Timor-Leste musicians bring stories of survival and identity to life

Artists from Timor-Leste have have brought stories of survival and identity to live in three new albums and a single released through the Wantok Musik Foundation.

The new music is a celebration of Timorese culture, language and identity; and also explores darker elements of conflict and surviving Indonesian occupation.

For the creatives behind these releases, the songs are more than pretty melodies.

Wantok Musik Foundation co-artistic director David Bridie said the project grew from a desire to preserve traditional songs and stories that were at risk of being lost.

“We got funding to do a project to go and work with younger artists who got together with their uncles and their aunties and their nannies and koros (choir) and recorded some of these old songs that they thought were in danger of being lost.”

But the albums also carry heavier elements. They capture the stories of a people whose history have been marred by conflict, and marked by tales of resilience and their fight for independence.

“We worked with 16 young women songwriters, storytellers and filmmakers who engaged with women survivors from the war.

“They sat down with these older women and heard their stories and listened to them and spent time with them and then went away and wrote a whole lot of songs based on honouring their story of survival and the sacrifice that women had made during the war.”

The three albums are IzuPi, Lolobremu, Feto Nia Lian – Feto Nia Istoria, and a single Pirilampu Nia Lalatak.

They explore the country’s history, cultural identity, and the experiences of its people who lived through Indonesian occupation from 1975-1999.

Bridie saw immense value in capturing this history through music.

“During that 25 years of the occupation, cultural practice and ceremonies stopped because it wasn’t safe to go anywhere.

“Timor Leste lost one in three people during that time, which was an incredible statistic. So for this record, for these younger artists who were so keen to get their the older ones to to record and tell them these stories meant even more.”

One of the artists is IzuPi, who believes the music will play an important role in educating younger generations about their country’s past.

“We can sing all the songs about love, about nature, things like that. But I think the important one to bring it up; education for the new generation will come.

It’s more than music, it’s still about Timor, still about the people, it’s for Timoresian people to know about the history, to respect the history itself.”

IzuPi hopes listeners will take the time to understand the history behind the songs, and find connections to their own lived experiences.

“The world need to know about music from Timor to share with other people.

“I think that not only in Timor that faces this struggle like this, but also other people from the other country, also face the same, like what we face in our country.”

Bridie said it was imperative that the stories were told by the community itself.

The project not only supports musicians developing their career, it also helps communities retain control over how their history is portrayed.

“Every artist and all and the in the case of when there’s you know the songs are recorded by the younger artists, but the songs were written by the older artists, for they own all of their copyright and they and their stories retold and written down,” he said.

The music will be further celebrated through the Ita Nia Lian, Ita Nia Istoria – Our Voices Our Stories concert series in Australia, which will bring together Timorese arrtists with Australian First Nations and other regional performers.

The concerts are scheduled for Melbourne on 20 November and Sydney on 21 November.