Art is reconciliation in action

Musician David Bridie and theatremaker Rachael Maza encourage more collaborations between black and white Australians.
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Collaboration is central to many artists’ careers, and ARIA award-winning songwriter and composer David Bridie is no exception. His career to date has included a number of fruitful collaborations with artists from Melanesia, as well as producing albums by Indigenous artists Archie Roach and Frank Yamma, and playing in the bands Not Drowning Waving and My Friend the Chocolate Cake.

A new project, Gather Together, sees Bridie collaborating with a group of Indigenous artists – including actor Uncle Jack Charles and singers Kutcha Edwards, Emma Donovan, James Henry, and Tjimba Possum-Burns – for a special, one-hour performance commissioned for the opening of Bendigo’s new Ulumbarra Theatre.

Bridie wants to see more collaboration between white and black Australians, but recognises that some non-Indigenous artists may be apprehensive about the risks and challenges involved.

‘I can see why people might be nervous – there’s been mistakes made and wrong ways of going about it, and there will continue to be. It’s an on-going process,’ he said.

‘But whilst there’s all that, I think that in music, and film as well, and dance; there’s a lot of great collaborations that have gone on between white and black Australia since the 1960s.’

Theatremaker Rachael Maza, Artistic Director of Ilbijerri Theatre Company (who is currently touring Victoria in the company’s Beautiful One Day), said the secret to successful collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists was simple. ‘Seriously, it’s not rocket science. Collaboration is the same rules, black, white, brindle. With all collaborations, it’s all about relationships and trust.

‘Literally, right from the offset, it’s about getting to know each other; it’s about respecting those persons and what they do want to include, what they don’t want to include. Essentially what I’m saying is it’s about developing that relationship of trust,’ she said.

One of the best ways to embark on such collaborations was to be invited in, Bridie said, as was the case with Gather Together.

‘I think in some ways you kind of need to be invited in, so that’s about establishing relationships. People play together all the time at gigs, on soundtracks and all that kind of thing, and after a period of time things will develop – somebody will come up and sing a song with you, and then you’re doing a record and they’ll come in. You develop that trust with each other and say “Hey, how about we collaborate on this?” That tends to be the way it works.

‘I would think the other approach is that if you have an idea for a show, go to the right person and talk with them about it. But the authorship and the creative processes needs to involve Indigenous people. I don’t think it’s something that you’d write yourself,’ he stressed.

‘But the other thing is just having your ears open the whole time and listening. There are wrong ways to do things like this, but there’s no right way. There are just different ways.’

Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists was essential to the future of Australia, said Maza.

‘I acknowledge that it’s a little bit more awkward because of the history, and because we’re kind of still in a stage where we’re still uncomfortable about asking the dumb questions. So basically my advice to people is just to go for it.

‘Follow those basic laws of respect and building trust. It’s about listening; about really listening. It’s about the opportunity not to know everything. It’s okay to ask dumb questions, you know?

‘And I really encourage it because seriously, this is the way forward for us as a nation. We’ve got an incredible, amazing history and then the last 200 years there’s been some really fantastic things in this country that we can celebrate. But until we start acknowledging some hard truths it’s like we can’t move forward or we can’t acknowledge and celebrate those good things, until we’ve gone there – so we just need to go there, together,’ Maza said.

Bridie stressed the importance of giving such projects a longer development timeframe than might normally be the case for a work of similar scale.

‘In this case we’ve had to get permission for every photo of a person that we’ve used, and there’s protocol for going through that, so we’ve gone to the State Library and the Bunjilaka section of the Museum, through the Dja Dja Wurrung Land Corporation. Luckily we started early enough because it can be a time-consuming process.’

He also cautioned non-Indigenous artists hoping to work on such projects that it won’t always be an easy ride.

‘You’ve got to be open to copping a little bit of flack because the Indigenous world is not united in their view of how things should be done – and that’s not a criticism, that’s just the same as society in general – especially a mob who’ve been subjected to the whole “divide and rule” take on it.

‘I’m comfortable and confident doing this because I’ve had great collaborations before, and now; collaborations with people who I’ve worked with before who trust me, or who know me well enough to come up and say “You can’t do that, you need to do this instead.” And hopefully I listen, and I listen well.’

The Australia Council’s guidelines to Indigenous protocols can be downloaded here.

Richard Watts is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM, and serves as the Chair of La Mama Theatre's volunteer Committee of Management. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and was awarded the status of Melbourne Fringe Living Legend in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. Most recently, Richard was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Green Room Awards Association in June 2021. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts