One of the key features of the 2022 Giiyong Festival was the Giiyong Gum Leaf Band performance - a dream Eden Elder Ossie Cruse had long wanted to realise.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"It was a real excitement because I always wanted to get that band together," Uncle Ossie Cruse said.
After hearing Uncle Ossie express his sincere wishes to reunite proficient gum leaf players from across the country, Jazz Williams, the arts and cultural programs officer at South East Arts, decided to look into making it happen.
"When he said it was his dream to bring together a gum leaf band for Giiyong Festival, I said we'll see if we can find appropriate grants to make it happen and that's what we did," Ms Williams said.
Thanks to funding granted by the Aboriginal Affairs NSW, South East Arts was able to bring together five gum leaf players from across New South Wales and Victoria.
The players of the Giiyong Gum Leaf Band included Ossie Cruse and Ossie Stewart from the Far South Coast, Herb Patten from Melbourne, James Dungay from Kempsey and Wayne Thorpe from Lake Tyres, Victoria.
Once the Elders had made their way to the Far South Coast, they spent the week leading up to the festival practising and bringing Uncle Ossie's dream of re-creating a gum leaf band to fruition.
Ms Williams said because the union of the solo gum leaf players marked such a "unique and historic" moment in time, they also decided to document the process.
"The players often talked about the fact that young people aren't playing the gum leaf anymore, so we knew it was really important to document this," she said.
Ms Williams said the bulk of the funding had gone towards engaging documentary filmmaker Toni Houston and her team of local film industry professionals, which included Kyle Wilson and Samwise Seidel.
"We asked them to spend the whole week with the men collecting their own personal stories, their history with gum leaf playing and what it meant to them to come together like this," she said.
Ms Williams said they decided to engage Ms Houston to document the process due to her strong ties with the community in the Bega Valley.
"We approached Toni because she is a local to this area but also because of her strong relationships in the Aboriginal community, particularly with Uncle Ossie Cruse, who she's worked closely with before," she said.
Ms Williams said she also wanted Ms Houston's "respectful and authentic" approach because she knew "Toni would be right person for the job".
A former Eden Magnet journalist, Ms Houston said she had been "super excited" when Ms Williams had reached out about documenting the story.
"There are a lot of really skilled filmmakers in the Valley and I felt really privileged to have been asked to come along and document the process," Ms Houston said.
Ms Houston said the gum leaf story was a historic and significant story to document.
"It had layers of cultural and emotional meaning and as always, it was a privilege to have that trust and intimacy for them to share those stories with me," she said.
"It was a beautiful time and I learnt a lot."
Gum leaf players band together to revive 'faded tradition'
Gum leaf music historian Robby Cruse said the newly formed Giiyong Gum Leaf Band had been formed as a tribute act to the 1922 image of the Wallaga Lake Leaf Band that had performed at Tilba Oval.
Ms Cruse said during the week of rehearsals, she heard first hand how much the players wanted to preserve the "faded tradition".
"Uncle Ossie Stewart is a respected elder in the area and he really wanted to promote the tradition because it's a culture he doesn't want to lose," Ms Cruse said.
Ms Cruse said it was the "legendary players" from Wallaga Lake Leaf Band that had inspired Uncle Ossie Cruse to continue the tradition of gum leaf playing.
"Uncle Ossie kept it all going because he loved his old uncles, Uncle Percy Mumbulla, Uncle Percy Davis and Uncle Ted, so much," she said.
Ms Cruse said the players who performed at Giiyong Festival had come to the South Coast with the goal of keeping the tradition alive.
Uncle Ossie Cruse said the unison of the Giiyong Gum Leaf Band had been a significant event, due to the difficulty of getting some of the "few" solo gum leaf players together.
"I always wanted to get that band together but it's been hard because people are spread so far apart," he said.
Uncle Ossie said therefore getting together to play as a band was very hard to accomplish and due to the distance between them, with some players like Kevin Tucker, being in Western Australia, they couldn't "just get together and practice".
Uncle Ossie said he hoped their performance might inspire younger generations to pick up gum leaf playing and continue the tradition into the future.
In the meantime Ms Williams said people wishing to see Toni Houston's documentary will be able to view it, once released, on South East Arts' digital platforms.