Yirinda | Fred Leone & Samuel Pankhurst

Image: Mark Crannitch

I felt very honoured to be at the launch for Yirinda, a self-titled album by Fred Leone and Samuel Pankhurst. In just over an hour the two retell and reimagine ancient songs in the Butchulla language, guiding the audience through hunting lore, creation stories and welcome songs. 

The music and the vocals married together perfectly. Pankhurst and Leone obviously had a lot of fun blending the old stories with the modern instruments and shared their creations with infectious enthusiasm. Leone is a charming and generous storyteller whose laid back stage presence brought a lot of laughter to the audience between the slow and reflective songs. 

The music was atmospheric and textural, a mix of strings, traditional instruments and synths. Some songs were intense and slightly discordant but overall the tone of the album was uplifting and hopeful. Between songs Leone told us the translated stories and I was in awe of the huge amount of knowledge he had and how deeply he held it within himself.

At one point, while describing the intersecting points of different songlines, Leone gestured to different points on his arms, traveling down from shoulder to wrist as the songline traveled over land. He then crossed his arms, wrist over wrist, to describe the position of the song he was about to sing, and the position of himself as a Songman from those lines. The whole show felt like an invitation to feel that same depth, to understand the time and the distance that the songs had traveled to reach us in Meanjin in 2023. It was just a quick view into a vast, growing, breathing knowledge system that lives in this land and its First Peoples.

The night finished with a beautiful song that Leone confessed was his favourite. It was a companion to a Butchulla fishing song, but told from the perspective of the fish as they traveled.  The music shifted beautifully between the twinkling bells and percussion of the shallow water to the fishes west, and the bass of the deep water to their east. It was a great example of the blend of old and new and the fun that Yirinda has when breaking western music conventions and passing on important stories. It was the perfect end to both the show and the album and I left feeling curious, energised and incredibly grateful.