SONGS FROM WALKING WITH SPIRITS

from Rhythms Magazine January-February 2023

Books 1 Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song

An Arnhem Land musical experiment comes of age

By Seth Jordan

The recent re-release of an unusual 2007 album Songs From Walking With Spirits, showcases a unique project that brought together four traditional Aboriginal songmen with four other very talented Australian musicians, and it’s sparked renewed interest in this remarkable collaboration. Originally titled Muyngarnbi – Songs From Walking With Spirits, but shortened for the new re-release, the original album was the brainchild of the late musician-actor Balang T.E. Lewis (aka Tom E. Lewis), who passed away in 2018 at age 59.

Please Note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this feature may contain images, voices and videos of deceased persons.

Best known to film buffs for his 1978 debut in ‘The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith’ - the Fred Schepisi-directed movie that was filmed when Lewis was just 18 – and which was nominated for the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, Lewis went on to appear in many other important films, including ‘We Of The Never Never’, ‘Crocodile Dreaming’, ‘The Proposition’, ‘Goldstone’, ‘The Skin Of Others’ and the documentary ‘Yellow Fella’. A phenomenal actor as well as a gifted musician, he also starred in an acclaimed stage adaption of Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ (titled ‘The Shadow King’ and set in an Indigenous community), and recorded two excellent solo albums - 2005’s ‘Sunshine After Rain’ and 2013’s ‘Beneath The Sun’. Originally from Ngukurr (Roper River) in south Arnhem Land, Lewis also co-founded Djilpin Arts, a community-run gallery-museumaccommodation cultural complex in his adapted nearby home of Beswick (Wugularr). And in 2002 he initiated the First Nationsbased festival ‘Walking With Spirits’ at a stunning local site known as Malkgulumbu or Beswick Falls). Having previously featured a number of local and regional Arnhem Land songmen at the festival, in 2007 Lewis’ trademark infectious enthusiasm made him want to record their traditional singing properly, albeit augmented by a few special guests invited to take part in the recording project. Four songmen – Roy Muyngarnbi Ashley, Micky Hall, Victor Hood and Jimmy Wesan, were joined by legendary Daddy Cool guitarist Ross Hannaford, bassist-producer Michael Hohnen (Skinnyfish Music, Gurrumul), and Lewis himself. Melbourne drummer Tony Floyd’s parts were subsequently added later to the recording. “This album was completely Tom’s (Balang’s) own project,” confirms Hohnen, who with the deaths of Hannaford in 2016, Lewis in 2018, and the passing of all four of the old songmen, is now the only surviving member of that original recording session. “He had come back to Beswick after being away for many years, and his passion for this was to bring the old men and the songs back into some sort of relevance,” continues Hohnen. “He and I had already worked together quite a bit, and that was

Balang T.E. Lewis at ‘Walking With Spirits’ festival 2006.

usually a matter of Tom just grabbing whoever he could at the time – so for me it was always a bit random and erratic. He would often choose people that I didn’t think were up to his standard, because I saw him as an incredibly worldly, very talented, and beautifully improvisationally creative person. But for this one he brought Ross Hannaford up to the Territory, because they had previously had a long relationship down in Melbourne, and he wanted him on this project. So that was huge for me to be able to work with both Ross and Tom together.” “But the main thing was his bringing together these old men, who are all gone now,” remembers Hohnen. “I was thrown into the deep end of Tom’s chaos when they asked me to produce it. He had an open jamming shed there outside of Katherine, so we brought in a Brits van and set it up like an outside broadcast van, so that the engineer Jeremy Conlon could look out through the window at us while we were playing in the shed. Julia Morris also had some students that she was training, and they filmed the recording process for a DVD.” “The impetus for Balang was definitely to bring the songmen to the fore,” agrees Lewis’ wife Fleur Parry, who was central to organising the original recording, and who co-founded both Djilpin Arts and the Walking With Spirits festival with him. “He had previously played didjeridu in contemporary and jazz formats for many years, and he had seen how big it had become all over the world as an international instrument,” she recalls. “But when he was back in community he used to say ‘No no, everybody’s got it wrong, it’s not about the didge, that’s just a drone, it’s about the song.’ So for Balang all the knowledge was in the songlines and in the songs that were sung, and it became an absolute passion for him to highlight these songmen.” Lewis had long-established relationships with all of the old singers. “Old Victor he called father,” explains Parry. “Micky was a very close cousin, Roy was a very close elder brother, and Jimmy was a close uncle, so he had strong family relationships with them all. When he said to them ‘Let’s do a recording, but let’s do it without the didjeridu, and use

