DEB DUTHIE: Thank you everybody for attending online and in the room. I’d like to the acknowledge the Turrbal and Yugara people as well and pay respect to their elders, past and emerging, and to acknowledge that these lands and waters have never been ceded. My name is Deb Duthie and I’m a Wakka Wakka Warumungu woman.
I have family in Cherbourg, Qld and Tenant Creek, Northern Territory.
I have been at QUT longer than I should be, but I’m an academic in Social Work, but also the Director of Indigenous Health (Faculty of Health).
I just need to tell you there will be photography happening here and so if you prefer not to have your photo taken you should let us know.
So, I’m going to introduce our guest. So, Joe Geia has been playing music and writing songs for the past four decades. Renowned singer songwriter, guitarist, Didgeridoo player, influential figure in the development of contemporary Indigenous music. He writes music of bravery and beauty, telling of Aboriginal life in Australia, of the quest for justice and belonging of history, family and love. He’s widely regarded as the pioneer of
contemporary Aboriginal music. First coming to prominence as the member of the influential band ‘No Fixed Address’. He was also a founding member of the ‘Black Arm Band’ with Ruby Hunter and Archie Roach and now he also has his solo career and plays with the Joe Geia Band. So can I please introduce Mr Joe Geia.
[Applause from the audience]
JOE GEIA: Thank you folks for giving me this opportunity to sit in front of you and give you a run-down of my background. Geia, that’s a Torres Strait Island name, so my descendants come from Torres Strait, of the Kurraway people. When it comes to my mother, she’s a Guugu-Yimidhirr woman from Cooktown, so I’m an Aboriginal Islander person. I grew up around Ingham, I was born in Ingham, my family actually are, a lot of them are familiar with Palm Island. In between that time, from my grandfather and me they were moved to that place, which was back under the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ Act. It was recognised as a penal settlement, and it was a place where it would collect the half cast and put them on places like Palm Island.
That idea of collecting half casts, was they presumed that they had white blood in them and this breed of Aborigines would learn faster than the blacker skin, there was some testing going on and when you look at the testing, way back, the Governor or something like that, said to integrate them, and it was a style of wiping out.
That was the intention, to wipe out this race by creating half cast and then the half cast would go off and create a lighter skin until we are blue eyed, blonde hair and white skin and all the Aboriginal things would be forgotten.
It was a big test and sort of I don’t know if it still goes on today, I have to do more research. But you know there’s evidence what that Governor said way back in them days. That’s what he said, we have to wipe them out by integrating and then be collecting the half cast. You know it was called a penal settlement. But you know a penal settlement, when you think of a penal settlement you think of Manus Island and all of them places like that, this was just for having a lighter skin.
Anyway that’s... I’m giving you a taste of way back then. For Aborigine or Islander that talk about those things and bring those issues up and tell what happened to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is sometimes, it’s very harsh on the ear and it’s hard to believe, sometimes the conversation is so common that sometimes we get told to ‘get over it’, you know.
So, my technique back in the ‘70s was, come from demonstrations, and leaders talk through megaphones and walking towards a wall of police on horseback and getting megaphones knocked into our face. And I thought, I know what I’ll do, I’ll make friends with some roadies and get them to set me up over the P.A. system and give me a microphone as a lead singer, sing my songs and play it that way. And get my message out about to my people through that one microphone instead of walking and marching with a megaphone. So, I thought I’d do it that way, and as I tried it that way, I realised that it worked. With my little message in that little three chord song, they didn’t get the message, they got the melody, and the melody was simple and sticky. Because when they came back again to hear me play, then they’d realise what the lyrics was about. So, I caught them with the melody, come back again, get to know me, come back again, get to see me, then they realise what I’m signing about.
Now that I’ve sort of become a renowned singer/songwriter, I thought I was an Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander singer/songwriter but when they get into hearing the lyrics, someone will say “are you an activist?”. Well, I thought I was a singer/songwriter first, but yeah… if you want to, call me an activist.
So that’s where that music... there was a lot of thinking about it, how am I going to communicate. And as I think back in old day time... you know we were a nation with no alphabets, and we had to communicate to the other, 500 different dialects in this country and the skill of communicating to other people that don’t speak the
language. We had art, we would communicate with art, we had dance, if they didn’t understand the painting, we would dance it out. There was song and dance and story, and that’s how, you know, we communicate.
