Hand to Earth
“While many contemporary projects strive to combine ancient and modern influences, this innovative and ethereal musical alliance actually achieves that lofty goal – with old cultural ground being respected, while new artistic ground is broken. Hand to Earth is a truly exquisite album.”
Seth Jordan, Songlines UK
I first met Daniel Wilfred in 2016 at Tarraleah, Tasmania when the Australian Art Orchestra’s Art Director and dear friend Peter Knight asked me to come to take part in the Creative Music Intensive as a faculty leader. I was immediately taken by Daniel’s singing. His voice was unlike any other voice I had heard. Raw yet refined, gentle yet piercing, the textures of his voice were starkly strange to me; yet I could recognise that his sounds evoked in me something deeply familiar. I quietly followed him around to listen to him as much as I could. Then one evening at a pop-up concert, there was an opportunity for us to sing together. Before we went up to the stage to improvise, Daniel whispered in my ear, “we sing about stars.” What I experienced making music with him then felt like pure magic. The improvised music had taken us to the beautiful night sky of Tasmania and I was mesmerised by the vividness of the stars in that very room that we were singing.
After the Intensive was over, we parted ways but came back to see each other the next year. Daniel shared his ceremonial songs with me and I continued to improvise with his singing. Since our first meeting in 2016, we continued to meet at the annual workshop and eventually developed a friendship exchanging our voices and thoughts about Mother Earth, life and death, and singing as a healing practice. Daniel has helped me to unlock my intuition and to rediscover my voice. Daniel has adopted me as his sister and I have been given a skin name (wamutjan). A new manikay (Yolngu traditional song cycle) song has been created and we have sung together in many places becoming birds, swimming in fresh water, walking and making fire together through singing. Peter Knight joined in to paint the scenes with us with his trumpet and electronics and later David Wilfred (yidaki, didgeridoo) and Aviva Endean (reeds) joined in to deepen and widen the spirit and sounds. Hand to Earth has performed in various places in and out of Australia and continues to make songs together to explore worlds unseen.
