Small Island Big Song is a cultural project created by Australian music producer Tim Cole and his wife Bao Bao with over a hundred Aboriginal musicians from 16 island nations between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, in order to shape a musical position of a slice of the world directly afflicted by environmental problems. L'album it was recorded in Natura, on the artists' islands of origin. It is a proposal of fair trade music.
Tim Cole and his wife Bao Bao after working in an Aboriginal music recording studio they decided to do something more with their lives forming a band of Aboriginal musicians affected by the threat of Global Warming and Climate Change, people whose motherland is located in small islands scattered across the Ocean.
Thanks to Culture and Music they hope to raise public awareness of serious environmental problems which are directly affecting the Small Island Big Song band members and their families. Some of the musicians belonging to the project travel around the world with Tim Cole and Bao Bao to show everyone what is happening and what they are experiencing firsthand in their island nations.
This is the interview given by Tim Cole and Bao Bao for First Art.
Why did you create this project and what is it about?
Tim Cole: “Me and Bao Bao previously we worked in an Aboriginal music recording studio in Australia and towards the end of the contract we decided to do a project with a deeper meaning. The last job I had with the recording studio was recording traditional Aboriginal songs, so I was inspired to venture into the area and record these songs surrounded by Nature.
I wanted to create a series of songs handed down from generation to generation as a transfer tool cultural: able to teach the social structure and how to travel within the territory, if it were possible to know the whole series of songs basically one could "sing the territory", it is like the mathematics of the earth. Then, when we learned that trash was arriving on the beaches of small earthly paradises crossing the oceans, I thought that whatever we did, it would have to address this issue.”
Bao Bao: "The report IPCC alarms us about Climate Change. Clear signs of sea level rise can be seen in the Pacific Ocean, mind you, it's just the islands of these musicians they are going under water, the fact is that are becoming hardly habitable because the sea is now reaching the cultivated areas and the salt water is entering their watering system, many island nations have had to move because of these problems.”
Tim Cole: “We wanted to create a project that talks about environmental problems, but not in a superficial way, we aim to draw attention to these problems with means of culture, by recording music in these precious environments. There are already many documentaries that talk about these issues but the will to action is clearly lacking, therefore we really hope that our project acts as a glue that connects people's souls through cultural narratives.
We brought 12 musicians last year to Europe from this vast region, to make people understand that everything that is happening very far indeed affects the entirety of the Planet. Their homelands are so far out in the middle of the oceans but metaphorically we all live on this little island, this Earth of ours, we came here to Europe to celebrate this planet and celebrate these incredibly precious ancient cultures.
Our message as we travel between these remote islands is that the oceans do not separate, there is one Ocean that touches all coasts. Ultimately, what struck me about Climate Change is to think that i the first to be affected are those who have lived sustainably on a small island for centuries, we must all try to live sustainably on this little island called Earth.”
Was it difficult to find the band members? How far have you travelled?
Tim Cole: “When Bao Bao and I came up with the idea for the project we were living in central Australia. Personally I have worked in the music industry for 30 years so I already had some context but when we thought about traveling in this vast region, across the Indian ocean and the Pacific ocean, I realized that my context didn't go that far.
So we started the project with just a small number of people that I knew and it just kept growing on the journey, after we went to this big festival, Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture, we met a large number of Aboriginal musicians from Hawaii, from New Zealand, and that was the beginning. We ended up traveling from one small island to another small island for about 3 years.”
Can you tell us more about the Small Island Big Song musicians? This is not a band with fixed components, right?
Tim Cole: “The musicians in this project come and go, we have 33 professional artists with important careers who contributed to the album, but there are also seniors, community groups who participate in the project only as guest musicians because we don't want to drag them into the music industry. We want to take on tour with us for concerts and festivals only those who are willing to leave the tranquility of their land and embrace such a stressful journey.”
How is a song created for this project? There is no main language, is there?
Tim Cole: “As a music producer I don't play any instruments but I'm constantly surrounded by musicians, so our approach was to go to their islands and record these songs that represent their cultural heritage, going to places that have meaning for them. The songs resonate greatly with the land of origin, recorded in nature, played on instruments that belong to that land, in the language that originated from that land.
The Small Island Big Song musicians carry musical legacies that go back to the breath of their home islands, they all sing in their own languages all of which share elements of this large linguistic group Austronesian headed to Taiwan.”
What about future concerts? Are you and Bao Bao planning a tour?
Tim Cole: “Our goal now is to tour the group of musicians who came with us to play at Rudolstadt Festival in Germany, we have already been to North America, we have passed through Asia, and finally we have arrived in Europe. Our goal next year is to bring these musicians back to their islands and other places in that vast region, so record songs as a group this time and be guided into a spontaneous relationship with nature through the musical-cultural narratives of those places , and then bring that material to major festivals around the world.”
How did all these musicians prepare to play together at the Rudolstadt Festival in Germany?
Bao Bao: “This is our second time back to Europe, and the Staff of this Festival was very kind to us, they gave us 4 extra days to get there earlier, get all the band together, and rehearse. Most bands usually rehearse in their garage and then go on tour, for us instead the tour represents how we can reunite with this family of musicians scattered across the ocean and come together all together, because clearly everyone comes from very different places.
I think touring has another level of meaning for us, I still remember the moments before our first show: we had 5 musicians from different islands at the time, not all of them spoke English but they all sat in a circle and started counting together one to ten in their different indigenous languages as they looked at each other. In this way they realized they shared the same way of calling those numbers and that many other words were also the same, such as the names of various musical instruments.
That was the most special moment for us. This time we have 9 musicians from 7 different islands and every day the band members chat with each other discovering common words between their different languages: today we say this is Taiwan, this is New Zealand, this is Hawaii, but all these borders were drawn by the colonizing nations, first there was another story, they were one population. And that's another story we hope to tell."
1 2 3 4
Except for the cover image and image number 2, all the photos in this article were taken by Gerardo Iannacci and all rights to the above are reserved to him, FIRST Arte Web Magazine does not own any rights to any of the photos
