Photograph of Barricades performing at Rouse Hill Psychedelia

Playing our Song

Today, ‘songs of home’ means different things to different people. Yet common musical threads bind us: making and maintaining social and family ties, or expressing connection to a place, whether near or far; the pleasure of sharing a passion for our musical idols; and embracing the fertile relationship between music and technology.

As we pick out a tune on the guitar, sing along with friends or listen to a new track, it may seem that little has changed over the past 200 years. But where, in 2019, is ‘home’? Is it something we carry on our phones, transporting and consuming a musical culture we share with an audience across the globe? Or maybe ‘home’ is a richer, more complex place where a flash mob can meet, sing and share music.

Or we might continue to look to family, reach out to those with a common love of music, welcome new immigrants and their songs, and celebrate Australia’s First Peoples and their deep and enduring message of country, kinship and music.

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Barricades performing at Rouse Hill Psychedelia, 2022

Photo © Joshua Morris for MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW

Sydney Flash Mob Choir

Sydney Flash Mob Choir started as a harebrained idea to summon a spontaneous choir via SMS. People choose to come along, and one of Australia’s many talented conductors picks a song for them to sing. It’s unexpected, sometimes surprising, but always a lot of fun.

Elaine Chia, CEO, City Recital Hall

Every month since February 2017, City Recital Hall in Sydney’s Angel Place has been filled with the sound of hundreds of exhilarated voices from Sydney Flash Mob Choir. The brainchild of City Recital Hall CEO Elaine Chia and the late conductor Richard Gill ao, the choir is open to anyone. A text message goes out once a month with a date and time. Participants range in age from babies to people in their nineties.

The choir’s repertoire spans modern pop music, classic songs from bands such as the Beatles, and international music; to celebrate Chinese New Year in 2019, the choir sang the Mandarin song ‘The moon represents my heart’. In November 2018, over 1000 people congregated to sing the 1960s hit ‘Dancing in the street’ for thousands of passers-by in bustling Martin Place.

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Brett Weymark conducting Sydney Flash Mob Choir at City Recital Hall

Photo © Poppy Burnett, 2018

Pure and unadulterated joy – there is simply nothing like singing in a flash mob choir.

Emma, flash mob choir member

Genevieve Lacey

For me, songs of home are ones born in Australia, giving voice to who and where we are, helping us imagine what we might become.

Genevieve Lacey

Recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey performs and records internationally as a soloist, and collaborates widely with musicians, writers, dancers and artists. She has a significant recording catalogue and a growing body of large-scale collaborative works to her name.

Born in Papua New Guinea, Genevieve began learning the recorder at the age of five and has been joyfully taking it into many different contexts ever since. After her family moved to Victoria, Genevieve studied music and literature in Melbourne, and later Switzerland and Denmark. ‘The magpie’ is one of many compositions Genevieve has commissioned and performed to excite a generation of players and audiences about the potential of this instrument so often found at home.

AUDIO

‘The magpie’

Music by John Rodgers (Copyright Control)

Performed by Genevieve Lacey

From the album Weaver of fictions

Australian Broadcasting Corporation 2008

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Genevieve Lacey performing ‘Soliloquy’ at the Melbourne Recital Centre

Photo © Pia Johnson, 2018

Contemporary First Peoples Composers

Brenda Gifford

I take my inspiration from my people and my culture. As a Yuin woman that comes to the front of whatever I am working on.

Brenda Gifford

Brenda Gifford is a proud Yuin woman, originally from Wreck Bay on the South Coast of NSW. An accomplished saxophone player, Brenda played with reggae artist Bart Willoughby in the band Mixed Relations, and worked with Kev Carmody on his album Eulogy (for a black person), playing saxophone on the track ‘Blood red rose’. She has toured and performed extensively around Australia, and internationally, to Native American communities and in the Pacific Islands. She has worked with remote Indigenous broadcasters and taught music to Indigenous students in the TAFE system. As a composer, her music draws on rhythms from nature and is a reflection of her strong connection to country, her home and her culture. The title of her composition, ‘Munggurra’, means ‘home’ in the Dhurga language. Brenda has a Masters in Composition from the University of Sydney.

