesley Enoch, Fiona Winning, Stuart Rogers and all at Sydney Festival, Anna Reece, Wendy Martin, Alexis Wright (for her advice, vision and inspiration), Amy Heatherington, Michael Parisi, Cameron Begg, Celeste Gear, Scotty at Premier Artists, Fiona Menzies, Vivia Hickman, Heath Bradby & Tank at Fidelity, David Bridie, Jude Gun, Genevieve Lacey, Jo Pratt & Nicola Pitt.

Film Research & Realisation Daybreak Films

Footage generously supplied by ABC Library Sales & AP Archive

Text & Ideas Alexis Wright Artistic Associates David Leha & Leah Flanagan

Additional Research Tracee Hutchison Production Management & Sound Design John O’Donnell

Created & Produced by Secret Chord Rehearsal Photography James Henry

Lighting Michelle Preshaw Stage Management Rainbow Sweeny Administration Paul Summers

Major Festivals Initiative

This project has been a association with the Co Arts Festival, Adelaide

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NOTE FROM ALEXIS WRIGHT As for me back in 1967, I was just a teenager suffocating from anxieties that I did not understand, and wanting to run as far away as I could possibly go. But the world was turning, and we were growing as part of a new phenomenon, the civil rights movement in the US and the songs that went with this time.

Black American musicians were giving our spirit back to us in songs that had multiple meaning to us, such as Ray Charles’ What’d I Say, Sam Cooke’s A Change Goin Come (Malcolm X), Smokey Robinson’s The Tracks of My Tears or Aretha Franklin’s Respect.

My cousins in Mount Isa were extremely sophisticated and looked like The Supremes. In Cloncurry, we were exploring the music of these times, deviating from the country and western canon, and driving 84 miles up to Mount Isa for the Saturday night dance, and then driving ever faster back home, so us young girls who never bothered to tell our mothers what we were doing, could be in bed by midnight. But the music and double talk of black musicians, even like The Drifters and The Platters, was growing big in our imagination.

It was only some years after the Referendum, when the Tent Embassy forced the government to act on what was happening to our people to break the stranglehold the states had over Aboriginal lives, that I learnt the names that described my anxiousness and sickness for flight: racism, oppression, dispossession, assimilation.

We became young workers for our elders governing our world, and they expected the very best from us. If we got knocked down, we were expected to get straight up again, and be quick smart about it. We learnt to fight with words from singers like Nina Simone entrenched in our minds: We were young, gifted and black, and we believed it with heads held high as we went protesting down city streets and shouting what our people had always known about what the problem was in Australia’s relationship with us: Land Rights Now! And, Treaty Now! Yes, we grew strong, resourceful and powerful, and we were up for fighting big battles on a daily basis, while listening too, and being sung by the exciting songs and anthems of our times from our own musicians. They grew like the rest of us.

Brilliant musicians with songs like Coloured Stones’ Black Boy and Dancing in the Moonlight, Warumpi Band’s Blackfella – Whitefella, Joey Geia’s Uncle Willie, Kuckles’ Bran Nue Dae, No Fixed Address’ We Have Survived, then Yothu Yindi’s World Turning and Treaty.

There have been many more great songs that keep telling our stories – new stories alongside the old stories that mean something big in our minds. We are song and story people, and these musicians took the power like we all did, to go out and take on the world to reclaim ourselves. Some things changed for the better, but this war about our rights is far from being finished.

Alexis Wright is an Indigenous Australian writer and winner of the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria.

JOIN US FOR A UTS BIG THINKING FORUM FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED UTS THE GREAT HALL, TOWER BUILDING, 15 BROADWAY, ULTIMO

Presented by Sydney Festival, UTS & ABC FROM 1967 TO 2067 18 JANUARY 5.30PM From 1967 to 2067 is a forum reflecting on the changes over the last fifty years since the 1967 Referendum that proposed to improve the place of Indigenous people in our country and was supported by 90.77% of Australians. The panel is invited to look to the next fifty years to predict and prioritise future constitutional and political change.

Speakers: Wiradjuri elder Aunty Millie Ingram, artist Vernon Ah Kee, historian John Maynard, writer Nakkiah Lui, novelist and poet Dr Tony Birch and MP Linda Burney.

Moderator Professor Larissa Behrendt.

MERITON FESTIVAL VILLAGE

6-29 JANUARY HYDE PARK NORTH ENTRY NEAR ARCHIBALD FOUNTAIN SOUL OF SYDNEY NUARY 8, 15, 22 & 29 JA Photo: Prudence Upton

VARIOUS DATES HAIRHAIR SALON THE SALON THROUGH 6–8, 11–15,JAN 18–22, 25– 29 JANUARY

Photo: Raw Bones

ROLLER JAM 7, 14, 21 & 28 JANUARY

EVERYONE’S FAVOUR AND HAS A SCHEDULEITE MERITON FESTIVAL VILLAGE IS BIGGER AN FULL OF FANTASTIC FR EE EVENTS THROUGHOD BETTER THAN EVER – UT JANUARY. THE PERM SET 6-29 JANUARY Photo: Jamie Williams

LET’S DANCE 10 JANUARY Photo: Johnny Chaing

BREAKING GROUND 27 JANUARY

PICTURED: SPECTRES OF LOVE