Hip hop meets classical in DOBBY's new album recounting the impacts of water theft in Brewarrina
DOBBY combines his skills as a drummer, classical pianist, rapper and composer in his new album Warrangu; River Story. (Rhyan Clapham: Princes Reyes)
Crunching steps on dry river gravel opens DOBBY's debut album Warrangu; River Story.
It's a stark reminder that even in the middle of the riverbed, there's no flowing water.
Warrangu means river in the Ngemba language, spoken by the First Nations people in Brewarrina, north-west of NSW.
Multi-genre musician DOBBY walks down the Bogan river in the company of his mentor Brad Steadman while recording Warrangu, and it's their footsteps we hear.
Steadman is a Ngemba man with extensive knowledge of the cultures and languages of this corner of Australian outback.
"It's out of reach … but it's not beyond us," Steadman says over DOBBY's sparse plucked strings and tinkling piano notes.
He's referring to both the water that used to flow down this river, but also the importance of this extensive inland waterway in our collective consciousness.
Although Australia is the driest inhabited continent in the world, a network of waterways crisscross and meander through the outback from Queensland to South Australia, sustaining generations of First Nations peoples.
In Brewarrina, the 40,000-year-old Baiame's Ngunnhu (fish traps) have been listed as one of the world's oldest human-made structures.
Brewarrina's 40,000-year-old fish traps, Baiame's Ngunnhu. (Wikimedia Commons: Dippiljemmy)
But these outback rivers and lakes have been dry for years, devastating the communities who depend on the water.
DOBBY's lyrics are blunt on the cause of the drought: "River Drained, Somathem, Thinkin It's a Game," he raps.
Warrangu portrays the interconnecting river stories through lyrics, musical motifs, the structure of the album and the voices of First Nations elders and knowledge holders.
It is an intricate tapestry of old knowledge and what these communities stand to lose if we don't protect the health of the rivers.
In the opening track River, Steadman asks the central question that threads through the album:
"Am I the road back to the country, or is the country the road back to me?"
The stories of the river people
Brewarrina is a remote town on the Western Plain of NSW, about nine hours' drive from Sydney.
It's defined by three rivers that meet west of the town: the Bogan River to the South, the Culgoa River to the North, and the Barwon River to the east.
DOBBY says that river draining is the leading cause of drought in his new album. (Rhyan Clapham: Princes Reyes)
Rhyan Clapham, who uses the stage name DOBBY, has family connections to Weilmoringle by the Culgoa river about an hour's north of Brewarrina. It's the traditional land of DOBBY's Muruwari people.
To grapple with the central question of the album, DOBBY invites us to understand the languages and laws of the lands.
One example of this is in speaking about the Rainbow Serpent, a creature sacred for First Nations people throughout Australia. It is associated in many places with rivers.
Aunty Josie Byno, a Muruwari elder whose voice is featured in the third track, Ngaandu, explains that the Rainbow Serpent is called Mundagatta in Muruwari country. But in Brad Steadman's Ngemba country in Brewarrina, this creature is known as Wahwae.
"You can speak to that creature but you've got to know which language to speak to and which land you're on," DOBBY shares.
Amid his piano accompaniment in Ngaandu, Aunty Byno recounts the story of Mundagatta: "When the river was up … that's when the Mundagatta travels."
She sums up her connection to the river simply:
"The veins that run in our body / that's just like the river that runs in our heart."
The draining of the rivers
One of DOBBY's catalysts for creating Warrangu was the 2019 Menindee fish kill, where up to a million fish died in Menindee lake.
Though the lake is hundreds of kilometres south of Brewarrina, the problem lies in the over-irrigation further north.
"It's just instance after instance after instance of redirecting the rivers for human benefit to optimise the most amount of profit," DOBBY says.
Warrangu conveys an array of emotions from water campaigner Rachel Evans's protests to the lyrics of songster Kelsey Iris: "now the river runs dry/and I cry."
In his fourth track Water, DOBBY calls out the corporate greed of the cotton and almond industries and how much the water redirection impacts the communities: "Send that water to Walgett, See no fish in the Barwon."
Harsh sticks and dry dripping in Water forms a sound-bed for devastating statistics delivered by Brad Gordon: "Narran lake … Macquarie Marshes … Menindee Lake … these places have been dry for 20 years and now we have nothing."
The most poignant protest anthem in Warrangu is the fifth track Matter Of Time, where DOBBY contrasts his harsh criticism of the authority and the lush elegance of orchestral strings.
On this track, DOBBY proclaims that his is not the only voice speaking through the platform his music has given him.
"I am the bridge, I am the line, I'm the divide between the divine," raps DOBBY. "I am the bird, I am the river that flow in the word."
Bringing the water back to country
Rivers have been a popular theme for musicians through the centuries, from enduring classics like Smetana's Vltava and Strauss's On The Beautiful Blue Danube, through to more contemporary examples like Yiruma's River Flows In You.
What's unique in Warrangu is how DOBBY combines his skills as a drummer, a classical pianist, a rapper and a composer to weave the environmental and emotional stories of Brewarrina's rivers.
DOBBY conceived Warrangu after receiving the inaugural Peter Sculthorpe fellowship in 2017.
He was previously part of Ngarra-burria, an initiative to support First Nations composers to further develop their industry connections and craft in classical composition.
"[Ngarra-burria] made me realise that anyone with a story with enough support and dedication can compose," DOBBY told Andrew Ford on The Music Show.
Warrangu's narrative isn't linear, mingling beauty and devastation in interlocking music and lyrics.
In Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya, DOBBY layers chords around the fluting call of a pied butcher bird. The track's title translates to "The bird names himself", a story whose spiritual significance for DOBBY is immense.
Many of the voices in the album offer ways to bring the water back to the river, from Kelsey Iris's father speaking Murrawarri words in Rivers Run Dry, to Brad Steadman playing the guitar over trickling water at the end of their river tours in Barwon, and a vision painted by DOBBY.
"I think about the way Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya travels over the Murray-Darling Basin to see a mighty river below him," DOBBY says.
DOBBY's concluding lyrics, The Language Is In The Land, offers a glimpse of a healthy, thriving river.
I said the History's in the ground, the Language is in the land
Follow the Mundagutta as he would travel into the dam,
It's pink and blue in the air, the sun is watering down
The sky turning to caramel like a Paddle pop in the cloud
And the Birds, singing for rain, while the Rivers are running deep,
see the Yellow belly and Cod, and there's plenty of em to eat
Give the water to Mother Earth, gotta give her what she deserve