I look at Corrobboree as an opera. I can go to a Russian opera, or a Chinese opera and not know the language and I can see that it’s a love story, a man and a woman. Swan Lake, it’s the breeding time of the swan, and there is this male and female swan dancing around. You know, but um, I don’t have to know what language it is, you can see it, it’s all there on stage, and that’s what Corrobboree, that same outlook.
We have Corrobboree about when European Bee arrived in this country. Because Native Bee doesn’t sting. These two fellas went out and came across a European beehive and they got stung. When they went back home, they thought evil spirit got them because they were all swollen. They wait till all the swelling went gone, and said “ok, tell us what happened” and they danced that little hunting expedition. Now it turned itself into a warning dance, to warn others there’s a new type of bee in Australia, and it’s the black and yellow one, so be careful.
DEB: So, we were talking earlier about, um a lot of your music, and a lot of your lyrics sort of talk more so about the moral that’s underpinning what you are saying.
JOE: Yeah, some stories about the things you know, there’s a little bit of exaggeration in, um, Giant Devil Dog Dingo, you know. But um, importance, things of importance, mainly based around respect. That’s why, you can always hear from the modern Aborigines. You’re always searching for that respect, you know. Where talking about respect, having respect for elders.
So, in them Dreamtime stories, there’s the moral in the story and its mainly based around having respect and even respect for, well you may as well say we were practising climate change at that time. You know, you only take enough, you don’t sort of take bulk of food. Leave that plant there so it can grow again, leave a bit of yam in the earth and next time we come back, plenty. Anyway, um, that’s where all those important things are, you know.
DEB: Can we go back to when you initially started your music career, it’s ... um you know... you’ve made substantial contributions to the music industry in general, but certainly in the Black music industry as well. What got you into the music in the first place?
JOE: Well music runs through my family, I must say. When I came back to the Torres Strait Island side of my blood line, you know, um, we have songs that go back and a lot of people, everybody sang, you know. That’s when you hear Pacific Islanders sing, you can hear all the harmony and you know, different people singing. That’s the sound of everybody singing the song, you know. So, that was in me to like music, um, my father when he was four he used to turn the page of the hymn book for the organist in the church and he didn’t read or write, but he would watch her fingers touch the ebony and ivory keys and then he would look at the music and he could see her hands touching those keys and he knew how to read music before he could read a newspaper. It goes back to dots and stripes again, you know, reading our artwork and reading music on a staff.
So, he was also a sportsman, and my father was one of the leaders, the seven leaders in 1957 that led a strike on Palm Island. From rations to wages, and he was one of the main instigators, so they kicked him off the Island for that. I wasn’t born then, I was born after 1957, but he wasn’t allowed back on the Island, and um, that’s when all that sort of struggling, life became a struggle for us, and him getting jobs and you know, um, working on the railways and working on main road department and cutting cane, but um, all that time I realised he had music, there was music in his blood, and so, so it sort of creeped up on me, that music. And I started playing guitar about 16 and started writing about the 1957 strike and trying to find chords and modify traditional tunes.
Because that, when I was growing up, we had people like Bjelke-Peterson and Russ Hinze saying that Aboriginal culture is extinct, you know.
Playing guitar chords for those traditional songs when you put it down on a guitar so it will never be forgotten again, and anybody can play it, you can play guitar, you can play a traditional tune. That’s just my little play on my head, working away on how to um, challenge and jump hurdles. Like I said, music was a better communicator than sitting down and talking about, you know, my grandmother being raped, or you know, me getting angry over it and it stopped me from saying “you white people, you…, you…, you know”.
DEB: It’s a different outlet.
JOE: If I played a song from intro to outro, I hoped that the melody catches your ears and then you can hear and read the lyrics later on, on your own, and realise what I’m signing about. Take the melody home, find out what I’m singing about, you can answer your own questions and that’s all. I’m thinking differently, I’m thinking how can I communicate with these people arriving in a country, some got accent, some don’t even speak language or English. You always know that musically you can capture their heart, can capture their attention. That’s the magic of music. You can get a language that’s almost extinct, almost forgotten and you can chuck it up into the Universe and it becomes a universal language. That’s what music is. So, it’s a good tool for Aboriginal message, not only Aboriginal message, but anybody’s message you know.
DEB: So, you heard about the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music which is located in Adelaide and you decided to that you wanted to head to Adelaide to actually study in that area. But you went via Northern Territory and was involved with, um, the Central Australian Aboriginal Music Association. So, how was that in terms of, your journey and being involved in Alice Springs and music up there?
