Samuel Wagan Watson: Smoke Encrypted Whispers

Release Date: 28th Jan 2013
Catalogue No: MR301140
Label: Melba Recordings

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

1-2. Smoke Signals (Robert Davidson)

3-4. Tigerland (Paul Dean)

5-6. Scared of the Dark (Richard Mills)

7-8. Wecker Road (Toby Wren)

9-10. Cribb Island (Stephen Cronin)

11-12. Capalaba (William Barton)

13-14. Rip (Ralph Hultgren)

15-16. Smoke Water (Mary Mageau)

17-18. Author’s Notes #1 (Stephen Stanfield)

19-20. Darkroom (Peter Rankine)

21-22. Fisherman Islands (Louise Denson)

23-24. Paper Trails to Midnight (Damian Barbeler)

25-26. Author’s Notes #2 (Sean O’Boyle)

27-28. Ghosts of Boundary Street (Lisa Cheney)

29-30. Dog Tired Tune (John Gilfedder)

31-32. When I Crossed the Ditch . . . (Tom Adeney)

33-34. Author’s Notes #3 (Freeman Mcgrath)

35-36. The Dust Company (Marianne Scholem)

37-38. From Boundary Street, West End, to the Berlin Wall, East Germany (Peter Clark)

39-40. Snapshots (Betty Beath)

41-42. Aunty Grey Smoke (Michael Knopf)

43-44. Author's Notes - Conclusion (Stephen Leek)

45-46. Revolver (Gerard Brophy)

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Smoke Encrypted Whispers is a sequence of 23 poems by the leading Australian indigenous poet Samuel Wagan Watson that pairs the Brisbane-born writer’s texts with succinct musical commentaries - part reflection, part response - by 23 of the poet’s Brisbanite composer peers.

What results - in a performance by the musicians of Southern Cross Soloists interspersed with readings of the individual poems by the distinguished Australian actor Ron Haddrick - is a variegated tapestry given cohesion and coherence by the multiple interwoven threads of Watson’s words. Smoke Encrypted Whispers presents tales of the poet’s own interior dreamtime and depth of feeling to produce a vivid and touching picture of growing up in suburban Brisbane.

While offering one revealing insight after another into the spirituality of displaced indigenous experience in contemporary urban Australia, Watson’s poetry taps into a potent mythology that predates the settled history of the continent - as well alluding to the fears, heartbreaks, hopes and humour that are universal rather than isolated qualities. Through it, we are invited into a magical universe veiled behind the obfuscating layers of our mundane existence.

The 23 composers are Tom Adeney, Damian Barbeler, William Barton, Betty Beath, Gerard Brophy, Lisa Cheney, Peter Clarke, Stephen Cronin, Robert Davidson, Paul Dean, Louis Denson, John Gilfedder, Ralph Hultgren, Michael Knopf, Stephen Leek, Mary Mageau, Freeman McGrath, Richard Mills, Sean O’Boyle, Peter Rankine, Marianne Scholem, Stephen Stanfield and Toby Wren.

Samuel Wagan Watson: Smoke Encrypted Whispers

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