Aboriginal artist Dewayne Everettsmith records palawa kani album with Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra

As Dewayne Everettsmith held his firstborn child in 2010, the Palawa man had a burning wish.

“I was sitting there at 3 o’clock in the morning, and he was crying and I looked at him, and I wished in that moment I could sing to him in language,” he recalls.

It was a desire he couldn’t fulfil.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised the following story contains an image of a person who has died.

While Lutruwita/Tasmania once had many unique Aboriginal languages, the impact of colonisation has silenced all but a small collection of ancient words.

“I didn’t have that knowledge at that time, nor the songs to sing to him in language,” the 37-year-old singer-songwriter said.

It was a stark realisation that sparked an idea.

“How do I embed the opportunity, and that cultural strength and resilience, [so] that my children can sing to their children in language, and so on and so on and so on?”

That nascent idea has since grown into an ambitious project fusing classical music with palawa kani — the revived language of Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

Collaboration described as ‘watershed moment’

The project has brought Everettsmith to Hobart’s Federation Concert Hall — the home of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (TSO).

The musical institution has been playing since 1948, but its collaboration with Everettsmith is like no other.

“This is a watershed moment for this orchestra,” TSO chief executive Caroline Sharpen said.

The project is titled Songs of Ceremony: Reawakening songs in palawa kani.

It’s a collaborative work overseen by Everettsmith, conductor and arranger Erkki Veltheim and producer Michael Hohnen from Skinnyfish Music.

The initial phase involves the recording of a full-length album in palawa kani.

They hope to then premiere the songs with a performance on country for the Tasmanian Aboriginal community next year.

Further public and school concerts across the state will follow in 2027, with the possibility to also go further afield.

Sharpen said one of the most “exciting and enriching” aspects of the project will be sharing the songs with school students.

Songs inspired by personal journey

Everittsmith is an accomplished singer-songwriter, who released the first commercially available palawa kani song in 2014.

One of his other songs was featured in a global advertising campaign by Tourism Australia in 2012.

For Everettsmith, his latest project with the orchestra is a celebration of culture.

But it’s also a deeply personal response to the intergenerational trauma carried by many First Nations people.

At birth, he said his father rejected him “because he didn’t want to have a black child”.

Then, at the age of five, his mother — a member of the Stolen Generations — put him up for adoption amid her struggle with substance abuse.

Everettsmith said he was fortunate to be taken in by a loving Aboriginal family related to Fanny Smith, the last known fluent speaker of one of the original Tasmanian Aboriginal languages.

“I was brought up strong in culture,” he said. “And that’s where my love of music was able to shine.”

It wasn’t until he was 17 that Everettsmith reconnected with his birth mother at a town square in Hobart.

As the pair sat on a park bench surrounded by colonial-era statues, he asked his mother why she hadn’t kept him.

It broke his heart at the time, but Everettsmith said her honesty helped him better understand the oppression and trauma she had experienced.

“It was a moment that forever changed the way that I started seeing the world,” he said.

“But also, in particular, seeing my mother and seeing the role of mothers in our lives.”

Song dedicated to mother

Among the dozen or so tracks that will feature on the album is an ode to his mother, called “ningi-mana”, or “my mother”.

“It’s a song that I wrote to my mother that acknowledges her tears, that [says], ‘I see your tears, I see your fears.’

Another song is inspired by the wax cylinder recordings of Fanny Smith, which are inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register.

Made in 1899 and 1903, they were the first and only audio recordings of one of the original Tasmanian Aboriginal languages.

The album also includes a track titled Lutruwita, which Everettsmith hopes will become an anthem for the island and a message of resilience.

“How amazing would it be to take this back to England, play this song on that country and go, ‘Hey, we’re still here.'”

Ultimately, Everettsmith wants the project to be a unifying force between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Lutruwita/Tasmania and beyond.

“Come and immerse yourself in our culture, there’s nothing to be afraid of, there’s nothing we’re going to take from you.

“What we want to do is gift you an opportunity to connect to a culture and a language that you will have nowhere else.”

Loading…