Australian indie rock group The Preatures have featured a verse in the Aboriginal Dharug language of in their latest single ‘Yanada’.
Lead singer Isabella Manfredi said she grew up listening to Yothu Yindi and Warumpi Band on the radio and wanted to bring Indigenous languages back into the mainstream.
Isabella co-wrote Yanada, which translates to ‘Moon’, with Dharug song woman Jacinta Tobin and the chorus is in language:
Yanada yanada yanada-marri yanada
Gumada, gumada, nula burra-wa
Yanada yanada yanada, walama yanama-la
Gumada, gumada wa nura (Ngurra-wa)
Translated this means, ‘Moon, moon, moon, great (full) moon / spirit, spirit (here there, everywhere) in the sky’.
Isabella said she was inspired to include language in the track after seeing the Sydney Theatre Company’s adaptation of Kate Grenville’s ‘The Secret River’.
She wanted to write a song about connection to the land where the band is based and where the Secret River is set.
‘One thing I’ve discovered is that Indigenous languages have been systematically oppressed in this country—and now they’re in danger of disappearing,’ Isabella said.
‘When you speak another language, you get an understanding of the cultural values, the particular way of knowing and understanding the world that you just don’t get from anything else.’
An important message during the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages.
