TRANSCRIPT:
Choir practice is about to begin at the Redfern Community Centre.
The group is eager to learn a new song from Choir Director Nardi Simpson.
The Stiff Gins musician teaches songs to choir members from the University of Sydney - and any First Nations person who wants to join Barayagal.
Staff and Students from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music improvise.
Playing in the choir is a subject they can take as part of their Sydney University degree.
Together Barayagal sings hello in Gamilaraay.
Nardi Simpson is the Director of Barayagal and she writes the lyrics.
"Us singing language gives me the joy of who I am and where I'm from. And it's a beautiful gift too for non-Indigenous people to sing Yuwaalaraay language or to think about a word that means a whole landscape of stuff."
The music that goes with Nardi’s lyrics is written by Kevin Hunt.
He’s a lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and is the facilitator of Barayagal.
"White Australia really doesn’t understand that we’re welcome, that we can participate and we can share. So yeah - that referendum seemed to be reflecting a real divide. But this - this just shows how we are all welcome to bring our cultures together, led by First Nations."
The choir is open to anyone who works and studies at Sydney University and any First Nations Person.
Tracey Cameron is both.
The Gamilaraay woman lectures in the Gamilaraay language at Sydney University and she is also a Choir member - coming along to sing in Gamilaraay.
"I really love to use language when we're singing. But the way she uses it and the way she creates such amazing poetry really in her songs and lyrics, that it makes me think fantastic. Language is really coming back. And we're really revitalising it. And she's right at the forefront of it so im excited to be involved in any way."
Another choir member, Noella Lopez, works at Sydney University.
She found out about the choir from a colleague.
"Well, I was in a mentoring meeting and the person who was coordinating the mentoring program at the university during COVID shared what was giving her joy. And she started to talk about the choir. And I was looking at her and I thought oh my God, I want to feel what she’s feeling."
Tonight, Nardi is teaching the choir names of birds that live at Narran Lake near Walgett in North West New South Wales.
It's her country - and she took Barayagal there last year to perform for elders like Brenda McBride.
"You have people making music but listening to each other, the complexity of those opposite things. It's one of those indescribable things you know. It feels really good, and if you could work out and write a thing about it and share it with the world, you'd be on to something. But also you would miss the beauty of the immediacy of that. It's a peopled connection."
The Elder has spent years teaching language to school children from many countries in Lightning Ridge.
When Brenda McBride took the choir to Narran Lake, she performed a smoking ceremony before Barayagal sang.
BRENDA: "Nardi is singing out there about those birds, and all of a sudden the birds - you could hear them in the background. It was absolutely beautiful. And she's singing and the birds are there joining in with the song. Absolutely fantastic."
NARDI: "When those little birds sang back - we've been singing their name down here for two years and they sang back, and it was just - for me kind of like - what's the word. It was the confirmation that you're always connected."
Barayagal is learning songs to return to Narran Lake in October for more performances.
"The Conservatorium is one way to know music, and blackfella is another way to know music, and non-Indigenous another way. Yet everybody comes here with a generous spirit and a willingness to do things that - they're not sure where it will lead. But the song holds that movement... I would love everybody - wherever you are in the nation - to know how powerful song is in inviting you as you are and then showing you your relationship to whose around and giving you that to work with in your everyday life. We should all be singing."
After they sing Yaama, the choir members shake hands and embrace.
First Nation's music stars and Non-Indigenous Australians sharing knowledge, culture and understanding through song.