JOE: We head south west... it was the movie Wrong side of the road, which I actually saw on Palm Island and in the story you see how people coming out of juvenile detention. No Fixed Address come out, and form a band and they hit the road you know. So, not only hit the road but make the smooth with another Aboriginal band called ‘Us Mob’. At that time, it was a bit of inspiration for me, so I thought that’s where it’s all happening, you know. Being on Palm Island, I’m going to go down there, make my way down there, so you know I’m hitch hiking my way around the country. So, I get a lift to Alice Springs, I can’t move anymore, I’ve run out of money and all that sort of thing, so I stick around there. I get involved with Karma Radio. It was a project coming out of Karma where they wanted to make a compilation album of Aboriginal artists and songs. Because I had a couple of songs, they asked me to throw some songs in that album. I said, yes, and they called that little cassette ‘Rebel Voices’, that was about 1980 or something like that and you know, I was pretty proud to sort of add my song and record it on a little cassette.
From there I made my way down to Adelaide and I got there in the middle of the year, probably ’81, went to the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music, and they said um, “oh, you arrived in the middle of the year, we can’t enrol you, you’ll have to wait till next year to be enrolled”. I waited around in Adelaide, and I used to try and mingle in the community and one day I went and walked into a community place called Aboriginal Sobriety Group, they only had one staff member organisation. This fella was sitting in this hall and at the bottom of the hall I could see a kitchen, and I put it to him, and I said “do you ever cook for them ‘Parkies’, do you ever give them a feed before they start drinking their metho and their wine? Put something in their belly”. He said, “That’s a good idea, do you want to do it? You can do it’”. Then I thought, I’ll do it, because it’s a good excuse for me to have a feed too (giggles) I wasn’t cooking for myself, I was cooking for everybody else, belly was pinchin’… you know. (giggles).
So anyway, when I left that area, you know a couple of years down the road, or a decade down the road, I opened an Aboriginal newspaper, Koori Mail, and I’d see an article - Aboriginal Sobriety Group Adelaide wins Soup Kitchen of the Year (laughs). They got their little name on the award, I said, “wow I started that kitchen up”.
DEB: So, while you were there, that’s where you met Mark Wilby?
JOE: Yeah, they were touring and one day I sort of visit down to Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music and he was there, sort of met him and talked to him. His excuse for getting me to join was um, he had a bit of a complaint about trying to drum and play the Didgeridoo at the same time. He said, “you know when I play Digeridoo, I got to stop drumming” and I said, “I play Didge”. A couple of days after, he made a decision, “we’ll take him as a Didgeridoo player”. There was only Didgeridoo in a couple of the songs, but they got percussion instruments and things like that and so.
Yeah but, I joined them, there was um, when we did the itinerary, it was like, we do Morlin Hotel in Cherbourg, Melbourne, and a couple of days after, there was another gig and that gig was supporting Ian Durie and the Blockheads at Festival Hall. Then all these great gigs and things come up on this tour that I totally forgot about joining the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music. Plus, they were playing a couple of my songs as well and I end up throwing a few songs on the songs list.
Yeah, the actual, that professional, treating myself as a professional artist came in through that style. You know truly doing shows and ‘Countdown’ and I saw No Fixed Address broke through those areas, they were breaking through the areas where um, Indigenous bands weren’t allowed to play, you know. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander bands weren’t allowed to enter, well not even people weren’t allowed to enter in certain pubs. But they were breaking it down, there were some places where they, you know, No Fixed Address would turn up and would say “oh, we didn’t knows you were an Aboriginal band”. Some of them would cancel, the pub manager would cancel their show. I remember one time we did support with Cold Chisel, and we came up here to Twin Towers, Tweed Heads, and Cold Chisel was already in the accommodation at Twin Towers, and we’d walk in and same thing “oh, we didn’t know you were Aboriginal band”. But Barnsy come down and he said to the
management there “this is our last gig, we can all pack up and go back to where we just come from, this is the end of our tour, Tweed Heads is our last gig, we can all pack up”. They said “no, no, we’re not closing” and Jimmy said, “well you have to let them stay because they are our support band”. And if it wasn’t for Jimmy Barnes come down and say that, you know, they would have moved us out, like the other venues have. So, what would you call that? A touch of racism? (giggles)
DEB: Potentially yes, yep. I think the alarming thing is, it’s the 1980s, it’s not even really that long ago, yeah.
