Bringing in the Gods – Paul Kelly, Arthur Flowers and Lucky Oceans cause ripples

I apologise in advance for the nature of this post.  I have been touched, in another era might have had my womb removed, incapable as I am of hiding my glee.  Yes.  Magic happens.  And sometimes we are lucky enough to participate in it twice in one day.

Lucky.  Lucky Oceans - legendary pedal-steel player, composer of music for film and television and host of one of Australia’s most acclaimed radio programs, “The Planet” – is like a kid in a candy shop.  A man so filled with love for what he does that he infects everyone around him; his sincerity, passion, humility and generosity seeing him create spaces that are - yes I’m gonna say it - verging on the sacred.   You don’t get the Gods to come to one of your sessions unless you are in the zone – and today I saw them twice.

In the African American folkloric tradition, Legba is the God of the Crossroads, the keeper of the gates invoked at the beginning of all performance. Arthur Flowers called on Legba in the session Lyrically Speaking: Telling A Story In Song on day 3 of the festival, and the Deity arrived in a rush.

“I think I might have just come” squealed the woman beside me, heard by at least three rows, as the whole room erupted.  Flowers had just performed what I will describe as spoken-word meets shamanic incantation, fusing the language of the slaves and the passion of the Preacher with the history of religious synthesis in the African-American context - and the audience, at this point including the great Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and Lucky himself, are ecstatic.

“I am a man of Power” Flowers’ intoned, and as he spoke and sang and praised, accompanying himself on the kalimba, the entire room was awash, transported to that space of power themselves, a mystical space entirely in accord with the island of Bali, a space in which individual boundaries are transcended, futile, where a higher order reveals its face.

And then there was Paul Kelly.  Sigh.  “As Australian as I have brown eyes”, Kelly does not join the tradition of boasting that flavours much Afro-American song writing.  He says that most of his life is failure, that he has been a songwriter for 30 years and he has about 250 songs which only works out to about one a month, that he scratches around for days and can still come up with nothing.  “The songwriter’s life is a desert,” he decreed.  But it was definitely raining last night at Sounds of Seasons’ UWRF Fundraiser at Betelnut, pure joy.

Whilst Lucky Oceans asked “Can I have some more frogs in my monitor please” the crowd was warmed up beautifully by UK poet Salena Godden; UWRF National Media Co-ordinator and woman of extraordinary voice Kartika Jahja; before being transported to landscapes sublime by the words of W.B. Yeats and the Wathaurong people of the Kulin Nation, as sung by novelist Gregory Day.  The audience were ripe.

Watching Kelly and Oceans play together on stage I was struck by the love that is evident between these two men, the incredibly deep level of respect.  They were a brotherhood, and the 200-odd people who crowded the stage were taken straight to the source by them; we were their flock, united in a purity of emotion and intent.

It has been a long few days, so many moments of exhilaration, an abundance of hidden delights, and the night was over far too soon.  But the impact lives on, and not just in my headache as I rush this out this morning.  Bringing together writers and performers of this calibre feeds all involved; creating spaces in which people can share ideas, chart new territory: cultivate the land within.

As he introduced Paul Kelly on Day One of the Festival, Balinese radio host Marlowe Bandem said “We are very blessed to have Paul Kelly here with us today – please, show your love.”  Encore.

by Harriet Gaffney