We’re a tad tardy to the party with this one, but Warrangu; River Story – five years in the making – is way too important to ignore.
Infused with birdsong, water sounds and recordings of Indigenous elders passing down knowledge, DOBBY’s debut album is also a harrowing call to take action.
As the 2017 recipient of Create NSW’s Peter Sculthorpe Fellowship, DOBBY researched, composed and produced Warrangu; River Story, which charts the history and degradation of the three rivers that form tribal boundaries in his ancestral home of Brewarrina, New South Wales.
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“Rivers taken, look at what we facin’/ All the fish are dead in the Murray-Darling Basin.”
After securing the funding to tell this story, DOBBY immediately got in touch with language and cultural consultant Brad Steadman, who suggested they take a walk down Bogan River to receive the messages of land and waterways on Country.
The resulting yarn, underscored by their own crunchy footsteps trudging through the dry riverbed, bookends this record. “Am I the road back to the country, or is the country the road back to me?”
I was hooked from the moment I heard DOBBY’s pied butcherbird sample, warbling rhythmically throughout Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya (the Ngemba phrase for ‘The Bird Names Himself’).
A Murrawarri-Filipino drummer and rapper (he calls himself a “drapper”), DOBBY spits bars in English as well as the First Nations languages of Ngemba and Muruwari. We’ve since discovered DOBBY didn’t even alter the tempo or pitch of his birdsong sample, instead shaping the music around it. Just wow.
Fun fact: DOBBY recorded the now-famous butcherbird one hot morning back in 2018 at his aunty Noeleen Shearer’s house in Brewarrina.
DOBBY draws from a disparate sonic palette, incorporating jazz drumming, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill-inspired piano interludes and hip-hop/sampled vocals alongside audio documentary. Over lush, orchestral arrangements, he drops truthbombs.
“Irrigators hide their face from the papers/ This our nation/ Watergate Investigation.” Elsewhere, Kelsey Iris’ singing shimmers over Rivers Run Dry – an acoustic, strummed number – and closer Language Is In The Land is DOBBY’s nod to jazzy J-Dilla rhythms.
Steadman also speaks of a sixth dimension – “seeing the life in it”. If you let the river “be what it is, it will bring you information”, he enlightens during the closing Story. “When you see the life in it, then you know the life in you.”
DOBBY has said of Warrangu; River Story, “The stories are the primary source of information,” but it’s his compositional nous that makes messages stick. Whatever your level of listening, the impact of Warrangu; River Story runs deep.
LABEL: ABC MUSIC
RELEASE: OUT NOW
