In a heartening update to our A Drive For Culture column from Limelight’s June 2023 issue, Daniel Wilfred has taken delivery of a culture car following a successful fundraising effort.
Daniel Wilfred (centre) and the car. Photo courtesy of Peter Knight
With donations from Australian Cultural Fund and GoFundMe among others, the fundraising effort raised over $65,000, allowing Wilfred and his community to purchase a low-mileage 2020 Toyota Prado, which will be used to facilitate vital cultural duties across the Northern Territory.
“I feel happy. The Wágilak clan, we are happy. We want to say thanks to the people for what they donated. It’s as really good car and we can use it to keep our culture strong. I will use it for teaching the young people to know the songs and the songlines and the dances. It’s really important work,” Wilfred tells Limelight.
Wilfred is a Wägilak songman and cultural leader. Alongside composer-trumpeter Peter Knight, vocalist Sunny Kim, yidaki player and vocalist David Wilfred and clarinettist Aviva Endean, he is a member of Hand to Earth, winner of the 2024 Music Victoria Award for Best Experimental or Avant-Garde Work, and nominee for the ARIA and Art Music Awards. The collective’s latest album, Ŋurru Wäŋa, was released on Room40 earlier this month, and will be accompanied by an upcoming UK/European tour.
Daniel and David Wilfred also have a long history of collaboration with the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) and were key members of the faculty of its Creative Music Intenstive. Knight, the former Artistic Director of the AAO and founder of the program, says that “they a whole generation of incredibly talented young Australian improvisers”, many of who contributed to the campaign.
Photo courtesy of Peter Knight
Wilfred is an Elder and ceremonial leader whose cultural duties require him to travel vast distances to remote communities, often hours away from his Ngukurr community, to conduct funerals and smoking ceremonies. As a keeper of Yolŋu manikay (clan songs passed down through generations), Wilfred shares songs in communities where there may be no one left who knows them –when a car wasn’t available, Wilfred would sometimes have to make it there by foot, or not make it at all.
Talking from London ahead of Hand to Earth’s performance at the Barbican, Wilfred says that the car is currently getting heavy duty tyres fitted while he’s away in preparation for the car’s journeys across the state. “The week before I left to come to London, there were two funerals at home. I went all around picking up people to come to the funerals to sing the songs and it was really good. ”
An instrumental force in organising the campaign for the culture car, Peter Knight says that the success is “a great reward for all of Daniel and David’s hard work”.
“It’s taken a long time to bring this project to fruition. It was a lot more complicated than I expected. It took a quite a long time to raise the money as Toyota Prado 7 seaters are not cheap. The car has to be big and very tough to withstand the rough conditions. The day the car was delivered was very emotional. I think Daniel had waited so long that he was starting to doubt whether it would very happen and it was so great to see the look on his face when the keys were finally handed over,” says Knight.
Hand to Earth (Peter Knight, Daniel Wilfred, Sunny Kim, Daniel Wilfred and Aviva Endean) performing at the 2023 Four Winds Festival. Photo © David Rogers
“Over the last few years, Hand to Earth has travelled so much and built a serious audience of people who wanted to help with this, who have experienced the power of these songs and who can see how important they are – not just to Aboriginal people, but to everyone. These songs are part of the oldest continuously practised music tradition in the world and to have an opportunity to help to support the vitality of this culture is a total honour and privilege.”
The car will be owned and managed by the Aboriginal-owned organisation Ngukurr Language Centre, to be leased to Daniel (“for a proverbial ‘peppercorn’,” says Knight) for his duties. Donations are still open to garner support for the Centre’s ongoing costs of the vehicle, including registration, petrol and maintenance.
“The car’s going to make a difference to us because when I was touring around and sharing culture before all around the country before, I couldn’t get a car sometimes and it was really hard. Sometimes I couldn’t go to funerals and ceremonies because I didn’t have a car. but now I can go and I can take other songmen as well,” says Wilfred.
“I am doing this for my people and to keep the culture alive. That makes me proud of myself, makes me proud that I can pass it onto the next generation and keep this culture running. And I hope my kids can follow my footsteps… where I go, where I sing, all around the world.”
More about the Culture Car campaign can be found here.
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