Using the personal to touch on the universal in this show my voice and ukulele will seek to warm your heart.
Regardless of how you feel towards Christianity it is
impossible to deny that it has created some very powerful music. As granddaughter of an Australian missionary to Fiji and daughter of a migrant Tongan, I have experienced incredible music inspired by Christ in a number of different languages across the pacific.
In this show I share a selection of those songs and stories of their significance. The show features the classic gospel song
'I'll fly away', which I was taught to sing in
Ngaanyatjarra by elders in the remote Indigenous community and former mission of
Warburton (
Milyirrtjarra) in Central Australia. I will also share the Tongan
Hymn 'Eva
Alleluia', a song taught to my brother and I by our Maternal Grandmother when I was 3 during her one visit to Australia before she passed away.
The show also includes songs that I have adapted to musically translate cultural stories, such as the Rogers and Hammerstein son 'Do, Re, Mi' through which I tell the story of the cultural
faux pas that happened when missionaries attempted to teach the
Solfège, system for learning where many of the sounds used by that system are Tongan swear words.
A 45 minute personal journey into complicated histories.