JOE: I only staying with No Fixed Address until 1982 and I jumped off the bandwagon in Sydney and started another band called ‘Nya Nunga’ and we got into Reggae there. I started um, skanking to all my songs, and I learnt how to skank, how to Reggae-fy a lot of my songs, and even try to Reggae-fy the Aboriginal tunes. So, um
‘Nya Nunga’ was that change of my whole writing.
You know, I really loved Melbourne a lot because of that multi-cultural scene down there. After Sydney, I made my way back down to Melbourne. You know, that’s when I started putting bands together. There was another band before, ‘Prince Nyah and the Slaves of Sin’. It was a little band I put together and then go to ‘Joe Geia Band’.
In these bands, I’m playing my songs and my songs were getting known. That was the technique, you know, the more you play your songs, the more the audience will hear it. One time I was playing at Aberdeen Hotel in North Fitzroy and um, someone come up to me and said “Oh Paul Kelly’s here and he’s with a fella called Archie Roach”. Archie Roach just come out of jail and Paul was escorting him around and he said “We gotta hear this band, this Blackfella from Queensland”. Yeah, they walked in too and that’s the first time I met Archie Roach.
DEB: So, was that sort of around the time of the Black Arm Band?
JOE: No, the Black Arm Band... you know, I um, in between that time I was also doing taking culture into schools. I asked a nephew of mine to come down to Melbourne, just only me and him, just a little duo went out, and our little school program was called ‘Aboriginal Song, Dance and Didgeridoo’. It worked out as three dance, one Dreamtime story, a Didgeridoo explanation, and a Farewell dance. When that Farewell dance was
happening, then the bell would go to end the period. So, it was a little programme that went from bell to bell.
But I did that for nine years and worked through an agent called Nexus Arts and they were in Elsternwick.
You know we got really well known for our culture show and dance and explanation of Dreamtime stories. We ended up with bookings at three schools a day. It worked out that first term we would do metropolitan Melbourne, second term we would do country Victoria, third term we might do Tasmania, and fourth term go out to NSW.
My holidays, um, when we took a break, was only school holidays. That started, so you know, I kicked off the first quarter for them Koori people down there, I’m taking culture to school and all the little, um, dance teams, and dance troupes started popping up around Victoria, you know. It was like they saw what I was doing, so they did exactly the same, followed, followed suit. But um, you know, I just sort of see it as an important thing and um they were longing to do it. I lived in Melbourne for so many years, I used to see international flights come into Melbourne and then tourists would fly all the way to Arnhem land to see an Aborigine. They thought that’s where all the Aborigines are.
DEB: All the real ones (giggles)
JOE: They had Aborigines right here where they land, they come and see you, you know, you got to pull your finger out and start dancing. I didn’t tell them that, but get yourself together, get your culture together. That’s why now you go down south, and you can tell, um, when they dance, they shake a leg like a Queenslander. You know they learnt from Queensland. They shake their legs like a butterfly, butterfly. ‘Imbala’, that’s Koori about shake a leg, that’s all the old fellas watching, the branch, the tree. We saw this cocoon and outta that cocoon comes a butterfly, but at the bottom of the branches, open and closes its wings and all these pretty dots, and then they flew away that’s where they flutter. That’s where the shake a leg story comes from, from the butterfly.
DEB: You’ve got lots of stories. You also spoke about, um, your overseas travel and um, but also supporting acts within Australia. What are some of the highlights do you think, in your career as a solo artist? You’ve talked about for example, welcoming Nelson Mandela.
JOE: When Nelson Mandela came out, he asked me, because I had a little Corrobboree team, and I wrote that song ‘Yil Lull’ about the Aboriginal flag. They got me to open it culturally, welcome him culturally and welcome him with a contemporary, so that was one of our great sort of shows, welcoming Mandela to Australia. Then there were other sort of shows like Dallas Jon Vea Vea, African women’s choir called ‘Sweet Honey and the Rocks’. Anyway, there was like a party with one of the ferries that went up the Yarra with Sonia Dada, No Fixed Address and Ian Dury, and The Clash. I did the support for ‘Clash’.
DEB: You were saying that Gary Foley was also invited to The Clash concerts as well to talk about Aboriginal activism.
