A Bit na Ta: from the sea to the stage

Collaborative music project A Bit na Ta spans 100 years of Papua New Guinea history.

Musical collaborators George Telek and David Bridie. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

It was while sharing chicken and beer at a beach barbecue in Rabaul that two musicians from different cultures first came to know each other. There, more than 30 years ago, a friendship was born ­between Melbourne-based songwriter David Bridie and Papua New Guinean singer George Telek that endures to this day.

The fruits of their long-lasting collaboration will be on display on Friday as part of Fresh Voices of the Commonwealth, part of Festival 2018 at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, where Bridie, Telek and a group of PNG musicians will perform a cultur­ally significant project known as A Bit na Ta. The name means “the source of the sea” in Tolai, Telek’s local language.

“The songs that we sing and write are all about our traditional culture,” Telek says. “Stories about things that happened a long time ago. Singing our traditions to other audiences reminds us that our culture is really strong and we need to promote it more.”

Spanning 100 years before PNG established independence in 1975, the concert — and an album of the same name — tells a dramatic story that includes volcanic eruptions, two world wars, political ­unrest and the presence of colonial powers, including Australia.

The free Gold Coast show will be the sixth performance of A Bit na Ta, following its debut as part of an installation at Brisbane’s Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art last year and several shows in support of Midnight Oil’s reunion tour.

Telek and Bridie met in 1986 when 24-year-old Bridie visited PNG for the first time with Not Drowning, Waving, the ambient music group he co-founded three years earlier. While in Rabaul, Bridie found himself haunted by a song that he heard three days in a row, on three buses. He learned it was Abebe by Moab Stringband, a group whose singer was Telek, a name well-known and respected throughout the region.

“It really grabbed me,” Bridie says of Abebe. “It’s one of life’s great circumstances that happened which I feel very grateful for. I bought that cassette, then spoke to the owner of a studio in Rabaul. He said, ‘Come along to this barbecue tomorrow.’ ”

“George and I sat on the beach eating chicken, drinking beer, and said, ‘We should work together’ — not thinking that anything would come of it.” During that first meeting, the two performers found common ground and mutual respect through their shared love of music.

When Not Drowning, Waving collaborated with Telek and musicians from Rabaul to ­record and release the album Tabaran in 1990, it became a landmark work of world music — as the nascent genre was then known as a catch-all term for non-Western traditional music.

Nominated for an ARIA Award in 1992 for best indigenous release, Tab­aran marked the first popular collaboration between Australian and PNG musicians. It helped to put Telek on the map as it was ­acclaimed by pop figures such as David Byrne of Talking Heads, who declared it his favourite album of the year in Rolling Stone magazine.

English singer and songwriter Peter Gabriel was a fan, too: he booked Telek to play at the inaugural WOMADelaide festival in 1992, and then at other WOMAD festivals in Britain and the US. Telek’s 1997 album Telek won an ARIA award for best world music.

“David is like a brother to us,” Telek says. “He co-operates with us. We write songs together, ­record, and we’re still working ­together. He’s a good musician.”

When asked to quantify Telek’s celebrity among Papua New Guineans, Bridie thinks for a moment: “George is a big figure over there. His bands and his solo work have been huge. He still lives in a village and doesn’t have too many airs and graces. He’s had more impact as an international artist than many.”

To illustrate how well-known and beloved Telek is locally, Bridie offers this: “I haven’t seen him pay for a bus fare in my life.”

At WOMADelaide last month, A Bit na Ta was performed to a seated audience of hundreds during a prime-time slot on Saturday night. The show is a sprawling epic, with Bridie’s keyboards and Telek’s voice acting as the anchors for those unfamiliar with the Tolai language.

The concert’s best moments — such as when the tight rhythm section was in lock-step while beautifully shot visuals from coastal Rabaul were displayed ­behind the group — were sublime, and among the highlights of a ­superlative festival bursting with some of the world’s best ­musicians.

Since its debut at QAGOMA in Brisbane, the audiovisual ­installation has been exhibited in the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan and Melbourne ­Museum’s Bunjilaka Gallery. It will visit Britain late this year and Germany next year, while in October A Bit na Ta will experience a homecoming when it is performed in Port Moresby and Rabaul.

Its performance on the Gold Coast on Friday will see the musicians sharing the stage with ­Indian group the Ska Vengers and Ghanaian rapper M.anifest.

Just before the band resumed its rehearsals in Melbourne last month, Bridie took a moment to reflect on where this work stands in his career as a musician straddling two cultures.

“It’s the culmination of a big part of my story, and the amount of time I’ve spent up in that place — but also George’s story as an international artist. In terms of the work that I’ve done in our ­region, this to me is the project that I’m most proud of being fully ­realised,” he says, smiling. “It’s got legs, this one.”

A Bit na Ta will be performed at the Main Stage in Surfers Paradise on Friday from 7pm.