After a difficult two years due to the pandemic, Quandamooka Festival is finally returning to Country this weekend.
Taking place on Friday, August 26th until Sunday, August 28th on Minjerribah/Stradbroke Island, the festival celebrates the culture and knowledge of the Quandamooka people.
A wonderful lineup of First Nations artists are set to entertain the crowds, including Emma Donovan, Sycco, and Roger Knox. Ahead of the festival, we got two other artists on the lineup – Simone Stacey from Shakaya and rapper Sachém – to have a chat about their music, history, and Country.
Beloved Indigenous Australian girl group Shakaya only released two albums, including their 2002 ARIA Top 10 self-titled debut – but that was more than enough to secure their legacy. Consisting of Simone and Naomi Wenitong, the pair ended up touring with superstars like Destiny’s Child and Kylie Minogue and, as will become clear in the interview below, their songs still mean a lot to younger generations.
Quandamooka/African American rapper Sachém has been on the rise for several years now, winning music and poetry awards in Queensland. A highly personal lyricist and spoken word performer, the North Stradbroke Island has proven that he can effortlessly hop between different genres and styles.
Read Simone and Sachém’s conversation below. Further information about Quandamooka Festival can be found here.
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Sachém: Whereabouts are you?
Simone: I’m from Cairns, so we’re both staying up in the far north of Cairns. Naomi couldn’t do the interview because she’s been sick lately.
So my my mob are from North Stradbroke Island. I’m Nunukul and Ngugi and I’ve also got family from Kuku Yulanji country up that way. So I’ve got a lot of connections up Cairns way. Without giving away the local secret spots where are some of the best places to visit when you’re up there?
Well in the Cape you have to be careful. I mean, there’s a there’s a beautiful blue waters creek up in the tank. It’s a kind of gathering area, but a lot of tourists don’t realise what the sacredness is around that creek. It’s just stunning – the water is just really blue among the forest, it’s pretty special. I’m a salt water girl so I love going up to Alice Beach.
Does it get busy during the tourism season?
For sure. Last year and this year it’s been pretty busy.
Whenever people ask me where is the best places to go, it’s always swimming spots! So who do you reckon cooks the better simmer chicken out of you two?
I’ve actually done a cultural cooking program at the place I was working at just before because I just transitioned to a new workplace. That was one of the specialty dishes to do with the kids.
What ingredients do you put in? I know a lot of people say you can add all these different things, but there’s also people who are like ‘there’s just these five ingredients’.
Well you’ve got to have certain soy sauces, you can’t just throw any soy sauce on there! The duck soy red one.
I’ve got it in my cupboard right now, I’m pretty sure!
And the ginger of course.
Do you serve it on rice?
Served on rice sticky rice.
Yes, sticky rice! I’ve got to come up your way when I come to Cairns, you’re making me hungry. Moving on to a different point, what’s the most outstanding piece of advice that you’ve been given for life?
So my great uncle is a musician and I’ve always looked up to him since I was a small girl. He’s now in his eighties, but he still gigs around a bit. One thing he told me is that he just never stops smiling. No matter how old he gets, he’s still learning because he’s a jazz artist and it’s a very technical genre to master. So he always tells me that’s he’s still learning. So I always have to be open to continue growing because if you’re not learning, everything’s going to stop developing. It doesn’t matter what age you are, you should always be open to absorbing information and inspiration.
100%. What I say is the moment you think you know everything, you stop learning. I guess that’s what makes a happy person is being able to open up your mind and explore new things. It’s cool because I’m 23 and I feel like when I hear people say the same thing, they’re a bit older than me.
Sow here’s your favourite spots in your Country?
One of my favourite places to go is Back Beach, which is on the eastern side of the island. It’s on the long side and you get on the causeway and it goes on a dirt track, then onto the sand. You can cut all the way down south to my southern part of the island, and you can see the Gold Coast, it’s almost right there once you’re the southern part of the island.
What’s your favourite food? But you spoke up there then. Do you do Sop Sop or anything like that?
I eat a lot of stuff, I’m not going to lie! I actually came up with this concept, I don’t know if it exists already – trying to have Sop Sop in a pie, like in an actual pie. My cousin Kieron is a chef, he’s the Quandamooka Chef on Instagram, and he cooks a lot of modern takes on First Nations dishes that we had on the island, and also across Southeast Queensland because we big migrations to the Bunya Mountains back in the days. So he does traditional style dishes with a modern taken on them.
So what about hunting? Your family would be the ones that have to get permission from First Nation community members.
So hunting still happens on the island. I don’t practice hunting myself. We’re saltwater people so a lot of the hunting that happens there is, you know, salt water animals. When I grew up in Adelaide, it was cold so my mum would always put dugong oil on us. It would help to keep our muscles warm or whatever, and still to this day I use it. Everything that gets hunted on the island, everything is used. I wanted to ask – do you still write songs?
Yeah, we still write. I’m working on a placement of inspiring youth doing good. It’s good for the kids to have an outlet. Naomi’s got an EP she’s working on at the moment so she’s busy with that.
That’s cool. How do you like to write songs? Do you jam and get an idea or a feel for it? Or do you like to have a concept that you can run with and then build something out of that?
We have a concept. Sometimes we come together and say, ‘Hey, we should just write about this, we feel like this should be about this particular topic’. Naomi feels the melody first pretty quickly, a bit quicker than me. She might start off with her voice and I might go home and think of something moments later and then come back.
Hearing that, the collaborative process seems like a very delicate space to be. I’m a solo artist and I’m always thinking about if I should be collaborating with more people. Should I have someone who’s with me every day doing music? I feel like those kinds of things come naturally though. Do you have any advice for up and coming First Nations artists?
Just don’t hold back. Be as creative as you want to be. Whatever your spirit inside you is feeling, go out and feel your creativity, what the songlines are speaking for you. Don’t let anybody try to mould you into something that want you to be.
So I got to see you perform at The Tivoli with my friends and every one of us was singing the lyrics. That’s because our parents blasted it and listened to it! How awesome does it feel 20 years later to see the next generation loving your music?
It makes us feel really proud and it can be emotional too. Just to share that legacy with up and coming First Nations artists and seeing the profession of the younger generation coming up. There’s so many coming up now and it just makes us feel so proud.
When we get young artists coming over and talking to us, we’re just really humbled by that and really blessed.
