Frank Yamma ‘Countryman’
The Australasian World Music Expo presents the Wantok Musik launch of
Frank Yamma “Countryman” CD
with special guests King Kadu (Torres Strait, Australia) and Gilius Kogoya (West Papua).
Date: Saturday 20th November, 2010 Time: 8.00pm – 11.00pm
Location: The Toff, 2FL Curtin House, 252 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Price: $18 + BF Bookings 1300 438 849 | www.thetoffintown.com
Also performing Footscray Performing Arts Centre Sunday 21st Nov and Queenscliff Music Festival Friday 26th Nov
Indigenous singer/songwriter Frank Yamma launches his acclaimed new album Countryman at the Toff in Town for the Australasian World Music Expo on Saturday 20th November. This event will also mark the launch of the Wantok Music Foundation’s label, Wantok Musik, dedicated to promoting the music of the Pacific region.
Countryman has been receiving great reviews and support from music media and industry since its release in mid October. Click on this link to the video clip for the first song on the album “She Cried” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQFPwt9Lu1I
Frank Yamma is a traditional Pitjantjatjara man from Australia’s central desert and speaks five languages. An extraordinary songwriter and an exceptional guitarist, Frank Yamma also has an incredible voice, rich, deep and resonant. Regarded by many as one of Australia’s most important Indigenous Songwriters, Yamma’s brutally honest tales of alcohol abuse, cultural degradation, respect for the old law and the importance of country are spine tingling. Frank has the ability to cross cultural and musical boundaries and constantly sets new standards through his music.
What the press have said:
The Australian Newspaper 23rd October 2010 4 1/2 Stars
Frank Yamma’s deadliest song to date could not have arrived at a more opportune time….under the production values of Tim Cole and David Bridie both songs attain maximum potency…elsewhere Bridie employs a stripped back approach, allowing Yamma’s rich powerful voice to resonate above piano or acoustic guitar arpeggios…the mellow cello of Helen Mountford earths Yamma’s upper register vocal delivery of “I didn’t know who you were that day”, the more ethereal Nguta Waljilpa, one of four songs sung in language, is as spiritually charged as any of the songs on Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingus solo CD or Archie Roach’s Albums; “Calling Your Name” is as hard hitting as anything produced by Kev Carmody.
INPRESS 3rd November 2010
From the opening two minutes of She Cried, you can tell that the latest album from Central Australia’s guitar hero Frank Yamma is going to break your heart, wipe away your tears, then make you cry some more… In the most enjoyable way possible.
The album as a whole is stripped back, with repetitious finger-picking patterns laying a road for Yamma’s overwhelming voice. Singing in both English and his native language, Pitjantjatjara, Yamma’s voice tells stories of romance, cultural degradation and the love of his country. In Remember The Day Yamma tells stories of his encounters with love, while other songs such as Make More Spear give us an overview of what he has witnessed through the generations with children being born into alcohol and poverty. Each song has a lesson and is sung with such honesty and emotion that has come from a life of hardship.
The way in which each story is told gives some pretty strong imagery. Putting the album on envelops you from start to finish and it’s near impossible to change the song before the story has been told.
While the foundations of most of Yamma’s songs fit neatly into the genre of roots music, he has strayed from the boundaries and you can hear influences from blues and jazz making their way into the album, especially in Calling Your Name and Inside, with the addition of a gravelly electric guitar.
This stripped-back, raw collection of songs spans across many generations and cultures. His honesty and emotion will tug on your heart like any deep Johnny Cash song would and any listener, be they 16 or 160 years old, can take something away from his stories.
Rhythms Magazine NOVEMBER 2010
He’s one of Aboriginal Australia’s deadliest singer-songwriters – as mellifluous as Gurrumul Yunupingu, as emotive as Archie Roach, as acerbic as Kev Carmody – and yet Frank Yamma is barely a blip on the radar as far as mainstream Australia is concerned, let alone the world at large. The anomaly is about to be addressed, thanks to a new album that is at least comparable to Gurrumul, Charcoal Lane and Pillars Of Society, the respective breakthrough releases of Messrs Yunupingu, Roach and Carmody.
David Bridie, who co-produced the album in question with Tim Cole, his associate from Not Drowning Waving days, and released it on his own Wantok Musik label, has no doubt that Countryman has the capacity to open doors that previous Frank Yamma releases such as Playing With Fire (1999) and Keep Up The Pace (2006) have left locked, even though both earned critical praise, the former a gong as the album of its year at the ‘99 Indigenous Music Awards. “This is the record that Frank always should have made,” declares the Melburnian mover and shaker. “This is the record that will make white Australia realise what Indigenous Australia already knows about him. The man may come from remote Australia, but his music is accessible and relevant to everyone.”
For those who don’t know, Frank Yamma is a proud Pitjantjatjara man from the central desert, who sings with imposing sonority and sincerity, in his native tongue and his second language (English),about the beauty of his country and of issues pertaining to the degradation of Aboriginal culture. Anextraordinarily gifted and evocative songwriter, he addresses such weighty subjects as alcohol abuse, the need to respect traditional tribal laws and ways and the importance of country. As one reviewer eloquently put it, “When Frank Yamma sings about standing on a sand dune watching over the landscape, it’s as though you are standing right there with him. When he sings about the plight of Aboriginal children born into a world of chaos and grog, Frank wrenches the heart.” Yamma’s latest and greatest release is an album redolent with contradictory images. Songs of longing and loving, and songs reflecting the vicissitudes of Frank’s life, the duality of living as a respected initiated man in the bush and as a disrespected outsider in the cities, where jail, poverty and discrimination are a part of everyday life for an Aboriginal person.
Wantok Musik is a new music label launched by The Wantok Musik Foundation with the release of two exciting albums, Frank Yamma’s Countryman and George Telek’s Akave. Established by a group of like minded musicians and creators including Airi Ingram from Grilla Step, David Bridie and Lou Bennett, Wantok Musik is the first label in Australia to focus on the unique music of our region. The launch of the label coincides with a palpable rise worldwide in the interest in Indigenous music.
Since its inception the Wantok Musik Foundation has been active in getting more and more of the stunning music of the Pacific heard by a wider audience in Australia and across the globe. Staging large scale concert events in the US as well as numerous concerts within Australia, it has also facilitated pacific artists to tour Australia’s festivals and venues and released a number of CD’s across 2000. Just as in recent years the US has finally embraced the music of its Latin neighbours, Bridie feels that given Australia’s geography, we should be celebrating more of the rich musical world of our island neighbours, and playing a pivotal role in getting that music out to a wider audience.