JOE: Yeah, he actually talks through a song, they’ve got a recording of Gary talking and Clash are playing the music. Yeah, so um, there’s always somebody coming into Australia and searching out Aboriginal people you know. Like when Sting come, he had a saxophonist called Brandford Marsalis and one of the backup singers for Sting, they wanted to meet an Aborigine. And Brad being a sax player, he had shown interest in circular
breathing. So, he came down to this place I was working, I was Cultural Officer there. They walked into the building and had started talking to the administrator there and he said “oh, you’re a musician?”, and Brad said
“yeah, yeah, we’re touring with Sting” and he said, “we’ve got a musician here, he’s working over there”.
They come over and Brandford Marsalis wanted to buy three Digeridoos, one for is father, one for himself and one for Wynton Marsalis. Anyway, he pulled out all this money and he gave it to me, he said “can you get me three Digeridoos?”. I brought out three Digeridoos I had, because they were souvenir ones you know. They need fixing so I went to a Mitre10, and I bought a rasp and started fixing up the mouthpiece for him. I did three Didgeridoos and then I put them all into PVC pipes and wrapped them up in blankets and sent them off to some address in Miami.
But one DJ, one German DJ came up to me one time and said, “are you Joe Geia, Joe Geia?”, and I said “yeah, I’m Joe Geia.” He said, “Brandford Marsalis thanks you on his CD for buying him the Digeridoo” I said, “oh that’s great” (giggles)
DEB: I’m just checking the time, I guess. Your ‘From Rations to Wages to Treaty’ touring that you’re doing now, what do you want people to get out of that?
JOE: Um, I just wanted people to see, like I say, they hear a melody first and then they get to know the lyric, so, when they get to know the lyric, that’s when they say, “well are you an activist”. But that’s what I’m writing about, songs about, how my father used to talk about the 1957 strike. The strike was for, to go from rations, into wages, to treaty, you know. And then there’s, I’m singing about, you know, leaders that have inspired me, Sammy Watson (jr.), Tiger (T)jalkalyirri, Tyrell Buchanan who used to um, she used to give it to us you know, if we run a woman down, said “don’t you say, don’t you do that in front of me”. We used to pull back, we never used to talk bad about women in front of her, she pulled us up, so we respected her for that. That’s why I get her, I get her in the show, Rations, I get her to narrate because she’s a true witness of that time. I’m not a nation, I can’t get up and do it myself, I am not a nation without my sister, you know, I gotta have sister’s voice and man voice, so, because culturally we got man business and we got women business, so it’s much better if I have a woman in the show, a Black sister can come. It’s the same in the performances too you know, I’d like to see an Aboriginal
singer, women singer. I like it when Georgia Corowa comes and sings. It’s sharing the stage; you share that stage with people.
DEB: And I can’t help you in that regard (giggles)
JOE: Well, I can’t sing about women, but if women singing it sounds beautiful.
DEB: And you’ve got some tours coming up, up in Cairns and Palm coming up soon?
JOE: Now that this Rations to Wages to Treaty is put together, I truly would like to um, end this Masters / Thesis thing, focus on that and write about that and my brother Yanto Browning. I hope that here at QUT I can put together some type of soundtrack album of it and record all the songs that are in my song list. Bring my band in, you know, um, that’s an opportunity.
Just recently, No Fixed Address got a book out, a No Fixed Address book. You know there are some things, some stories about me in there. But Donald Robinson that wrote the book, he rang me a year and a half ago and said
“um, I’m doing a book on No Fixed”, and he got some stories off me, when I was with them. So, there’s a bit of writing there about me. But, um, yeah, I just wanted to sort of give my sort of 40 year plus story down and now that I’ve got my Rations to Wages to Treaty show, I could focus on that and create something. All that creativity is um, I’m looking at this place to create and the help of my lecturer here, my supervisor.
DEB: We’re fortunate enough to have Joe, probably commencing his PhD soon, based around his life’s music career and lots of things, so…
JOE: Yeah, I just want... in my family there’s things like um, things that are hereditary, with heart attack. You know my mother just passed away with Dementia. While my head has still got them stories. They say Aboriginal male always living short, their lives are short, this sort of, pull up and say “OK, this might be the right time to do it then”. All that I’ve thought about.
DEB: It’s time, it’s told.
JOE: Yeah, I was glad that my last album works ‘North, South, East and West’, to come back to make a Queensland CD. There at out Reedy Creek Road there at Burleigh, they’ve got a little studio there called Big Note production. It was Tony Jackie that said, “there’s this beautiful little studio, there good people out there”.
