CASIOs and old drum machines inspired the theme for Pip and her new found friend Pooch. Cute Eh.

Terrapin Puppet Theatre Pip and Pooch  opens

just a bit orchestral, swingey , revised recently afetr sitting onb the shelf for a few years

Shining Eyes

Written By Matthew Fargher with Lorrae Coffin with the Marrugeku band for the show Burning daylight

Samurai Butterfly

Scrolling Music Box Remix. Originally made For Pip and Pooch, Terrapin Puppet Theatre Hobart. Directed by Sam Routledge.

A Day In The Life  1 Minute of Suburban Joy

Music From Marrugeku's theatre show Cut The Sky. First performed at Perth Festival 2015. Featuring Music from Matthew Fargher, Ngaiire, Nick Cave and Buffalo Springfield

Rain Song_ Ngaiire

Opari is a song about WAR 
It says "Opari is not so far from Here, It's just over there, but you can't get there from here. It's too dangerous, Land mines and Ambushes" 

Madi Adungu Band   South Sudan
Recorded for The Continental Drift Project Hobart Tasmania 2015

Madi Adungu Opari

Matthew Fargher has composed music for Terrapin since "Touch The Air" in  2002. Recent shows: Boats, The Gatekeper, Love and Sleeping Horses, have used sound scapes, foley and genres as wide ranging as Bossa Nova, Ukrainian Bluegrass,orchestral, Spaghetti westerns and steam punk Carousels.
http://www.terrapin.org.au/sleepinghorseslie.html
http://www.terrapin.org.au/love.html
http://www.terrapin.org.au/gatekeeper.html
http://www.terrapin.org.au/boats.html

The Sabre Cart Prowls

Burning Daylight is a multimedia production incorporating contemporary dance, film, live music and karaoke! The project combines the unique performance style of Western Australian Indigenous dancers and musicians with Malaysian martial arts, and the company’s visual and acrobatic performance language. Burning Daylight was researched and created in Broome, with its unique history of cultural relations between the local Aboriginal and Immigrant Japanese, Chinese and Malay communities.

The performance is set from late one night until dawn outside a notorious pub on a Broome-style Karaoke night. A series of contemporary dance scenes unfold expressing the friction, local humour and cultural collision in the streets at night in the part of Broome known as ‘The Bronx’. With Karaoke country songs sung by the talented Broome line up, the karaoke videos ‘shadow’ the onstage performers with historic Broome characters (such as the pearl diver, geisha, Aboriginal cowboy). The multi-screen short films, shot and directed by acclaimed Aboriginal filmmaker Warwick Thornton explore classic inter-racial love stories set as Westerns against the backdrop of the racist government policy of the 30’s to the 50’s.

Burning Daylight has been choreographed by Serge Aimé Coulibaly from Burkina Faso, West Africa, a former member of leading Belgium contemporary dance company Les Ballets C de la B, assisted by Indigenous choreographer Dalisa Pigram from Broome. Serge’s process of combining traditional and contemporary dance provides a dynamic collaboration with Marrugeku’s existing style and Australian context. Associated with the 2009 national tour is a major documentation. To see some aspects of the project online, please follow the link: Burning Daylight

Burningdaylight Live in Broome

Crying baby is an intercultural performance weaving contemporary, historical and djang (dreaming) stories from Western Arnhem land. The work is spun around a traditional orphan dreaming story and its resonance with the legacy of Mr Watson, the first white man in Arnhem land. These stories are told by Thompson Yulidijirri and interpreted by  Marrugeku  in its fusion of contemporary and traditional performance styles. Crying Baby is a large-scale outdoor work incorporating physical theatre, video and traditional Indigenous dance, music and storytelling. The production combines the work of Western Australian urban Indigenous and non-Indigenous dancers and musicians and Kunwinjku dancers, storytellers and musicians from Kunbalanja, Arnhem Land.

Crying Baby gives dynamic theatrical form to the experiences of a young nation occupying the land of an ancient culture. The performance explores issues of cultural identity, of blurred edges between story, history and dreaming which challenge our understanding of ourselves on the edge of the 21st century.

“First thing I can say, I think it’s gamak (very good) that new story and old story go together. I will start with Crying Baby, this place, somewhere behind Coopers Creek. The story starts at Croaker Island, finishes up at Gapari. That little boy, he was crying, all the time crying, all the time crying for food. If you let that little boy crying all the time, little boy will make rainbow come, will kill you all. Like this mob, white man came and take children away, might be I can’t see them when they grow, they go away from mother and father, no one looking after them. I draw that story in that book. White man collect all them children. Take away, never come back. We have to look after them kid, or then that rainbow angry, coming to kill all”

