A musical transformation for late Prime Minister’s speech by The Australian Voices.

The Australian Voices’ performance of composer Rob Davidson’s musical setting of Julia Gillard’s famous “Not Now, Not Ever” anti-misogyny speech (made in response to Tony Abbott’s attempts to have the Speaker of the House removed for making sexist remarks in 2012) became a huge online hit earlier this year, receiving over 188,000 views on YouTube to date.

The Australian Voices

Now in tribute to the late former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, Rob Davidson has created a setting for the Australian Voices of Whitlam’s iconic “Well May We Say” speech, made by Whitlam in 1975 following his dismissal during the Australian Constitutional Crisis. In a similar vein to Davidson’s Gillard setting, the music juxtaposes the Australian Voices’ distinctive close harmony sound with specially edited recordings of the original speech. Davidson has cleverly extrapolated the accompanying harmony from the natural melodic contour of the recorded spoken elements, transforming them into lyrical, musical lines.

“Davidson has the men of the choir mimic the exact intonation and rhythm of Whitlam’s voice,” says Gordon Hamilton, the Artistic Director of...