You know I went out there, I sort of enquired, that’s when I lived out there. Yeah, um, Danny and Smudge, they welcomed me in and I got a little round funding to do that last album, ‘North, South, East and West’. And what was really good about it, I wasn’t bringing in studio musicians, session musicians, it was all on Pro Tour, big you know, Pro Tour studio. Everything you know, orchestral, the drums, they all come from the desk. I thought it was amazing, but I’d walk out of the studio in the afternoon with a song, a complete song. There was a time when they’d give you a final mix. But it was like putting down a song a day, and if I had a bit of time in the afternoon, I’d put down the foundation of the next song. When I’d come in, you know, I was happy to do all the harmonies, baselines, I didn’t do that, that came out of the Pro Tour, co-technology is a good thing. And only three people were working there, Danny his wife, myself, Paul Harris and Jenny Matthews, that’s what we ended up with.
Now I’m looking at Yanto, (giggles) I’m here now my brother.
YANTO: You get to bring the band up though, right?
DEB: Does anyone have any questions they’d like to ask Joe? Do you want to do a song? So, we’re privileged enough to get Joe.
JOE: You know I’m sitting at the table, and I see one flag missing, and that’s not respect, they have that flag missing, I just made that up on the spot there. But the song I wanted to play, you know, people always say “Oh, that song ‘Yil Lull’’’ that I wrote is about our flag, our Lands Right flag. I’m always saying, wherever I went in these 40 years, I always walk past the fire brigade station and I always see these flags. I walk past and entering a school to do a cultural show, there’s these flag flying. I even walk past a police station and these flags are flying, when I go into Centrelink and these flags are flying. So, because I’m seeing these flags all the time, I went straight to these two songs, and I put together a medley. When I thought about ‘Advance Australia Fair’, I thought about what other people have said about it, especially Indigenous people say “Oh, we’re not young and free, we are ancient and you know, our freedom...”. Anyway, you know the writing of Peter Dodds McCormack
that’s who wrote our anthem. His writing is eight verses, Advance Australia Fair is eight verses, but the first two we use, we use the first two as Australian. So, I had a look at the second verse, and I thought “If I sang that second verse, it really sounds like a welcoming, I’m welcoming everybody”. So, I got the second verse, and I turned it up with the song I wrote about the Aboriginal flag. It creates this little medley, anyway that’s the song I’d like to sing to you. I called it ‘Anthem Combined’, it’s on the website Joegeia.com.au
JOE SINGS: ‘Anthem Combined’
[Clapping from the audience…]
JOE: ‘Yil Lull’ means to sing and ‘Yil Lull’ comes from the same language of where Kangaroo comes from. We all use that word even though that whole world uses that word Kangaroo, and the Aboriginal people shared that word Kangaroo when Captain Cook hit the Barrier Reef and come to Cook Town for repairs, that’s when they picked up that word and ‘Yil Lull’ came from that same group of people. Um and I thought, as a medley we have um, South Africa, they do the same with their national anthem. New Zealand do the same with their anthem, they got their language put in their anthem. South Africa has it and why not us fellas?
DEB: There are a couple of schools isn’t there, who are actually doing it?
JOE: Yeah, Dutton Park they do it, Yeronga Primary School, schools up in Broome do it, Ballarat.
DEB: Well, it should be all of them. Well, I guess we’re at the end of our conversation. Thank you so, so much for coming.
JOE: Thank you for coming to hear me and same for my singing. Yeah, I just thank you very much for you know, just you all being here and showing me respect and I thank you so much for that. I hope you realise that and understand that music is a great, great way to... it’s harmony, we live in harmony, with music you can put harmony in it. Don’t ask me about ‘The Voice’, I’m not that politically minded. I knew Ian Kirby, a long time ago.
And um, Noel Pearson is like me. I want to sing about those issues, but to write about it I need more
information. So, I can find a good punch line for the chorus, and a good title for the song. I need more learning myself, it’s all new at the moment, you know Peter Dutton can’t even understand it.
DEB: And you’re not politically minded (giggles) JOE: Because we got the Baldy head (giggles) DEB: Maybe. Ok. Please thank Joe Geia.
JOE: Thank you.
[Clapping from the audience…]
NICOLE: Before we all go, I just wanted to give you a little thank you for you, Joe. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your story. It’s just a little thing.
JOE: Thank you.
NICOLE: I know you’ve got fans in the audience, so thank you for gracing everyone with the song, it was really lovely, so thank you.
JOE: Thank you.
NICOLE: and Deb, thank you.
