Award-winning Indigenous Australian artist Jessie Lloyd is exploring Brixton’s culture and heritage through song.
Following her renowned Mission Songs project, which saw Lloyd gather and revive the music of Indigenous Elders in Australia, the artist and musician is creating an incredible mapping project in Brixton, having been invited by arts organisation Border Crossings, as part of their ORIGINS festival.
Lloyd will apply her Indigenous methodology of working with communities in south London to delve into the rich stories of the local area and bring them to life, working alongside Tony Cealey, the community animateur who leads outreach to the Brixton area. Lloyd aims to explore the commonalities of experience between Indigenous Australians and Black Britons, using music to commemorate heritage, and emphasise it within global histories of racism and emerging processes of reconciliation.
There will be live music and storytelling events in October, and the collection of songs, and some community stories, will result in an interactive music app, created by Aswarm, led by artist Thor McIntyre-Burnie that will launch in December.
Lloyd’s grandfather Albie Geia was a leader in the 1957 Palm Island Strike, which like the events in Brixton in 1981, were labelled ‘riots’, leading to Geia’s imprisonment. Drawing from her own family’s background and lived experiences, Lloyd is speaking to members of the Brixton community, including Alex Wheatle MBE, the award-winning novelist (Liccle Bit; Crongton Knights) who was sentenced and imprisoned following the 1981 Brixton uprising.
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Wheatle’s story was featured in the acclaimed series Small Axe in 2020, and he tells it to Lloyd as part of Mapping Brixton. Lee Jasper, the British politician and activist, is also speaking to Lloyd for the project, talking about his life and career as a race relations activist, his work in politics, as the Secretary of Notting Hill Carnival, a staunch member of the Stephen Lawrence campaign for justice, and his activism at the 1995 protests in Brixton.
From the tropics of North Queensland, Lloyd is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musician hailing from a musical family. Her father, Joe Geia, is a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous music, and Lloyd’s grandfather Albie Geia was the conductor of the Palm Island Brass Band. Lloyd was the CEO of Songlines Aboriginal Music in Melbourne, and is renowned for her Mission Songs project, which continued the 60,000-year history of Aboriginal Australian songlines, reviving 1990s Indigenous songs by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians on missions and state-run settlements.
Border Crossings Artistic Director Michael Walling comments, Working with Jessie in Brixton is incredibly inspiring. Her way of exploring people’s lives and cultural histories through song really brings the community into focus and animates the room! Age Concern Brixton was jumping like a club night!
Mapping Brixton Through Song is on Thursday 13th October at The Advocacy Academy