“Telling that story, that is a good way to teach so those balanda (white people) can learn too. Might be they got no mother and father too, those balanda children. Might be they got rainbow serpent too. I think that is good, gamak, if you people dance I will see it and ask, what is this one? Everyone dancing Crying Baby or Mr Watson or Lightning Man or whatever, but I want to see it dancing. Try and work it out, what is the best way to tell this story, work it out, dance, try to do this way or might be no good, we do it that way. If you think first good, go ahead do it with your dancing. We are finding a new way, never mind if we don’t know the song, its lost, maybe we can find a new strong one.” (Thompson Yulidjirri, Story Man

Music also plays a significant role in the intercultural nature of Crying Baby. By weaving traditional song, contemporary music and technology with language, sampled sound and a variety of instrumentation we create a synthesis drawn from contemporary and traditional life/ As well. the multi-screen video installation, shot by Aboriginal film maker, Katej man Warwick Thornton assists the weaving of contemporary and traditional stories.

Crying baby

HUNGER Trad Song (Kupunj) Trad Bruce Nabegeyo sound design M Fargher

Crying baby Composers Matthew Fargher

Buru is Marrugeku’s work for children. Buru (dirt-land-earth; time-seasons-place) is a story sequence inspired by the six Yawuru seasons. They are Man-gala—wet season; Marrul—big tides/mangrove fruit; Wirralburu—wind change/salmon time; Barrgana—cold time/creek fish; Wirlburu—first hot wind blows; Laja—build up to wet, proper hot time, first thunder and lightning, animals come out again.

Buru has been specially devised in consultation with the Broome community and key story holders. Some of the retellings are traditional, some contemporary, drawn from the lives of young Broome people.

Buru tells traditional stories including Janyju—the Red Lizard story as told by Karajarri elder and Yawuru language specialist Doris Edgar and Walmanyjun—the Greedy Turtle story as told by Yawuru/Jabirr Jabirr elder Cissy Djiagween. Buru also acknowledges the two custodial Boss Lizard figures, as shared with Marrugeku by senior Yawuru law man Patrick Dodson.

These stories connect land, environment, story, culture and social life, letting the land and the weather speak, through the semi-traditional lives of young people in Broome, and giving urban Australia a window into a very different environment. The core concept for the project was to explore the experiences of the young people of Broome now. Drawing on the lived experience of the young participants, the project moves between contemporary dance and text-based scenes reflecting life for young people in Broome and through stilt dance, music and digital and real time storytelling we will juxtapose these with telling traditional stories of Yawuru seasons.

Musical Director Matthew Fargher  with
Lorrae Coffin, 
Dazastah,
Stephen Pigram, and the cast

BURu Run 17 July

Mangala Rap Dazastah

Larja Song Stephen Pigram

Seasons Song  Stephen Pigram

The Marrugeku Company was founded in 1994 specifically for the project Mimi and based on an original idea by choreographer Michael Leslie. Mimi was commissioned and produced by Festival of Perth 1996.

Mimi explores the relationship between humans and the spirit world. It is a metaphorical journey which takes place over a single night where spirits and humans meet at significant points through time. Performed by five stilt dancers, three traditional Kunwinjku dancers, three Kunwinjku musicians and with narrations by storyman Thompson Yulidjirri. Since its creation, Mimi has been presented throughout Australia and the world to great acclaim. The production was Australia’s ambassador at the World Expo in Hannover in 2000, as well as welcoming in the new millennium live from Uluru during the ABC’s New Year’s Eve coverage.

Mimi was developed as a collaboration between the performers of Stalker, contemporary Indigenous dancers and musicians from Western Australia and the traditional Aboriginal dancers, musicians and painters from the Kunwinjku tribe of Western Arnhem Land. Mimi’s extraordinary success, in Australian arts festivals, remote Aboriginal communities and international arts festivals is a measure of Marrugeku’s early achievement in synthesizing contemporary and traditional practices into dynamic performance.

Mimi was acclaimed worldwide. Audiences and critics are alike in agreeing on its astonishing skill, beauty and lyricism. The reception at the Olympics Arts Festival of Dreaming in Sydney, where it played to over 13,000 people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, was further evidence of the power and beauty of the production universally regarded as the success of that extraordinary event.

Mimi

Ascension

Sun Burning Mimi Fires

Ngalyod 2 Wind

Yawk Yawk 2 Drunken Sisters

Hunting ,Gunbarlang

Walk of Space and Time

Monbodokorr (stringy bark)

 Matthew Fargher is a Producer working out of Hobart, Conjured and Upcycled Beatmaker, Community Musician, Musical Director, Theatre and Film Music, Composition, Sound Design. Album Producer and Engineer specialising in Mixes tweaks and Mastering for digital Release.

Bedlam Music brings dust and creak to the mix, rattles hums and earwigs. Separation of the frequencies is matched by integration of the soul.

Voice coach, jack of all trades, player of all instruments, strings, skins, wood, stone and wires.

Bedlam Music Tasmania

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