BIG TROUBLE
Two hundred years of segregation, separation and genocide.
History has a habit of weaving faction and fiction into a taught myth. From Australia Day to Anzac Day our myth-making, flag waving, icon shaping national celebrations have been a finely honed product of a distorted imagination - fed by the DNA of colonisation, racism, and the exoteric disease of Christian self-entitlement.
"Big Trouble" is my take on the 26th January 1788. The music was written and arranged by Phil Rigger with a special thanks to Bruce Carr for his inspired didge playing.
The video was shot by Brandon Batton at Art Equity in Sydney at the combined launch of Deborah Young's Meditations exhibition and the launch of my poetry book Walking Skin.
BIG TROUBLE
Long time this one been walking
Longer than the sun upon the mountain
Longer than the root of mangrove tree
Longer than the smell of rain on dry earth
This one his feet are mighty sore
But this one he does not rest
He carries the unbroken song of the land
This one he has mighty big lungs for this singing
He knows his tired old feet must do the walking
There is the singing and his land is in this singing
No matter what time of night or day
This one for sure was there that very first time
Sniffing out gunpowder and smallpox
He saw that Arthur Phillip squinting in the heat
Looking for fresh water and farmland
He knew that man was big trouble alright
Handing out rows of pretty beads
That one Arthur Phillip he had a job to do no worries
His long time sailing was not for nothing no way
He was loaded up with maps and ambition
He was stuffed with religion and empire
That Arthur Phillip he knew what he was doing
This one he was with that Eora mob sucking on crayfish
Watching from the long grass when that Arthur Phillip landed
He didn’t need no compass to tell which way the musket pointed
He sung in Dharug tongue soft words of the long time passing
He sang in Cadigal tongue hard words of the tall ships coming
This one sang among their fishing grounds and forests
His lungs a tidal wash of reckoning
His walking skin among the shadows of the inlets
His old man’s feet making tracks along the beaches
He was sniffing out the wind of dispossession
He was watching history break upon the shores
© Big Trouble (McArthur-Rigger) Blue Pearl Music.
ABOUT TERRY McARTHUR
" I am from the same source that has given birth to the poems of Rumi, Hafez, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Allan Ginsberg, the bhakti poets of India, the Zen poets of Japan, the American Indian shamans, the sacred songlines of my country's first Australians."
Terry McArthur is an Australian performance poet. His works have been published, performed and recorded in Australia, the UK, Europe and the USA. He is the author of 3 books of poetry, 5 plays and over 300 songs.
www.bluepearlmusic.online
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