Balang T.E. Lewis, with wife Fleur Parry and their son Alex, 2006. Ross Hannaford at Wolseley Winery

other instruments instead,’, “they all said ‘Yep’.” “Through the festival they had already done a few different things, they’d sung with a Steiner quartet, they had sung together with traditional Indian singers from Chennai, all kinds of stuff, so they were quite happy experimenting with how you could get the song carried by something else other than didjeridu,” she says. Almost my default, Roy Muyngarnbi Ashley’s contribution became a bit of a focal point in the recordings. “In some ways it was just a matter of who was available for certain tracks,” laughs Parry. “But of course Roy could sing in a number of languages, as he was culturally right-across it all and multilingual. >>>

Onstage performance from Walking With Spirits Festival 2006, including (on right) T.E.Lewis and Ross Hannaford.

>>> One very special song on the album ‘Cloud Over Micky’s Country’ he sings with Micky, since as brother and cousin they had a particular cultural relationship, and were able to sing that one together. There were kind of subtle rules as to who could sing what, and then there were a couple where different songmen were able to sing together.” The resulting recordings were an eccentric and intriguing combination of the old songmen’s traditional vocals, Hannaford’s energised rock-blues-country guitar work, and Hohnen, Lewis and Floyd’s steady supporting roles. “The singers absolutely loved it, remembers Parry. ”Victor - who was the oldest of those four songmen - used to go to Balang and say ‘Give me that white man’s didjeridu’. “By which he meant he didn’t care whether they were orchestral members or electric guitars, he really just loved the idea of experimenting with a different sort of drone, as long as the song held its integrity.” ‘They were definitely into it,” agrees Michael Hohnen. “They weren’t used to playing with Ross at all, but he was playful and it was beautiful, and because Ross was in his late 50s at the time and they were just a little older, there was a mutual respect and admiration towards him, and they were looking after him on their country.” Given Hohnen’s long history of important production projects, including all of the albums he did with Gurrumul, and his two for Balang, it’s surprising to hear his retrospective assessment of Songs From Walking With Spirits. “I’m probably most proud of this record beyond just about anything else,” he reflects. “There are a couple of songs on here that are just killer pieces that would stand up anywhere in the world, and I keep coming back to it. It’s like a hidden secret.” When the album was first released in 2007 it only had limited distribution, which is one motivation for Parry wanting to re-release it now. “At the time there was a lot going on, and we’d just finish one project and be onto the next one, and in hindsight we could have promoted it better then,” she explains. “So that’s one reason to give it some new re-release energy now, and make it more widely accessible via the digital stream, which wasn’t really available back then. And as you’ve seen, we’ve still even got a stack of the original CD/DVDs available at the Djilpin gallery too.” “I’m aware that it isn’t necessarily an easy album to listen to, because of all of the really different styles and rhythms,” concludes Parry. “But it’s a very fond memory for me, and watching them all in the shed in 2007, having such an absolute ball doing it, laughing and singing, it was an extraordinary process.” In retrospect, Songs from Walking With Spirits was one of the very first albums that combined traditional Arnhem Land songmen singing with Western instrumentation. Like the similarly re-released 1997’s album Crow Fire Music by black-whitefella band Waak Waak Jungi, it created a template for more recent cross-cultural experiments, such as the Australian Art Orchestra’s impressive 2021 album Hand To Earth with songman Daniel Wilfred, and the fabulous new self-titled debut album Ngulmiya from Numbulwar singer Grant Ngulmiya Nundhirribala – both of which feature traditional songmen vocals, along with elements of Western classical, jazz and electronic music.