The first time David Bridie left Australia was to travel to Papua New Guinea.
This trip, taken in 1986, when Bridie was in his early 20s, marked the beginning of a lifelong connection to the island nation and its music.
By this time, Bridie, the leader of Not Drowning, Waving, was already established on the Australian music scene. But his friendship with Papua New Guinean musician George Telek (aka Telek) would become career-defining.
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Bridie and Telek’s bond laid the groundwork for Not Drowning, Waving’s fifth album, Tabaran, which is now 35 years old. Tabaran features prominent contributions from not just Telek but various other musicians who frequented the Pacific Gold Studios in Rabaul, including Pius Wasi and Emmanuel and Ben Hakalitz.
These musicians will all join Bridie and the rest of Not Drowning, Waving to celebrate the album’s 35th birthday, as well as the 50th anniversary of Papua New Guinea’s independence, at Melbourne Recital Centre on Saturday 20 September.
“We’ve spent more than half of our lives together with George and Ben and Pius,” Bridie tells Beat. “We know them really, really well. So it’s really comfortable in the studio and on stage.”
There were a range of things that initially motivated Bridie to travel to Papua New Guinea, he says.
“It’s Australia’s closest neighbour would be the first point, a country that Australia has a long history with. There’s a lot of artists all across the field who engage with First Nation artists because they see that as being an important thing as an Australian artist. And I agree with them. But even before we went, I thought that that was the same with Papua New Guinea and maybe with Timor-Leste as well.”
Bridie was friends with the late documentary filmmaker, Mark Worth, who did visuals for Not Drowning, Waving in the early days, projecting 16mm Super 8 slides on backdrops during the band’s live shows. Worth – whose career output revolved around West Papua’s struggle for independence – strongly encouraged Bridie to visit PNG.
“Mark was born on Manus Island because his father was in the Navy at Lombrum,” Bridie says. “And Lombrum is where the dreaded detention centre was set on Manus back in the day, the Naval Base. Mark spent the first 15 years of his life there. And then when he was a filmmaker, he was actually drawn back to a place that he knew a lot about.
“He was always in my ear about how this is a really important place and that artistically and culturally, but for a lot of other reasons, you should head to PNG.”
So, he did. Once there, Bridie got to know George Telek, the frontperson for the local rock’n’roll band Painim Wok. Telek took Bridie to Pacific Gold Studios, and Bridie quickly became interested in making a record there.
Some tracks on Tabaran are not too dissimilar to the material on Not Drowning, Waving’s first four albums. But the album also includes some traditional and contemporary Papua New Guinean songs.
“George was a rock’n’roll singer,” Bridie says. “Painim Wok were huge. They rocked. But the music that he recorded with Not Drowning, Waving, he wanted to sing his traditional melody lines and do something a bit different.”
To coincide with the 50th anniversary of Papua New Guinea’s Independence – which falls on September 16 – Bridie helped facilitate the visual and sound documentary Sayes Arares, which is on at MPAC from 16-19 September.
Not Drowning, Waving also have a new album on the way. Bridie and his bandmates, John Phillips (guitar), Russell Bradley (drums) and Rowan McKinnon (bass), played their first shows in 20 years for the 2025 Sydney Festival. During rehearsals, several new songs started taking shape that felt like spiritual successors to the songs on Tabaran.
The new album, titled Malira, will be released on the eve of the Recital Centre show. Telek, Wasi and Ben Hakalitz all feature, as well as Not Drowning, Waving’s long-time cellist Helen Mountford.
“Because it was working with Telek and with Ben and Pius, it would always be seen as being a bookend to Tabaran,” Bridie says. “And I think we wanted to make sure that it was something special.
“The personalities of George, Ben and Pius are really conducive, you know; they’re warm characters. I think we were just embracing that and appreciating each other’s musicality and artistry, but also just hanging out.”
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