CHAPTER

15
Conversations with Ash Dargan
9 May 2010 — Research Fellows’ Room, Queensland Conservatorium
Transcribed by Nicholas Ng on 10 December 2010, Brisbane

NN: Hello Ash.

AD: G’day Nick!
NN: It’s great to have you here at Queensland Conservatorium. Maybe we can begin by
asking some questions about your background: where you were born, and maybe you
can tell us something about your heritage and your upbringing as well, and where you
grew up.
AD: OK, well, I’d like to begin this story with where I was conceived. Where I was con-
ceived was in Darwin, Northern Territory on Larrakia land. My background is from there,
although I didn’t grow up there and I wasn’t birthed there, but I was certainly conceived
there. I was actually born in Chincilla, just west of Brisbane and was adopted … grew up
on the Gold Coast. Had a wonderful life, just a very normal life.
But my heritage was a mystery to me, and in 1992, that all changed because the gov-
ernment changed the freedom of information act. That was a big year for Indigenous
people and the stolen generation.
And so armed with that new amendment, I was able to find my mother and my
Aboriginal heritage. I moved back to Darwin. I got in contact with my mother, she invited
me back, and I moved up on a one-way ticket and started the next chapter of my life,
which was all about Aboriginal culture, the Larrakia people and my grandmother (a tra-
ditional elder of the Larrakia tribe) who were the traditional land owners of Darwin in
the Northern Territory. So I identify now as an Aboriginal man from the top end of
Australia, the Larrakia nation.
NN: When did you discover music?
AD: Music, oh, in Grade 4. Growing up on the Gold Coast, I went to the Broadbeach
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State School, and there were music opportunities there for students, and I put my
hand up. I started the cornet in Grade 4 and I remember my teacher’s name, Mr
Hughes. He used to conduct the mighty big band at the time.
He was prolific on the Gold Coast as a musical teacher and conductor, and he
inspired me. So that’s when I started. I eventually graduated to trumpet a year later.
NN: And when was it that you discovered the didigeridoo and flutes?
AD: The didgeridoo didn’t … I didn’t discover that until I was 21, which was in 1992.
So, that was parallel to my returning home to my culture. The didgeridoo came with
that. I remember it was only a couple of days of me being in Darwin for the first
time—21 years old, meeting all my family, going through some ceremonies, recon-
necting with the greater family, the greater tribe. And my uncle, my great uncle, one
of my grandmother’s brothers, actually passed the mamalima to me (the didgeridoo,
in our language is “mamalima”), and he looked at me and he told me: “this is part of
who you are.” And he held the didgeridoo up to me. “This is a part of who you are.
Are you gonna take it up? Are you gonna continue?”
And I looked at him and look at this strange instrument, and you know growing
up playing trumpet, I thought ‘yeah, I’ll give it a go’ and I remember saying to my
uncle, “Uncle, I’m not really sure. Why don’t you leave it with me, and I’ll get back to
you in a couple of days.”
And what happened is I just feel in love with it. It was like a duck to water. It made
sense to me even though I didn’t grow up playing it. And I wouldn’t call it … it’s
actually more complex than the trumpet in many ways with the techniques of playing
it. But for me it became something that I held on to in my personal journey of finding
out about my Aboriginality, finding out the history, finding out the stories.
The didgeridoo for me, being able to have it in my life and constantly be playing
and practising, somehow helped my journey of reconnection.
NN: Yes, and it was wonderful to have you here playing the didgeridoo at the opening
[of the festival]. Certainly you’re a very special person for us for ENCOUNTERS, not
only because of your musicality but also because of your heritage. I know that you are
partly of Chinese descent, which is why in many ways you’re the embodiment of
ENCOUNTERS for us: the Australia-China connection.
AD: That’s right, I was so pleased to be invited and you’re right, Chinese is part of my
heritage as well. My grandfather was responsible for that. He was a second generation
Australian Chinaman. He was from Canton and he worked on the Pine Creek gold-
mines and he married my grandmother. So … my mother and all my aunties and
uncles are half-half. And so that’s where I have this rich Chinese heritage from.
You know, by the time I got back to my people when I was 21, my grandfather had
passed away early in his 50s, from cancer, and so I didn’t actually get to meet this man
that now plays a mythic role in my life because my family talks about him. These were
very tough days in Darwin. He spoke both Cantonese and Mandarin. He was an epic
gambler, all the Chinese were. He was a part of his culture — the Chinese community

