Aboriginal musician Mitch Tambo’s message to violent men in his community

Aboriginal musician Mitch Tambo has an important message for violent men in his community and reveals how he plans to give a voice to women everywhere.

Even over Zoom, Mitch Tambo’s face beams as he recalls the rehearsals for last year’s Fire Fight Australia benefit concert. Tambo, a proud Aboriginal man and acclaimed musician, had been personally invited to perform with headliner John Farnham, who adored Tambo’s take on ‘You’re The Voice’, sung in his Gamilaraay language.

Now he wanted Tambo to perform it with him – in front of 75,000 people.

At rehearsals before the show at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium in February, Farnham called over the other person who’d be singing the 1986 hit alongside them. “No-one told me Olivia [Newton-John] would be there,” Tambo tells Stellar.

“I looked at the statistics, which are that women in my Aboriginal community are 35-80 times more likely to be hospitalised through domestic and family violence.” (Picture: Damian Bennett)

“John goes ‘Livvy! Livvy! Have you seen Mitch’s version of ‘You’re The Voice’?’ And the next minute they’re all around a laptop watching it on YouTube. It was a little bit embarrassing.

“But John came over and hugged me and said, ‘Mate, this isn’t my song anymore, this is our song, it’s your song, too. I’m so happy with what you’ve done with it.’ He and Olivia treated me like family.”

Farnham asked Tambo to perform the second verse in Gamilaraay, a didgeridoo player joined the song’s usual bagpipes on stage and Brian May from Queen guested on guitar for the special event.

“Brian May came over and said, ‘Mate, you’ve got a set of pipes,’” Tambo says now. “Meanwhile I’m still trying to digest just being on stage in front of 75,000 people. I’ll carry that with me forever.”

While Tambo’s first independent EP Guurrama-Li was released in 2016, it was his bilingual take on ‘You’re The Voice’ on Australia’s Got Talent in 2019 that firmly placed him on the national stage and secured a record deal, leading to five consecutive number-one singles on the world music charts.

But within weeks of his triumph at Fire Fight, COVID struck and – like all musicians – the work suddenly evaporated. Tours set for everywhere from Poland to the Middle East were scrapped.

“We’re only here because of the gift of life, and that gift of life comes from the women in our community, from their sacred womb.” (Picture: Damian Bennett)

So Tambo, who lives in Melbourne with his fiancee Lea and three step-daughters, used the time to create a home studio and gym as well as a backyard fire pit; he also took to social media and started Tambo Talk, in which he interviews media figures about their careers rather than just talking about his own.

“I grew a lot out of COVID. The calendar was stripped bare,” he says. “You had to start from the ground up again and educate yourself in other areas and get better equipped to gain another level of resilience.”

The downtime also saw him finally finish a song that he had been tinkering with for years. ‘Dreamtime Princess’ started out as a “lighthearted, jovial” track, but when he went back to retool it, he started to take the song more seriously. “I began having conversations with women about the domestic violence they’d been subjected to in their relationships,” Tambo tells Stellar.

“I remember saying to this person: ‘You’re worth so much more than that, you’re royal, you come from this long line of matriarchs and cultural people. You need to understand your self-worth and where you come from.’

“I looked at the statistics, which are that women in my [Aboriginal] community are 35-80 times more likely to be hospitalised through domestic [and family] violence than [non-Aboriginal Australian women].

“My heart sank looking at those stats. It made me reflect on growing up in the bush, hearing stories and feeling sick about the normalisation around domestic violence. Hearing about how some fella bashed his woman and everyone just skims over it and moves on – it’s just, ‘Oh, she didn’t come to the party because she had a cold.’”

Mitch Tambo with his now-fiancee Lea in October. (Picture: Supplied)

After seeing the portrayal of female empowerment when he watched the 2018 superhero film Black Panther, and the sexual assault in an episode of the hard-hitting ABC drama Redfern Now that left him “sobbing for ages”, Tambo knew the message behind ‘Dreamtime Princess’ needed to have more weight.

“We’re talking about women being hospitalised predominately at the hands of men,” he tells Stellar. “I wanted the lyrics to be geared towards a sister hearing them and [the lyrics] pumping her up – [to think] ‘this is who I am, there’s more to my life, I’m a dreamtime princess. I’m worth it.’

“[I want to] celebrate [Aboriginal] women through the lens of royalty,” he continues. “We often celebrate royalty through the lens of the Queen. Imagine taking that concept back. We’re the oldest living race on the planet, we’re only here because of the gift of life, and that gift of life comes from the women in our community, from their sacred womb. There’s nothing more sacred or royal than that.”

Even when playing an earlier incarnation of the song, Tambo always invited women on stage. When he can play gigs again, he wants to make sure that becomes a regular feature. “[This song] isn’t just for women in my community, it’s for all women,” he says.

“I’ve had grown men sobbing their eyes out in the crowd when I played it live. I had aunties in their 50s come up to me afterwards weeping, telling me they’re survivors and they’ve never heard a man talk about women like that before.”

Mitch Tambo features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

Those experiences have only fortified Tambo’s desire to back the song’s message by pushing for solutions. “For the women trapped, please know there’s more for your life,” he says.

“You might be in fear and not know what’s next but know there’s something bigger for you. It’s OK to escape. I don’t want to sit here and condemn my fellow brothers; I want to create a space where we can heal. It’s not about breaking broken men; it’s about how can we heal broken men?

“That’s what it’s about – opening up the conversation and healing. If you’re a man with loose fists, it has to stop. Go and get counselling. Deal with your trauma. We can’t make our trauma our wife’s or daughter’s or auntie’s trauma. We have to break that cycle.”

‘Dreamtime Princess’ is out May 7th.