Festival review: Big Name, No Blankets
A rock n roll homage to Aboriginal music icons Warumpi Band tears the roof off of Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Named after Warumpi Band’s debut studio album, Ilbijerri Theatre Company’s impressive production of Big Name, No Blankets honours and celebrates the band and their journey, from jamming on flour drums in Papunya in the 1970s to touring Australia with Midnight Oil and eventually the world, this is a potent and reverent celebration of the first recorded Aboriginal rock band to sing in their own language, Luritja and Gumatj.
Written by Andrea James — and co-directed by Anyupa Butcher, daughter of founding member Sammy Tjapanangka Butcher whose voice narrates the story, alongside consultation with the families connected to the Warumpi story — Big Name, No Blankets does a masterful job at providing a magical experience that seamlessly fuses the city and the desert, the traditional and the modern, the black and the white of it all. The set designed by Emily Barrie is a hypnotic blend of modern rock stage and traditional desert country. Elements from everyone’s work in this production had a certain ineffable awe about it. The lighting, the digital projections, the music direction and the performances themselves — every aspect glowed with a certain effortless synergy.
The Big Name, No Blankets band in particular have built an undeniable chemistry and tightness over their touring time and the effect was as heartfelt as it was raucous, and it truly captured the energy and essence in what made the Warumpi Band so great. The cutting raw lyricism of the soaring vocals, the desert clang of their jangly reverb guitar and the pulsing endurance of their rhythm section goes beyond a homage and becomes a living, breathing testament to their timeless message and spirit.
The term ‘golden age’ gets bandied about quite frequently in matters pertaining to everything, from the price of wool to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it feels as if we are genuinely living through a golden age of transformative First Nations theatre in Australia.
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Big Name, No Blankets sits as one of the many exemplars of that idea, fusing blackfella stories and cultures within the whitefella form of the ‘black box’ flawlessly and with a certain grace, earnestness and optimistic joy that is reverent.
Not only did it receive a standing ovation, but the band’s electric energy was so infectious that every song was greeted by passionate voices from the crowd singing along and many bodies dancing to the beat. As the great band sang, “It doesn’t matter what your colour” — if you’re a brother or a sister, or anyone in between and beyond, you will be electrified by the power of Big Name, No Blankets.
Big Name, No Blankets continues at Her Majesty’s Theatre until March 16
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