Emily Wurramara on her monumental ARIA win: ‘It was kind of like a fuck you’
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03.02.2025

Emily Wurramara on her monumental ARIA win: ‘It was kind of like a fuck you’

emily wurramara
Photo: Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore
Words by Juliette Salom

With the release of her sophomore album, a national tour to launch it, a historic ARIA win and now an encore tour to take NARA back on the road, Emily Wurramara has had a dizzyingly big year.

But the multi-award-winning artist, author, producer, activist and proud Warnindhilyagwa woman isn’t fazed by any of it. “I’m feeling great,” she says. “I’m feeling grounded, feeling ready to go into 2025.” 

After going through so much, remaining grounded in who you are and where you come from would be no small feat. But Emily holds each of these notions close to her heart – and her music – so it’s no surprise how content she feels about where she’s going from here.

Emily Wurramara

  • February 7, 2025
  • Worker’s Club
  • Tickets on sale now

Check out our gig guide, our festival guide, our live music venue guide and our nightclub guide. Follow us on Instagram here.

It takes a lot to usurp Emily Wurramara. There’s perhaps no greater testament to that than the musician’s latest album, NARA, named after an Anindilyakwa word that means ‘nothing’. The collection of songs came about after a devastating fire in 2019 that saw Emily lose her house and everything in it. 

Besides ‘nara’, Emily points out that the only other language word that appears on the album is ‘yo’, which means ‘yes’. “I’ve purposely done this because I think language is for mob,” she says.

“It’s a privilege for people to hear language. It’s not a right. As an Indigenous woman, that’s something that I’m proud of and that’s a lived experience I have to wake up to every day. It’s important to see the art and the music to feel that.”

A cascading journey that transcends genre, NARA sees Emily soaring through the sonic spectrum, picking up some blues, indie, country and folk along her way. It’s as heartbreaking as it is heartfelt, as strong as it is sensitive. It’s an album that, Emily agrees, is best heard live.

“This album deserves to be heard by everyone in this way, in a live way,” she says. “I get really deep and personal and I think it helps people understand sonically the direction that I was going with this album.”

While Emily initially toured NARA in late 2024, she’s getting the band back together for a slew of encore shows this February and March. Among the tour dates is a show at The Workers Club in Fitzroy – Emily’s first Naarm headline show in nine years.

Bubbly, bright and a bloody good performer, she admits that she’s “better at just yarning with people one by one, to their face”. 

“I’m a bit of a storyteller, so I love connecting with people in that way,” Emily says. “I think hearing my mom tell me stories and growing up with that in my culture, it’s just a natural thing for me to do.”

Emily’s natural ability to connect to people through music is a gift she’s nurtured since she was a teenager. Throughout NARA, a kaleidoscope of stories from across Emily’s life emerges. The oldest song – Magic Woman Dancing – she wrote when she was in high school. 

Emily says her younger self always had big dreams for the future. “I feel like she always knew that something’s gonna happen, but not to this extent,” she tells me. 

“It’s a big, courageous thing to open up and be vulnerable in this way and that was something that younger me would’ve been like, ‘fuck no, get the fuck away,’ she says. 

“I think she’d have a bit of a meltdown if she learned that she won an ARIA, to be honest. A bit of a freak out. But I think she’d have even more of a meltdown knowing she was friends with Missy Higgins.”

Emily’s ARIA win last year for Best Adult Contemporary Album is an experience the musician describes simply as “surreal”. The glory of the win was compounded when it was announced that Emily was the first Indigenous woman in history to win in that category. The significance of that isn’t something Emily takes lightly.

“I was walking up and I was thinking of my grandmother and how she lived her life as a black woman in this country, and how someone had said to her that her legacy wouldn’t amount to anything because she was a black woman. It was kind of like a ‘fuck you’.

“I mean, it should have happened years ago. I know so many amazing black women who deserve the recognition and who came before me. I couldn’t have done it without them paving the way and knocking those doors down for me to be able to stand here and create something,” she says.

“Me being the first Contemporary Album of the Year winner Indigenous woman in 2024 – like, come on,” she shakes her head, laughing. “We can do better. But I know I won’t be the last, that’s for sure.”

Get tickets to see Emily Wurramara at the Worker’s Club on February 7 here.