Star To Make His Prizemoney Talk

FOR an easygoing veteran of the Australian music circuit, Warren H. Williams has a long list of unfulfilled ambitions.

In the next year, the 48-year-old country star from Hermannsburg in central Australia is hoping to record an album in Nashville, tour Australia with traditional song men from Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory and write an opera.

The Aboriginal singer, who made his name as a solo artist and a collaborator with country legend John Williamson, yesterday got a leg-up for his plans when he received the Red Ochre Award, a $50,000 prize from the Australia Council in recognition of his contribution to indigenous arts.

Williams was presented with the cheque from the council’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board at the National Indigenous Arts Awards in the Sydney Opera House.

He knows where a lot of the money will be going. “I want to tell Australia’s story in language,” Williams told The Australian. “I want to take it to the masses, to people who want to hear about Australia.”

Williams last month released Winanjjarra, his first album in language, recorded with song men from Tennant Creek.

The project aims to help preserve the local Warumungu language, to which, like Tennant Creek, Williams has a connection through his paternal grandmother. “The language is dying fast so we wanted to preserve it,” he said. “It was great during the recording, because a lot of young kids came to see what we were doing in the studio, and some of them are now learning to write songs in Warumungu.”

Williams will perform songs from the album with his Tennant Creek collaborators at the National Indigenous Music Awards in Darwin in August, and hopes to take the show on the road later in the year. And he would like to extend that discipline to writing an opera in language.

“I’ve written the first opening score,” he said. “I might need to get help from other people to finish it in the next few years.”

Lee-Ann Buckskin, chairwoman of the Australia Council’s ATSIA board, said Williams was a worthy winner of the fifth annual Red Ochre, describing him as “a quiet achiever who not only shows young people the way to have a successful career in the music industry, but dedicates his energy to issues of health, Aboriginal rights and the environment”.

Also recognised at the ceremony yesterday was Sydney playwright Nakkiah Lui, who received the inaugural $20,000 Dreaming Award for a young and emerging indigenous artist.

Two fellowships of $90,000 over two years were announced, one going to singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu to create a multi-screen sensory installation featuring sounds and smells from his native Elcho Island, and the other for visual artist Jenny Fraser.