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brought their culture with them, of course, and he was very involved in that, so he
knew his culture. Unfortunately for me, I … never met him, and I’m sure for me that
piece of the puzzle is still unfolding. What is that part of myself? I need to have that
dialogue in my life so that I can understand that incredible lineage within me.
I’ve been given the opportunity to follow the Aboriginal side, and boy, I can’t wait
to touch and dance, and live and breathe the Chinese heritage side. So when you
invited me to Encounters, it was this opportunity for me to meet Chinese people, to
be amongst that culture, and to breathe as much of that in, to get as much as I could
from that, and it was really special for me, thank you.
NN: You’re very welcome. It’s very special for us to have you here. And maybe there
are musical avenues that we can explore together between the didgeridoo and your
other instruments.
AD: Yeah, you know, I remember asking my mother on the phone because we did the
panel in Encounters. I really wanted to come in informed about any possible musical
relationship that the Chinese and Aboriginal people had … back in those days, and
she … gave me a lot of information on that.
And you know, we were all poor people back in those days, so people just couldn’t
afford pianos … It was all just about real hard life, and … things were very, very dif-
ferent back then. But what I like about any opportunities say if we were to play
together, we could explore: well, if our ancestors had the opportunity to play, because
they had their culture with them (that’s a given-music was so much a part of their
culture) had they been given that opportunity, if life hadn’t been so hard. What might
have come … in this joint living together, these Aboriginal Chinese families living in
the north of Australia? If they had instruments and the freedom to explore that, what
would it have sounded like?
And that’s where we get to explore now, and I think that’s a very beautiful concept
because we get to honour them in a way, to honour our ancestors to by giving them
music that we can play together and offer it up to them, and for me that is a way that
we would approach it. Because these people lived in hard times, they didn’t get the
opportunity to, but we do … We’re they offspring and so we can offer that up.
NN: That’s wonderful, Ash. So I look forward to … exploring this connection, even
musically and in research too. A joint publication, who knows?
And so is there anything significant you might like to say about yourself? Your
career highlights, your plans for the future? Working with intercultural music …
AD: Having travelled the world, having so many opportunities being a mamalima
player, and using my background of music to develop myself and explore myself
musically as a serious artist, as a professional artist — I consider myself very fortu-
nate. Through successive opportunities, I have been able to travel a lot and meet a lot
of other cultures around the world. And I became fascinated just with meeting other
cultures. I loved seeking out the old people, sitting around the fire and just dialogu-

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ing, and always in English … seems to be the one language that all cultural people
around the world can speak in, thankfully.
But there was also our musical instruments, and quite often I got the opportunity
to dialogue over the fire in other places in other natural environments overseas. Other
places that people called home, culturally, and I got to explore this wordless dialogue
through these ancient musical instruments that actually share a great many things in
common. And this is what I started to understand, and this understanding birthed in
me, and I hold that very close to me.
It’s personally what I honour most about sitting with other cultures that have
ancient forms of music, and I enjoy speaking and dialoguing with those instruments
with each other, because what I find and what a great deal of other cultural people
that I’ve sat with dialoguing in this way, that we see and explore and share parts of
ourselves that simply can’t be spoken. It seems to me we’re really sharing on a multi-
dimensional level through the power of music, and you know, that’s just a wonderful
thing.
So, I hope top continue doing that, because I just seem to understand so much
about myself and other people through the act of dialogue, of just sitting around the
fire. Simple, simple, simple. But there’s also the sharing of food; there’s the sharing of
time together. There’s looking into each others’ eyes and telling the story of your
people, and all of these moments are synonymous with coming together with other
cultural people, because these things are as important as music. Music is a part of
that. It’s one of the dimensions that we share in, and it’s a beautiful one.

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