One of Australia’s greatest rock bands was born in the Indigenous community of Papunya, a few hundred kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. Named for the honey-ant dreaming site and Country they loved, Warumpi Band toured the country and the world, and racked up a stack of successes: three studio albums (in 1983, they released the first rock song performed in Australian Aboriginal language), three Aria award nominations, and an entry in the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia collection.
Their contemporary rock songs were rinsed with a twist of country, telling stories that spoke to the soul of a broken nation. Performed in English, Luritja and Gumatj, their music is electric, connective, and kinetic. It’s also a remarkable heartbeat for a work of live theatre.
Big Name, No Blankets, co-directed by Dr Rachael Maza AM and Anyupa Butcher for Ilbijerri Theatre Company, is an early highlight of this year’s Sydney festival. Written by Andrea James and developed in collaboration with founding band member Sammy Butcher (Anyupa Butcher is his daughter) and the families of Warumpi Band members, Maza described the work in an opening night speech as the Blak musical we need in the wake of the failed Indigenous Voice referendum. The joyous response from the audience left no doubt that she was right.
Grounded in music and guided by culture, Country and history, this jukebox musical is a little more rock show than theatre; named after the band’s first album which featured their reconciliation anthem Blackfella/Whitefella, it celebrates the musical trailblazers, and has audiences leaping out of their chairs to stomp, clap, sing, and feel.
On a stage set by Emily Barrie that blends a rock stage with the Papunya desert, we meet brothers Sammy (Baykali Ganambarr, whose character is also the show’s narrator), Gordon (Teangi Knox), Brian (Aaron McGrath) and their beloved mother (Cassandra Williams, who plays all the women in the story and is Sammy Butcher’s niece). From the beginning, Sammy tells us, music was how he best communicated, and the brothers were in love with it too, thrilled by 45s of Little Richard and Chuck Berry, unable to resist drumming on billy cans. When they meet Neil (Jackson Peele) – a Victorian teacher and labourer working in the Top End – the band grows; all it needs from there is, as Sammy later calls him, “the head of the spear”.
Enter George Burarrwanga (Googoorewon Knox, in a standout performance). A Yolngu man raised on Elcho Island and trained in cultural and ceremonial pitch and tone, Burarrwanga is shown in blazing, complex glory: a natural fit for lead vocals, a born performer, and one of Australia’s greatest frontmen of all time.
The musical uses Warumpi Band songs as signposts, milestone markers and punctuation, as it tells the story of the band from its earliest days performing in remote communities, to sharing headliner status on tour with Midnight Oil (featuring a bang-on Peter Garrett impression from Knox that had the audience roaring on opening night).
Barrie’s set is backdropped by a curtain on to which animations, images and videos are projected to summon new places and stories (Sean Bacon is the video content designer), and the house band is always onstage, under a rig of rock-show lights. Tucked at stage right though, campfire burning, is the Butcher family camp, always waiting for the brothers who ache for home – so close, but so far. When band members leave the group, we see them sink their bare feet into the red earth and watch the burden lift from their shoulders. Home, and the culture and memories and people it holds, is everything.
When the show finally performs 1987’s My Island Home, one of Warumpi Band’s most famous songs (you may be more familiar with Christine Anu’s 1995 cover), it is transformative. Performed in language, as Burarrwanga did in later years as an act of reclamation, it could make you weep with its suffusion of love, custodianship and belonging.
The book, by James, doesn’t shy away from band tensions: how fame complicated relationships; how cultural and racial misunderstandings caused bumps in the road. But it returns always to the brotherhood, both familial and honorary, between the band members: how they lift each other up, connect through music, and honour the places they call home.
It also sounds crisp, rollicking, and undeniable. Music director Gary Watling relishes in Warumpi Band’s rock edge, keeping it front-and-centre; sound arranger and composer Crystal Butcher (Sammy Butcher’s daughter; two of his sons also play in the house band) keeps the book and music lively and connected. The band is hot and unstoppable, the cast a joyful expression of music and story.
At one point, Ganambarr’s Sammy considers if the band’s music changed the world. Maybe it didn’t, he says, but they were able to share their stories and for a while Australia listened. And, he says, you danced with us.
Big Name, No Blankets keeps us listening – and a post-show encore performance of Blackfella/Whitefella makes us dance together again.
Big Name No Blankets runs at Roslyn Packer theatre in Walsh Bay until 14 January, as part of Sydney festival