LEARN MORE

Contemporary First Peoples Composers, Museums of History NSW

AUDIO (Commissioned exclusively for Songs of Home)

‘Munggurra’

Composed by Brenda Gifford

Performed by members of the Royal Australian Navy Band, 2019

Recorded in partnership with ABC Classic

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Brenda Gifford

Photo © Marissa McDowell for

MUSEUMS OF HISTORY NSW, 2019

I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t folk music in my house. It was as legitimate a musical form to me as anything else that my friends were listening to.

James Fagan

Both my parents were musicians and singers. I always think of Mum as the song background and Dad as the instrumental background.

Nancy Kerr

Internationally acclaimed folk duo James Fagan and Nancy Kerr met in December 1995, and formed the musical and life partnership that has been the backbone of their music ever since. James, an Australian, sings and plays many instruments, specialising in bouzouki (a Greek stringed instrument), guitar and mandolin. Nancy is a songwriter and one of England’s best-known folk fiddle players.

Anchored in Irish, English, Scottish, Australian and American folk traditions, James and Nancy’s songs blur musical boundaries. Their music often explores the elusive and ever-evolving concept of ‘home’. The song ‘Hand me down’ describes how we find home through music, friends and dance no matter where we are.

AUDIO

‘Hand me down’

Composed by Nancy Kerr

Performed by Melrose Quartet: Nancy Kerr (voice, fiddle), James Fagan (voice, guitar), Jess Arrowsmith (voice, fiddle) and Richard Arrowsmith (diatonic accordion), 2017

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Nancy Kerr and James Fagan

Photo © Elly Lucas

‘Hand me down’ is about moving to a new place but finding music, friends and dance there that make you feel like you are home, no matter where you are.

James Fagan and Nancy Kerr

Dami Im

Singer-songwriter Dami Im grew up in a home filled with music. The daughter of an opera singer, Dami emigrated from South Korea with her family at the age of nine. Music helped her to overcome the challenges of migration and feel at home in her new country. She learnt English through pop songs and found solace from schoolyard taunts by playing piano at school.

In 2013, Dami auditioned for the reality television music competition The X Factor Australia, which she went on to win. Her first song release, ‘Alive’, went to number one in the Australian music charts. In 2016, Dami represented Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest, before a worldwide audience of 200 million, and was voted runner-up with her performance of ‘Sound of silence’.

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Dami Im performing ‘Sound of silence’ at the Eurovision Song Contest

VIDEO (BELOW)

'Sound of Silence'

Composed by Anthony Egizil and David Musumeci

Performed by Dami Im

Music was very important and helped me adjust and find my identity in Australia. It’s really helped me through.

Dami Im

Contemporary First Peoples Composers

Tim Gray

As I grow, becoming a better person, songs map my recovery and my connection with the spirit world.

Tim Gray

Tim Gray is a Gumbaynggirr/Wiradjuri/Bidjigal man from the Mid North Coast and central regions of NSW. Raised on Darawal country on the Georges River, he trained in classical piano as a child but did not reconnect with music and his culture until 2008, after a period of homelessness resulting from 16 years of alcohol and drug addiction. Tim wrote his first song in Namatjira Haven, an Aboriginal drug and alcohol healing centre, and in 2010 began studying music performance at Eora TAFE College in Sydney. He has been writing songs ever since.

Tim sings in a group called Voices Carry, led by choral director Tania Bowra, and is the keyboard player in a reggae/ska group, Green Hand Band, with Troy j Russell, a fellow composer with the Ngarra-burria First Peoples Composers initiative. His vision is to empower others with music, through healing and education, and in 2018 he hosted a program called Social change on Koori Radio. ‘Water is life’ is a protest song, encouraging people to come together to heal our rivers and look after our home.

LEARN MORE

Contemporary First Peoples Composers, Museums of History NSW

AUDIO (Commissioned exclusively for Songs of Home)

‘Water is life’

Composed by Tim Gray

Performed by Tim Gray, Tania Bowra and Gabby Dinallo (voice), and members of the Royal Australian Navy Band, 2019

Recorded in partnership with ABC Classic

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Tim Gray

Explore the Exhibition

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which we live and work. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.