Submerged by JWPaton

from JWPaton
This release acts as a comapnion to my album, forming the complete title ‘Structures Submerged’. The song titles are taken from and influenced by poems and talks which have since shaped the way I view the work.

I saw Wiradjuri / Gadigal singer-songwriter Akala Newman speak down by the harbour. She talked about how the buildings surrounding the harbour used shell middens in their concrete and mortar. The middens here were formed over thousands of years near Indigenous meeting places all along the coast and waterways inland. This made me reflect on how these buildings and skyscrapers here today are built upon towns and cities that existed long before the invasion.

The title ‘A River Will Always Be A River’ is a line from Wiradjuri poet Jazz Money’s poem called ‘Bila, A River Cycle’. It brings back memories of Breakfast Creek near my Nan’s house in Marayong, Blacktown. All my life the creek resembled something more like a giant concrete drain than a waterway. My Nan told me that when she moved to the area, over 70 years ago now, it was bushland. I see this title and Jazz’s poem as one of resilience in the face of annihilation.

‘End Of The World’ is a poem by Goorie writer and poet Brooke Scobie. The title of the final song is taken from her poem. The song itself is a kind of coda or epilogue maybe. It makes me think of Coomee Nulunga, who I’ve been told is an ancestor of mine. Coomee was ‘honoured’ with a breastplate engraved with ‘Last of Her tribe’ of the Murramurrang people. You can actually find a statement from Coomee describing colonisation from her perspective. Heartbreaking stuff. We are the gardeners of the apocalypse.

making noise on Darug Country

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