Co-founder and songwriter for the Warumpi Band Neil Murray, has released a powerful new single and video from his latest album The Telling. “Tears of Wybalenna” tells of the treachery and devastation that befell Tasmania’s First Nations people in the early years of colonisation.
“I had a rough, general knowledge of Tasmania’s history and the devastating impact on its First People but it didn’t really hit me emotionally until I stood in the graveyard at Wybalenna,” says Murray regarding the thinknig behind the song. “The grief and sadness was palpable. How those old people were betrayed. Their suffering and loss. It was not difficult to extrapolate or to conclude. Lines like:- “all the sorrow in the world can be traced right back to an invading force and the humanity they lack”- were just there in the ether. It wasn’t a labour. But I was compelled to it, out of a kind of love. So those Old People, their story, their voices, are still heard and not forgotten.”
Released in March 2023, The Telling is his tenth original solo album. The video for “Tears of Wybalanee” was filmed and directed by Jin Tommo, with footage of Wybalenna, Flinders Island, kindly supplied by Sammi Gowthorp.