GURRIDYULA ON RAP MUSIC, THE NATURE OF TIME, AND SPITTING BARS AT COPS
BY GERARD MAZZA
This interview was originally published at The Swell by Gerard Mazza. With permission, Ngaarda Media has republished it here.
In a trailer in the middle of the bush in Australia's Central Queensland, Gurridyula writes and records rap music.
The trailer sits on the ancestral homelands of Gurridyula's people, the Wangan and Jagalingou cultural custodians. It also happens to sit on the mining lease for the open-cut Carmichael coal mine owned by the multinational company Adani.
Gurridyula, also known as Coedie McAvoy, is part of a group of Wangan and Jagalingou people who have maintained a camp on their country for more than 600 days now. They have continuously kept a sacred fire burning in a stone Bora Ring as part of a ceremony called Waddananggu (The Talking). They are occupying land which sits across the road from the partially-constructed, already-operational Adani mine.
These custodians oppose the coal mine because of its impact on land, waters and cultural heritage. Under the Queensland Human Rights Act, they've claimed their cultural right to be on country, despite Adani's best efforts to remove and discredit them.
"Basically, I've cut them off half their mining lease," Gurridyula told me. "They're super, super angry about it."
Gurridyula is a leader and spokesperson for Waddananggu. He believes music is a particularly effective tool for sharing his message "in a way that people will remember."
People take notice of the message because the music is worth hearing. Gurridyula makes his own beats in a range of styles and writes rhymes filled with clever wordplay. There's an emotional directness to the songs. I hear an eagerness to connect, uplift, and share. Gurridyula describes the message in his music as "a gift straight for the people."
anthropocene.FM is a project about the climate crisis, which has been caused by a larger set of nightmarishly destructive forces, including colonisation. First Nations people continue to be dispossessed from their lands and have their human rights denied. Fights for country, culture, and First Nations sovereignty go hand-in-hand with any meaningful fight for a liveable climate.
Read on for my conversation with Gurridyula, which has been edited for length and clarity.
The Swell: What's the meaning of the name Gurridyula?
Gurridyula: It's my tribal name from Waddananggu. Gurridyula means the wedge-tailed eagle, my personal totem. I've basically walked away from my colonial name. I've gone back to live on country, so it's only fitting that I adopt back my tribal name. It's empowering because it connects me back to my surroundings. When I'm sitting on country and I see the wedge-tailed eagle, I know he is me and I am him.
When you're out on country at Waddananggu, what music is around?
I listen to a range of different types of music. I'll go from listening to country music to listening to heavy electro-house music. I make rap, because it's easier for me to convey a message in rap than in a soft singing voice. I make most of my music in my trailer. I've got a little program called Fruity Loops I've been using for 22 years or so since I was about 15. I've been playing the didgeridoo since I was 10. I've been writing since I was maybe 12 or 13, but it was never the time to put it out. My spirit said, wait. Once I got to Waddananggu, I decided to start making music and recording it. Waddananggu was my drive to put any sort of music out there.
Do you get feedback from other people around the country about how your music has impacted and influenced them?
People send me messages and say, "Brother you've given me so much power from just listening to your music." There's mob down in the Pillaga that get geed-up when they hear my 'Geed-Up' song. My music is made to create that sort of feeling.
I'm not a subjugated blackfella anymore, because I have power. In my music, you won't hear me talking about hurting the police. I'm talking about having the power over the police. I'm talking about how I took my rights back and I took my power back, so the police can't walk over me anymore. That's the message that I'm trying to portray to other young black men. I'm trying to show them that they are seen. They feel like they're the bottom of the barrel, and I come out and say: "No, you're not the bottom of the barrel. You're a king in your own country. You just have to take back your right, take back your royal estate, and you'll feel the power that you have inside you, and the police will say, 'Yes sir. No sir.'"
We've got a problem with blackfellas killing themselves. The suicide rate of blackfellas is one of the highest in the world. I sit here and I go, What's the problem with this? Why is this happening? It's because they're dispossessed. They're walking around the city lost because they have no home. I try to inspire them to find pride in themselves. I say: "If you knew you were the descendant of a king, that you're royalty, then you wouldn't act the way you do. You would hold yourself in your stature, and you would walk with pride." This is the energy and the power that I'm trying to instil into these young men and women.
