Aboriginal Soul

Compiled by UK-based Aussie music j ournalist Jane Cornwell, Aboriginal Soul is an excellent selec tion of fairly recent tracks from Australia’s burgeoning indigenous music scene. With a strong focus on the talent-laden Northern Territory/Arnhem Land region, it opens with the lilting ‘Djilawurr (Orange-Footed Scrubfowl)’ from Elcho Island’s popular Saltwater Band – the group that features blind singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Top End favourites Nabarlek, a veteran outfit from the small community of Manmoyi are also featured, along with girl-band newcomers Wildflower, who hail from the remote Mamadawerre outstation. The narrative storytelling talents of New Territories actor and musician Tom E Lewis are on full display in his introspective track ‘Sunshine After Rain’, while another sentimental inclusion, ‘Ronu Wanga’, is sung in Yolngu language by the late George Rrurrambu – the charismatic former lead singer of groundbreaking 1980s group Warumpi Band. Darwin-based singer-songwriters Mark A Hunter and June Mills both offer solid country tunes, but it’s former busker Shellie Morris who blows the roof off with her guitar-fuelled, octave-leaping opus ‘Swept Away’. Southern Aboriginal voices are also well represented, with influential husband/wife team Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter both contributing individual tunes – Roach’s ‘Liyarn Ngarn’ and husky– voiced Hunter’s ‘Down City Streets’, backed by the j azzy Australian Art Orchestra. Young Melbourne retro-rocker Dan Sultan revs things up considerably on ‘Your Love Is Like A Song’, contrasting markedly with the lush string section on Peter Rotumah’s ‘ Remembrance ’. Showcasing the wide diversity of Oz indigenous talent on offer these days, Aboriginal Soul is a well-chosen cross¬section of the current crop.