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'Ngananga Kunbu' - Our Music Place

Bringing People Together Through Music
Soundhouse Music Pilot Project - Cape York

'Ngananga Kunbu' is Kuku Yalangi language meaning 'Our Music Place'. It is a project developed through the Soundhouse Outreach Program with the help of Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation.

Dylan

Dylan Harrigan is the Project Manager for this venture. His vision for this project gained him the support of the program’s partners to carry out and develop this endeavour. His personal success with his band 'Black Image' and his many contributions to the indigenous community by playing at youth centre functions, fundraising events and teaching music to youth, all on a gratis basis, has earned him respect from his ancestral communities and from those across Cape York.

Ngananga Kunbu's goal is to preserve and promote indigenous music from the Cape. It also aims to engage Cape York children and families in appreciating the value of education. It does this by helping them produce and record traditional and contemporary music using a transportable digital equipment kit.

The project's objective is to:

Encourage children and families of 50 - 80 people to produce their own music CD
Help improve family school attendance and improved literacy
Assist schools in using the music kit on an ongoing basis
Plan to run this project further throughout the Cape York region
Show a successful model for extending the Soundhouse Music Alliance Outreach program nationally.

The pilot starts by working with families in three communities - Cooktown, Wujal Wujal and Hope Vale. It aims to develop and record CD's using the special Soundhouse Music Kit. This kit together with the training is provided by the Soundhouse Music Alliance (based in Melbourne). It includes a keyboard, a computer, a mixer, a computer with CD writer, software and sample educational programs.

Ngananga Kunbu also works with a range of social and economic programs initiated by the Cape York Institute, headed by Noel Pearson, that are currently running on the Cape.

Ngananga Kunbu's strong and committed partners are:

Soundhouse Music Alliance (Melbourne)
Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation (Cairns)
Indigenous Enterprise Partnerships (Cairns)
Gungarde Aboriginal Corporation (Cooktown)
Perpetual Trustees (Melbourne)
Australian Children's Music Foundation (Sydney)

Ngananga Kunbu also has great potential to create music industry opportunities for talent and provide exposure for 'unearthed' musicians across Cape York. The CD recordings will hopefully serve as confidence builders and deliver a sense of pride for musicians seriously wanting to pursue a career in the music industry. A compilation / 'best of' CD incorporating talent from the 3 pilot communities, will also be recorded at the end of the 6 month pilot period. Recordings are to be distributed to radio stations for potential air- play.

Ngananga Kunbu will aim to extend to communities throughout the Torres Strait over a three to four year period. It's broader and more ambitious vision is to develop a sustainable music industry in Cape York and the Torres Strait. One day it hopes to develop an indigenous run recording studio/radio station based in Cooktown. It overall objective is to bring people together through music.