Hidden power of First Nations women unlocked in Big hART's Punkaliyarra project.
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ABC News
12-07-2025
- ABC News
Hidden power of First Nations women unlocked in Big hART's Punkaliyarra project.
A long-term creative and cultural exchange between Women from the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi communities in Roebourne and women from Yuin country on the NSW south coast. Video by Vanessa Milton and Isabel Darling, photo by Rachel Mounsey
ABC News
09-07-2025
- ABC News
Iconic First Nations artists' exchange culture and music in New Caledonia
Language was never going to get in the way when two iconic First Nations artists and the people of New Caledonia came together in the name of music. Earlier this year, the Australian Consulate-General in Nouméa brought Australian artists Jeffrey Yello Simon, Manuel Dhurrkay and Michael Hohnen to New Caledonia. Over the week, they shared traditional music from their homelands and immersed themselves in the culture and music of New Caledonia. The cultural exchange began two hours north-west of the capital Nouméa, in Tribu de Gouaro in Bourail. Set on the sandy Pacific coast, the cultural exchange all began in Tribu de Gouaro in Bourail. ( ABC Pacific: Nicolas Job ) Jeffrey, well known as the frontman of popular Tiwi RnB band B2M, told ABC Pacific he wasn't at all worried about the language barrier. "We all work at the same frequency, same energy, same vibe. When we start with that, everything blooms after that," he said. Jeffrey was right — as soon as he, Manuel and Michael began their small concert in Tribu de Gouaro, the crowd responded with cheers and clapping to music in their mother tongue and the didgeridoo. Manuel is the lead singer of the island reggae group, Saltwater Band. ( ABC Pacific: Nicolas Job ) The group was also flanked by New Caledonia musical legend Esther Wamejo, who helped navigate customs and translation and collaborated on musical performances as well. After their performance in Bourail, they then travelled further north to Pouembout before finally spending several days in Nouméa. It was in Nouméa where the next generation of Kanaky New Caledonia's musicians got to engage with the group, jamming with young locals and creating music to perform at at their final concert. Jeffrey and Manuel spent the day creating music with young musicians from New Caledonia. ( ABC Pacific: Nicolas Job ) Manuel, the lead singer of Saltwater Band, the island reggae group from Elcho Island, hadn't been to New Caledonia and said his visit filled him with joy. "Culture back in Australia and their culture [here] is a little bit similar, and I can't believe it," he said. Esther said the week-long exchange came at a good time and that she loved "seeing the eyes of the people they were exchanging with". "Seeing the stars shine in their eyes when they share about their culture and customs," she said. "Seeing their eyes shine even more…. So, for me it's really about the exchanges." A night of unity The concert provided a time of unity. ( ABC Pacific: Nicolas Job ) On the final night of the Australian group's exchange, they held a final concert at the historic Tjibaou Cultural Centre, which soon filled with a diverse crowd, from indigenous Kanaks to European migrants. In the group's final song, everyone gathered and danced. ( ABC Pacific: Nicolas Job ) Esther said her family from Maré attended the concert and "were really touched" and "really moved by the evening". "And yes, lots of people dancing too. A lot of people who were happy to be there. You could see all the colours of people from different communities, different islands." Australian musician Michael Hohnen was overwhelmed by the community's response to their concert. "Having Yello and Manuel from two different bands, two different languages… so we've really had to mix it up. Yellow's done more kind of hip hop stuff, Manuel has done more lyrical, beautiful vocal stuff," he said. "But the crazy thing about here is, as you've seen over the last few days a lot of people sing here, there's a lot of beautiful song." In the spirit of NAIDOC Week's 2025 theme of strength, vision and legacy, the cultural exchange made connections that will likely last far beyond a single week of music.