You have a song called 'Country Boy'. What do you mean by the word 'country' in that song?
It's not really the country of country music, it's actually country. I'm explaining my connection and my love for the bush. I'm describing my soil. I'm describing trees that are around me: the gidgee tree and the brigalow tree. Those trees give you a locative marker. It's encapsulating country.
I was just sitting out on country, and I came across this hip-hop/country beat. I've had a few people say to me, "I don't really listen to rap but I enjoy your message," so I wanted to move towards a different genre. I've had a good response to it. People appreciate a song just about the love of country.
I noticed quite a few references to time in that song. Lines like, "I know what it's like/to lose track of time", "Out here things go/comparably slow", and "I'm ok not checking the date". I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your relationship with time, especially when you're out on country.
There is no time. When you don't have a watch, the only thing you realise is the sunup and the sundown. And sometimes those sunups and sundowns go a lot quicker than they usually do. While we're sitting there in the bush, it's the moment, and there's nothing else that matters.
When you're living in the city, you have schedules: I've got a 10 o'clock appointment; I've got this next week; I've got that next week. When you're sitting in the bush, there is no 'that'. It's just living. You just sit there; you're just watching. When you have the opportunity to just sit and watch and not worry about what time it is, then you actually start to understand country. You understand the symbiotic relationship animals have with each other. We don't see that until we actually sit and we watch. Once you're on country, time is irrelevant.
It's interesting to me to compare what you're talking about with the way these mining companies like Adani operate on such precise timing. Everything is measured and accounted for, down to the second.
You know, you've got polar opposites on each side of the Adani lease. On their half of the road, you've got time management, you've got destruction of country, and you've got destruction of cultural heritage and stories. But over on my side, we've got no time management. It gets done when it gets done. There's no destruction of Country and there's no destruction of culture and songs. Their time management cannot interrupt my no-time management.
I've seen a video of you blockading a road and freestyle-rapping at a whole bunch of cops. What happens when you bring music into a protest space like that?
You chop them down, man. Honestly, they've never been met with something like that before. The good thing about doing something like that is you can basically say whatever you want because it's political expression; it's art. It's not just seen as a provocation.
I blockaded that road for five days. I'd built this ceremonial fire in the middle of the road. When the police officers first turned up, they didn't want to touch it. They were trying to negotiate with me the whole week. On the fourth day, the negotiators said to me, "What do you want?"
I said, "I want the national parks, state forests, and unallocated state land to be given back to our mob, and then I want the government to buy the pastoral leases off everyone that wants to sell them and give them back to us. If people don't want to sell, they can keep them in their families until they want to sell. I want all this so I can take the fences down, so the emus can run up and down the way they used to."
Turns out, they rocked up with 50 police officers the next day. I guess they didn't like my negotiation skills. They brought in police from all over the place, who had no idea what was going on. I went to tend to the fire, and a police officer pushed me and said, "Get back." That drove me to spit some bars at him and cut him down through music.
These police came to do the same thing they did to my grandfather, and to all my other mobs' grandparents and great-grandparents, but it's come to the day and age where I'm not going to let that happen anymore. I'm not going to let a police officer roll over me and kick me off my own home. So I just drew that situation out. And it opened their eyes. That video footage spread like wildfire throughout the police force. They've all seen it.
After that, they came and removed us from our camp, which was on a pastoral lease. Federal law allows all Aboriginal people to go onto pastoral leases. So after the Queensland Police removed us from there, we took them to the Human Rights Commission and got a human rights complaint against them. The tide changed. They have not done anything like that since. Since we spanked the Queensland Police and said, "Naughty; You can't limit our rights," they've been super chilled. They don't want any conflict. It's gotten to the point where this mining company and I are basically just like disgruntled neighbours. Adani is like that Karen who lives next door and keeps calling the police.
Some parts of the media have labelled you a sovereign citizen recently. Is that a label you identify with?
Well, that's kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? The sovereign citizen movement is basically an alt-right, majority-white, straight, male group. They have these beliefs that they are independent of any sort of jurisdiction and they are a power unto themselves. That's dangerous because they have no accountability. I have accountability to my elders, and I have accountability to Waddananggu lore, which is to protect the animals and protect the water.
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