The Australian band Hand to Earth was born out of the Australian Art Ensemble album by this name (AAO, 2021), which introduced brothers, vocalists Daniel Wilfred and David Wilfred, singing in the Wáglilak language, with Korean-born vocalist Sunny Kim, alongside trumpeter Peteere Knight and clarinetist Aviva Endean. Daniel Wilfred is the keeper of Yolngu Manikay (songs) from North East Arnhem Land that can be traced back over 40,000 years. Hand to Earth is using the ancient songlines, the dreaming pathways, memorized for the traveler to know the route to their destination.
Ŋurru Wäŋa (pronounced Wooroo Wanga, translates as ‘the scent of home’) is the sophomore album of Hand to Earth, following Mokuy (Room40, 2023). The album traces notions of home, belonging, and displacement. The main theme of the album is the search for a sense of belonging, and this is what Hand to Earth is about: a band of five people who come together from different backgrounds, different birthplaces, and different musical approaches. All have their own relationship to Australia, its difficult history, its contended present, its clouded future, but all want to share their songs, and by doing that to create something new.
The songs of Ŋurru Wäŋa were recorded mid-tour on a day off, in a single take, in one session at Florence St Studios in Melbourne. These songs were enhanced into hypnotic soundscapes with in-studio addition of electronics, subtle percussion, and field recordings (by Room40 label head, Lawrence English, who also added his ambient touch to Mokuy). The two-part title piece features Sunny Kim intoning the words of Korean poet Yoon Dong Ju’s poem, Another Home, in counterpoint to Daniel Wilfred’s song, sung in the Wáglilak language. Daniel Wilfred sang songs from the songline of Djuwaḻpada, who walked through the land singing the place and everything that lives there into existence.
These powerful songs keep moving back and forth between past, present, and future, employing the ancient ritualist legacy of the songlines as a living tradition, always being renewed and updated, with new stories, images, sounds, and compassionate, peaceful imagination. Hand to Earth creates with its own songlines new sonic connections, new stories, and new, promising common grounds. Ŋurru Wäŋa guarantees that these songlines will keep resonating, blurring, and vibrating in the listener’s mind long after this moving, beautiful album ends.
Eyal Hareuveni
Daniel Wilfred (voice, bilma), David Wilfred (yidaki, voice), Sunny Kim (voice, percussion), Peter Knight (trumpet, electronics, synthesisers, bass guitar), Aviva Endean (clarinets, winds, electronics), Amalia Umeda (violin), Lawrence English (field recordings, atmospheres, bass synthesiser), Quinn Knight (percussion, SPD)
