Australia’s David Bridie and PNG’s George Telek have been making music together for 20 years. Larry Schwartz reports.
WHEN David Bridie and George Telek first met at a barbecue in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, they sat down to talk over a few beers and chicken roasted in a pit with coconut milk and rice.
Bridie was entranced at the time by a Telek song about butterfly spirits. He’d heard it on buses and at a trading post. As he set out to meet the man behind the song, he brought along a Walkman with music by his band, Not Drowning Waving.
Telek remembers that encounter of more than 20 years ago. “The first time that I shook hands with him, I thought, ‘This guy is a white man but he is like a black man in his attitude,”‘ says the celebrated PNG performer, among several musicians here for concerts showcasing the music and
dance of the Pacific region during Melbourne’s inaugural Australasian World Music Expo.
Bridie has immersed himself in his friend’s culture. “When you see David and George together, there are no barriers,” says Namila Benson, a Melbourne-based DJ and public radio 3RRR presenter from PNG. “David is always very respectful. They love him like a brother.”
Such is the regard for Bridie, Telek’s uncle, Lakman, last year invited him to undergo a traditional initiation into Tolai society. “It means he is part of my clan and I can call him ‘brother’ and he can call me ‘brother’ and my parents are his parents and his parents are mine,” Telek explains.
But he is not there yet. Bridie reveals he has completed two of four parts. On completion, he will be given a traditional name.
He says initiation is an honour though he’s “agnostic as it comes”. But he is wary of betraying confidences of the Tolai people by revealing details. “I have respect for them, I can’t go into it too much,” he says.
Telek’s country has had a big impact on Bridie since that first visit, in 1986. “PNG is a sensory overload,” he says. “Every smell is twice as strong as anything you’ve smelled before. Eat a banana there and it’s like eating one for the first time.”
He was 23 when he first went. It was his first trip overseas. His film maker friend Mark Worth, who died in PNG in 2004 after completing work on his documentary, Land of the Morning Star, had persuaded him Europe and America were “just the same as here”.
“So one minute I was in Donvale and 24 hours later I was on the Sepik River,” Bridie says, “and there’s never been more drastic transformation in my whole life.”
Bridie returned with Not Drowning Waving in 1988 to record the band’s acclaimed fifth album, Tabaran, with local artists including Telek. The Melbourne singer-songwriter and pianist has recorded several albums with his other band, My Friend the Chocolate Cake, three solo albums,
soundtracks for film and television and produced five albums for Telek.
“Melbourne is my second home,” says Telek when we meet at rehearsals at the Adelphia studios, in Fitzroy.
Telek strums an old Yamaha steel-string and sings gently in the Tolai language, Kuanuan, and creole Tok Pidgin. His songs blend contemporary grooves with Melanesian rhythms. He began singing in the late ’70s with bands including the Moab Stringband. His first breakthrough was with
rock group Painim Wok. The release of Tabaran brought him international attention and Peter Gabriel invited him to appear at Womadelaide in 1992. Telek’s self-titled solo was released in 1997 on the Australian label, Origin, and won the ARIA for best world music album. He received an MBE
in 2000 for his services to PNG music.
“He is our greatest export,” Namila Benson says. “He’s put our nation on the map.”
Telek is in his early 50s. Once he bought a drum kit with wages earned labouring at the Bougainville copper mine. He went on to play guitar and ukulele. Bridie says when they first met, he was amused to discover that a Hawaiian reggae band called the Pagan Babies was visiting “such a
missionary-run country”. “Until I found out that one of George’s bands was called the Junior Unbelievers, which was even better,” he says.
Stringband is a folk music that emerged after missionaries brought guitars to the region.
Some of the songs record oral history; others are in lieu of love letters. “A bloke will walk up to George and say, ‘There’s this girl I really fancy but I’m too ashamed to tell her about it,” says Bridie. “Can you write a song about it?”‘
Telek’s first trip to Melbourne in 1991 was his first trip abroad. “I just saw new things that I hadn’t seen before,” he says.
He’s found in VB a beer similar to the local SP and, at Dimmeys discount stores, clothes, material and other goods for his wife Bridget, seven children and others in the community.
“He’d arrive here and within 15 minutes he’d be over at Dimmeys because there’s all this stuff he couldn’t buy in PNG,” Bridie says. “He’d say, ‘Dimmeys is cheap as chips’.”
Melbourne was a challenge after village life. “Ah, look, at the beginning it was huge,” Bridie says. “I was reminded of this when the whole of the Moab Stringband came out two years ago. Some had never been out of Rabaul.
“I’ve got a train line at the end of the street and they just stood there for hours watching the trains go past. I took them to a cinema to see an action movie on the big screen with surround sound. George and I started going up the escalator. We got to the top and looked back and they were
just standing at the bottom saying, ‘What the…”‘
Bridie and Telek are at the Spiegeltent at 9.30pm on Saturday. Bridie is directing the South Seas concert at the Hamer Hall, with 17 artists including Telek on Sunday. Free pre-show activities begin at 3pm, ticketed concert at 5pm. Tickets via Ticketmaster and the Arts Centre.
SING SING
The South Seas, the latest of a series of PNG-style Sing Sing concerts
co-ordinated by David Bridie, is a highlight of this week’s inaugural Australasian World Music Expo in Melbourne that has brought together musicians, industry representatives and others for three days of “indigenous, roots and world music” from the region. It is part of the Arts Centre’s Mix
It Up program.
Artists include New Zealand’s Moana and the Tribe, fusing traditional Maori instruments, haka, chants with soul, reggae and classical influences; Hein Arumisore (West Papua); Djakapurra (Yirrkala); George Telek and Airi Ingram (PNG); Albert David (Torres Strait); Bart Willoughby
(Pitjantjantjara) and Georgia Corowa from Vanuatu.
The Age, 21st of November 2008
Larry Schwartz Writer 