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George Rrurrambu
George Rrurrambu live in concert – used with permission from the family, via the producers of Big Name No Blanket. Photograph: Supplied
George Rrurrambu live in concert – used with permission from the family, via the producers of Big Name No Blanket. Photograph: Supplied

Blackfella/Whitefella by Warumpi Band – Australia's seminal reconciliation song

This article is more than 8 years old

Australian Anthems
Fronted by the charismatic George Rrurrambu, the Warumpi Band was the country’s first rock act to sing in an Indigenous Australian language

Blackfella, Whitefella.
Yellowfella, any fella.
It doesn’t matter, what your colour.
As long as you a true fella.

Rarely were words performed so convincingly and exhilaratingly as when the Womad New Plymouth hosted Indigenous Australian rocker George Rrurrambu in 2005. Early Saturday morning on the festival’s most intimate stage, the former Warumpi Band frontman interacted bracingly with the audience, singing passionately about reconciliation and togetherness, always looking the audience square in the eye. Blackfella/Whitefella’s crisp drum intro and blistering guitar riffs had even a hopeless dance-phobic like myself moving.

Warumpi Band sang in Luritja of Australia’s Western Desert (although Rrurrambu hailed from Arnhem Land’s Elcho Island), and became the first band to perform rock’n’roll in an Aboriginal language. The Yolgnu lead singer was inspired by rock music pioneer Chuck Berry, and American rhythm and blues. The kind of music that went “straight from the heart to the people,” as Rrurrambu (also now known as George Burarrwanga or GRB) put it, in the moving 2013 documentary Big Name No Blanket.

Video used with permission from the family, via the producers of Big Name No Blanket.

Rrurrambu co-wrote Blackfella/Whitefella with whitefella songwriter and guitarist Neil Murray, a Victorian who arrived at the Warumpi community as a teacher. Murray found camaraderie in the Butcher Tjapanangka brothers – bassist Sammy and drummer Gordon – with Rrurrambu (Sammy’s brother-in-law) rounding out the band lineup on lead vocals and didgeridoo.

Warumpi Band’s first track was 1983’s Jailanguru Pakarnu (Out From Jail), which established their emancipatory, upbeat philosophy. Many other great songs followed, such as the lively Warumpinya or Kintorelakutu, but it was Blackfella/Whitefella, from debut album Big Name, No Blankets two years later, that would go on to leave a lasting legacy on the Australian musical landscape and beyond. Blackfella/Whitefella was most powerful in the band’s dynamic live performances and a second version of the song on third album Too Much Humbug fared better in capturing their stage energy.

Warumpi Band and their Powderworks labelmates Midnight Oil toured Australia together in 1986. Charismatic frontmen Rrurrambu and Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett excelled, playing free gigs at remote Aboriginal communities, such as Rrurrambu’s homeland in north-east Arnhem Land. The experience became a major influence on the Oils’ 1987 album Diesel and Dust and its historic land rights anthem Beds are Burning.

Video used with permission from the family, via the producers of Big Name No Blanket.

And so, before John Howard refused to say sorry, long before Kevin Rudd’s apology, it was Blackfella/Whitefella that fired up reconciliation.

Warumpi Band never received the recognition they deserved from mainstream Australian culture, but did pave the way for other Aboriginal musicians such as Yothu Yindi and Gurrumul, and Christine Anu, who closed the Sydney Olympics in 2000 with a cover of Warumpi Band’s My Island Home. Rrurrambu also inspired varied Aboriginal artists like Warwick Thornton, director of the stylish 2009 film Samson and Delilah.

It was with great sadness that Australia’s artistic community learned of Rrurrambu’s death, aged 50, of cancer, just two years after that memorable Womad performance. But not unlike Berry, who at 88 still performs monthly at St Louis’s Blueberry Hill, Rrurrambu’s music and his furtive cry to “stand up and be counted” on Blackfella/Whitefella remains rousing and timeless.

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