21 nov: Hand to Earth
Hand to Earth is one of Australia’s most distinctive contemporary music ensembles. At its heart are Yolngu manikay (song cycles), a 40,000+ year-old oral tradition from North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia. These songs exist to cross vast time and space, to continuously make the continuous – known as raki, the spirit that pulls all together. Music Meeting invites you to experience the deeper ancestral treasures held in each Yolngu homeland, on 21 November in de Lindenberg.
Hand to Earth is a call to open ears: eluding genre, traversing continents and fusing ancient and contemporary. The combined vocal approaches of Yolngu songman Daniel Wilfred and Korean vocalist Sunny Kim express a deeply human commonality, whilst also invoking raw elemental forces. Trumpeter and composer Peter Knight draws upon his minimalist influence to create a bed of electronic atmospheres that meld beautifully with these contrasting voices. The combination of clarinetist Aviva Endean and David Wilfred’s evocative didgeridoo sounds transport the listener to previously unimagined sonic plains. Together the ensemble wields these mystical elements with a masterful improvisational touch.
In north-eastern Arnhem Land, the Yolngu people have been singing manikay for millennia. Manikay are series of songs, passed down through generations from the ancestral beings that originally shaped and named the Yolngu homelands. Accompanied by bilma (clapsticks) and yidaki (didjeridu), these manikay series are sung at ceremonies and contain ancestral knowledge essential to the Yolngu way of life.
They are sacred ritual songs, but are also songs about the land, and the plants, animals, people and spirits that inhabit it. Mokuy, the ancestral ghosts, are everywhere in the landscape and mediate the transmission of the manikay. Their teachings offer a glimpse of the deeper ancestral treasures held in each Yolngu homeland. Hear the stars, listen to fire, feel the cooling of the rain, on November 21st in de Lindenberg.