ABC News
27-06-2025
- ABC News
Lorde on her feminine lineage, gender fluidity, and creating new album Virgin
Lorde seems to have emerged into her final form. We first met the New Zealand sensation at the tender age of 16 when she she exploded into the Zeitgeist with 'Royals'. From there, we've seen her explore her identity through each release like a different set of clothes in her wardrobe. She's been the dark pop girlie, the up-all-night club kid, and the barefoot free spirit. Now, ahead of her fourth album, Virgin, she has once again emerged from the proverbial chrysalis. But instead of debuting a flashy new look, she's stripped everything back — clean, vulnerable, exposed, virginal. "I was really trying to make an album that didn't lie in the instrumentation, in the language, in the feeling," Lorde told triple j Mornings' Lucy Smith. "I've made work in the past that were sort of dramatising it as the point and pumping up the saturation on the colours and that's so sick. But I really felt with this one that there was something very… plain and true that needed to come, something pure." Lorde's taking it back to her roots in every sense of the word. She's physically returned to a version of herself she hasn't experienced for more than a decade. She's lyrically displayed her thoughts and feelings without a mask. And she's spiritually reached back into the line of women that came before her, who made her who she is today. "I really thought about my mum [when] making this album," she said. "I thought a lot about what comes before us, as women, the lineage that reaches up above us and shapes us. I understood my mum a lot more through making this album." There's an abruptness to Virgin, where Lorde lays it all out on the table for the world to see. Launching this new era with an X-ray of herself was merely the beginning of this up-front energy, which she credits to wanting to honour her teenage self. "I think of these big swings of emotion, these sort of big surges, and I think of this toughness and 'my way'-ness. And also, this deep vulnerability. "You're on the precipice of great change. You're leaving something behind, you're gaining something else. Just as I came into myself and my body in this new way." Lorde's newness of herself comes down to the personal decision of stopping birth control; the IUD we see in the X-ray scan. "The little yellow pill I took every morning for thousands of mornings since I was 15, I stopped taking it five days ago. Gonna see how it goes," Lorde wrote in her September 2023 newsletter. Right as the 28-year-old teeters on another of life's precipices — her Saturn return — she made the decision to change herself at a cellular level, allowing her body to revert to its rawest form. And with that change come significant shifts in hormones, her understanding of herself, her identity. It's this exact renewal that she opens Virgin with, singing on the first track, 'Hammer': "There's a heat in the pavement, my mercury's raising Don't know if it's love or if it's ovulation When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail" "Very raw. Something very kind of pure and crazy pumping through your system. There was also something kind of macho in a way, just the strength, the physical strength in my body was completely different. "I lift weights, and it was crazy when I would ovulate — it's sort of more chill now — but when I was first coming off birth control, I would be able to lift significantly more." Writing in such an up-front manner is a big shift for Lorde, considering 2021's Solar Power was "cloaked in metaphor and imagery", as she told Smith, and the ecstasy-soaked energy of her much-loved 2017 release, Melodrama. On Virgin, she was determined to turn the harsh fluorescent lights on to pick herself apart wholly. Inspired by reading the works of plain-writing women (in a 2023 newsletter, she noted reading Sheila Heti, Renata Adler, Olga Tokarczuk and Molly Giles), Lorde wanted to be as courageous as these women are with their words. No sugar-coating, no crypticism, just seeing "the body in its grotesque beauty". One artist Lorde drew inspiration from while creating Virgin was British artist Tracey Emin, specifically her 1995 work, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963 — 1995 (which was destroyed in a warehouse fire in 2004). This piece was the background on Lorde's laptop while she built the album — it's influence perhaps most evident on third track 'Shapeshifter' — as a reminder of the kind of unflinching art she wanted to create. "Her works are just this unsparing femininity," Lorde says. "It was such a game-changer in the art world. That work really struck me. It's this kind of pop-tent that's embroidered with the names of everyone she's ever slept with, whether it was hooked up or just shared a bed with." The overarching theme of Virgin is Lorde's deep exploration of her gender and femininity. In the process of stripping herself back, Lorde discovered: "I was beginning to understand that my gender was more expansive than I had thought." In the album's second single, 'Man Of The Year', we meet Lorde at this realisation point, sparked by feeling out of place at the GQ Man Of The Year awards. "I wore this basic hot-girl outfit, my hair really looked like a girl, and I felt all wrong all night," she told Smith. "This is a night where I'm a man, like I'm supposed to be with them. I really felt this wrongness. Written at a time when she was going to the gym, gaining strength, and broadening out in her arms and shoulders, Lorde challenges both her and our understanding of modern femininity with Virgin. While she credits her mother and grandmother as being "the blueprint" for her, she also pushes the envelope to explore what it means to be an unafraid, unapologetic woman in 2025. "I think a lot of women have this conditioning to want to look… to want to be the smallest possible version of themselves," she said. "It took me a second to be like, 'What if we didn't do that? What would surrendering to becoming whatever size you're supposed to become do to your life? What would that feel like, if you could be brave and let that happen?' "The answer is that amazing stuff happens. I couldn't be more of an advocate of letting yourself become yourself, all the way, come what may. You truly have to surrender to it. You don't know what that's gonna look like, but it's gonna be good." As Lorde reflects on her maternal lineage, she's also forging ahead with her own divine feminine — one who's confident to reveal her whole self. Unadulterated, unfiltered, unflinching. "My mum's such an incredible woman," she said. "She really is like the blueprint for who I am. And her pain is my pain, and her peace is my peace and her grandmother's and all this. "So I really had that sense of us all being together." Virgin is out now. Hear Lucy Smith hosting Mornings on triple j from 9am Monday to Friday.
