Jhana Allan & Pirritu House Concert

Join us for a House Concert in Dorrigo with Jhana Allan and Pirritu on the Saturday 5th October. BYO food & drink.

Bookings and directions via Bridget.rees24@gmail.com or 0428415078. $15!

Jhana Allan is a progressive country folk singer and multi-instrumentalist who explores themes of darkness and light, loss and self-acceptance. Her original tunes range from slow moody ballads to up-beat foot-stomping country numbers. She is influenced by artists such as Bjork, Mountain Man, and Tom Waits. Jhana delivers raw, honest lyrics wrapped up in sunlit mandolin, fiddle, viola and piano, with driving rhythms and pure vocals.

“A true songwriter”-The Wild Women of Anywhere Beach

Praise for debut album, Darkest Night

“With a powerfully sweet clear voice reminiscent of a young Kate Rusby, Jhana Allan sings her songs strong and true. This is a beautiful collection.” -Lucie Thorne

Ngiyampaa man Pirritu’s (Brett Lee) music is gentle, intricate and highly melodic – strange but beautifully framed chords overlaid with gently weaving vocals that sing to you a story of both sadness and hope.

Enticing you into the depths of his stories, Pirritu’s sound comes from lazy days filled with listening to folk and acoustic surf tunes with hints of country hidden between the lines. His writing is honest and personal, set against a soundscape that goes from sunny and toe tapping to a rainy sadness felt by a lonely lover on a Sunday.

Brett was adopted by a non-Aboriginal couple when he was a newborn baby but was raised to be proud of his Aboriginality and encouraged to follow his cultural journey to wherever it was to take him. He began this journey connecting back to family, culture and language when he was 14 years old. Two things are driving his continual thirst to connect to country, language, culture and mob, and that is his one year old daughter and his passion for music.

He is also involved in a volunteering capacity in the Ngiyampaa Language Project through providing his time and skills to testing materials being created for the purpose of updating the Ngiyampaa Grammar written by Tamisin Donaldson in the 1970’s. Through being involved in this project he is gaining a deeper understanding of his mother tongue which has mostly ceased being spoken among Ngiyampaa people. Again, his daughter and passion for music drives his thirst for this knowledge.

Oh, and if you’re wondering where ‘Pirritu’ comes from or what it means, its actually ‘Brett’ written in the grammar of his native Ngiyampaa Language. Something he learnt through his work with the Project

Over the past 12 months Pirritu has been involved with Gidgeeburra Productions with performances and workshops through 2018 with his musical mentor Glenn Skuthorpe.

Brett works as Art Project Officer at The Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency (VACCA) running two long term projects with Indigenous youth in Melbourne: the Koorie Tiddas girls choir (ages 10-16 years) that write and perform their own music expressing their lived experiences of being Aboriginal young people in Melbourne; and an art mentoring program that works to establish and support young Aboriginal artists in Melbourne to create work for an exhibition.

Brett sits on the Board of Songlines, Victoria’s peak Aboriginal music body, a not-for-profit organisation which has supported Aboriginal musicians since 1996 by providing professional development programs, performance opportunities and administering a range of festivals and events.