Details

Connecting one of the world’s oldest languages with our youngest generations.

Award-winning duo Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse have firmly established a reputation for bringing a fresh, modern take to ancient traditions. Merging evocative sounds, natural acoustic instruments and poignant stories, the natural rhythms of Noongar language are perfectly captured and represented.

About the concert

Gina and Guy’s performance in Primrose Potter Salon presents their contemporary take on a suite of children’s songs and lullabies performed in Noongar, matching the glorious strings of The String Contingent and the piano genius of Russel Holmes. With guitar brilliance and beautiful vocals, Koorlangka showcases and connects one of the world’s oldest languages with younger generations.

Gina is a Balladong daughter; one of the 14 clan groups which make up the Noongar nation covering the south west corner of Western Australia. Noongar language is critically endangered with less than 400 recognised fluent speakers left. Gina’s mother and grandmother were both part of the Stolen Generations and were never allowed to speak their languages. Gina wasn’t stolen, but was relinquished as a baby for adoption.

There is a saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ but what happens when the village is burned down and the songs are taken away?

Traditionally, music was used to preserve and pass on language, lore and culture. For 60,000 years, mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers sang to their children, creating songlines which span from the north to the south, from the east to the west.

Koorlangka works off a simple premise that 3,000 generations of cultural practice were interrupted at colonisation. To bring healing to the intergenerational trauma that ensued, the community must find ways to reconnect future generations to old ways.

Linking storytelling, lullabies and children’s songs, their performance showcases Noongar language in all its beauty, a language that underpins the values, ethos and aspirations of their community, weaving stories of love and loss, of joy and triumph and celebrating shared experiences.

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Artists

Gina Williams voice
Guy Ghouse guitar
Russel Holmes piano
The String Contingent