"Music means everything. We grew up listening to music.

We knew music from overseas before we knew the music of our people. There was no-one playing CDs around Mowanjum, but we knew music from our people performing live; it was only cassettes in the car.

There was a lot of live music growing up, more than today. The festivals were bigger. We didn't have to wait until the floats, we had the Mowanjum Festival, Moonrise and the floats.

All of our experiences are from live music. We knew how to play before we went to school, but school gave us extra help, like the name of the chords.

We learned music from Gulingi Nunga, they are our family and mob, we call them our uncles, the lot of us. Their music is important to the Mowanjum Community, they share stories from our old people, we carry that on. Our bands are a representation of our community. The bands and community are not separate things, even the name ‘Gulingi Nunga’ (rain coming) was given by the old people. For us and other bands, members come and go; the band is the community identity.

My uncle taught us more, he taught us Gulingi Nunga songs, they took us to the next step, he taught us how to play and sing. We started a little group from school and we made Red Alert, our first band when we were young. Ishmael Barunga had the accident and we weren’t sure if he could play again, so Cassie started playing for us and we had the name change to The Kriu3ers.

Music was in our everyday life growing up, everybody knew the words to Gulingi Nunga, they were the biggest band in the Kimberley.

I think it's different, but we sing about the same things, they sing about their era and we sing about ours, 'Broken Glass' is about mob drinking, looking at the back street drinking, glass shattered. Gulingi Numga sing about thinking over, reflecting and looking back. Most of our songs were written out bush. We got inspiration for all our songs from Yaloon, our Country, saltwater country. I feel there is more to write about our own Country rather than Mowanjum, but there are still songs about Mowanjum. Settled at Last is about how we were moved, our old people were moved five times from our country in the early 1900’s. Mowanjum means ‘settled at last’ in Worrorra language.

'He’ll Be Riding' was written by Gulingi Nunga members, it has come out of the Kimberley.

'Old Man' was based on a book, my grandfather's fathers book, David was his name. The book is called Yorro Yorro, one little sentence caught my attention and I wrote it down on paper and thought I had to write a song about it. Sitting up late at night I could feel the old man there, I never met him, but I felt connected and could feel he was there. The line was “At sunset I levitated on my swag, into a velvet night somewhere into a trillion turning lights, as the fire burns to an amber I'm drifting off, I can still see the old man sitting across from me.”

'Rebel Child' was written about my little girl, Celeste, she's a little trouble maker, she doesn't listen.

Kallem Mungulu
Mowanjum, January 2023

**

Making ‘Rebel Child’ broke a lot of new ground for me. It was the first time producing an album for another band, first time driving my own self in my own car up to my childhood home of Derby, first time there with a purpose that wasn’t school or holiday, first time I caught a Barra.

This was a completely new recording experience for me, and it was so rich for it. We did everything in the 6DBY office, sometimes using electric drums when meetings were happening or something. Jada or Sam would bring in lunch - first sushi, then snags and bread when they realised the band hated sushi - and we’d sit in the lunch room talking about life and music and the album. The guys are such amazing musicians. At the end of the day I’d drive the whole crew back to Mowanjum in the little blue Hyundai.

It was such a pleasure seeing them all shred in their own ways, from Cassius’ amazing lead guitar to Tiddles’ rare talent as a drummer and multi-instrumentalist, Edmund’s bass and of course Kalo’s beautiful and thoughtful songwriting. My job was pretty easy looking back. The most striking thing for me was how much the process accelerated and elevated once we all started jamming the songs together. I felt really honoured to be able to play guitar or the plastic Yamaha school keyboard along to He’ll Be Riding, Biding My Time and Bring Your Loving Arms.

I never felt so strongly connected to the old town as I did after this trip - doing the thing I love as an independent adult, with the trust and support of the band, plenty of laughs, plenty of jams, some pretty fruitful fishing (I reckon anyway). I found new friends and old family.

Being locked into a serious recording session can be really mentally and emotionally taxing, but these blokes just took it like absolute champions and brought such rad songs and mean chops throughout, no matter the (plentiful) distractions Derby town threw our way.

Nicholas Allbrook
Walyalup/Fremantle, January 2023