peter mumme
Shoalhaven
'Shoalhaven .. music and nature sounds from a special Australian place.
Wonderful sights and nature sounds have inspired the composition of the new music for this recording.
The Shoalhaven district has been long associated with indigenous peoples, with (later) artists, writers and musicians, it is located 169km south of Sydney, Australia ..
It is the site of the 'Bundanon' property - once aboriginal homelands, later a farm (hence the Scot's name), still later passing to (the Boyd family of) artists
Bundanon was bequeathed to the state for use as an 'arts residence' in the mid 1990s
I arrived there in December 2001 for a three month stay ..
'Shoalhaven' is laid out as a 'trip', a walk through a rain forest, around rock escarpments, into hidden magic places and open cow paddocks, around the old 'bundanon' homestead, close to night-time dams ..
You may hear a 60 second snippet of all the tracks - just by clicking the (play) 'triangles' below
Shoalhaven tracks:
'Shoalhaven' is 67 minutes long
The story:
Down a dirt track of subtly changing colours and trees, the pathway cuts a fringe between forest and green cow paddocks.
Birds fly out and over, circle, stop and talk.
Many birds - kookaburras, ravens, magpies, mudlark, wrens, bower birds, butcher birds, wagtails, parrots, goshawks like light shifters
Bundanon lies beyond a gate of rock; even the track winds around this old fella
Cut off, 150 years of recent building and business have also moved away into memory, into ghosts and voices, areas of presence
The subtle nature of Australia seems to constantly elude our white perception and understanding, yet the remnants of people, voices and spirits, white and black, drift amongst the escarpments, trail one up the bush walks, follow into the natural ampitheatre of rock and tree and sound
This resonance of space is within and yet surrounds us, hovering, manifesting itself through earth and spirit, leading us toward a knowledge of country and ourselves
The country seems to be brooding, waiting, needing the old songs to re-awaken for it to become whole and relevant again.
How to make sense of this?
of country, of spirit
How do we hear the stories - without signposts, wisdom, knowledge or elders?
Yet the stories can reveal themselves
Just as rocks, slowly eroded by wind and water, expose their layers to reveal older stories, new stories are layered upon them
Hear then the rock story, the bird stories, the story of aspect and space - as they reveal some of themselves in this celebration of a special place
Di Johnson
We have produced a remastered version of 'shoalhaven' especially for download ..
The original music is unchanged, optimised a little for new listening technologies and is formatted in '.wav' files
The art work, the track lists and notes are all included plus additions of background story and images
If you like the works, please feel free to send a few bob, $s, rupiah, shekels, yen .. via paypal !
If wanting to use any bits in commercial productions, you do need contact me for copyright clearances
Further information, stories, music, nature’s songs ..
contact me here
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More about 'bundanon' ?
© Peter Mumme 2005 all rights reserved
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