CHRISTINE ANU

Rip It Up, Issue 224, 1 April 1996, Page 10

CHRISTINE ANU

lines between indigenous culture and American hip-hop culture. In being true to her culture Anu focuses on storytelling not culture defined by a style. “I didn’t want the album to get too clever musically or the whole story is washed away. With my album I wanted to tell a story, to be as nice on your ears, as a cake on your tongue. I wanted to touch your senses.” When Christine uses sampling it is not to raid the past but to create her own sounds. “I used a lot of samples, water on the side of a dingy opens ‘lsland Home’.” Christine sees language as the “core of culture”, but says she doesn’t speak her parents’ Torres Island dialect fluently and notes that “there are a lot of dialects in the Aborigional community.” “Music is a very excellent format to utilise the oral history tradition. I am telling a story in a format that goes out to my people and other people in the world.” With her Stylin' Up album and her popular collaboration with Paul Kelly, Christine is no purist. She is pleased that people of many races make music with her. “My band represents reconciliation in Australia’s multi-cultural society.” Christine’s parents are very proud of her becoming a known figure in the community. “It’s good publicity we’re getting, not bad publicity, for a change.”

MURRAY CAMMICK