Spinifex Gum | Spinifex Gum

“Some things stick like Spinifex Gum” and this song sure will.
Stick in your head, that is. It’s the hook that got me coming back to Spinifex Gum for more, time and time again.

As described on their Website:

Spinifex Gum is a musical collaboration between The Cat Empire’s Felix Riebl and Ollie McGill, and Marliya Choir, an all-female, all-Indigenous group from Cairns conducted by Lyn Williams (AM) and choreographed by Deborah Brown.  Part protest, part celebration, Spinifex Gum is a deep and affecting musical experience.  It has the power to disarm, inspire, and speak to us in a way that no individual voice can.

Indeed, there is something so moving about the youthful femininity of these voices singing in unison, calling out an abuse of power that has remained complicit in the erosion of our collective humanity for far too long.

I discovered Spinifex Gum through suggestions between friends on social media when one of them was programming a special for Naidoc week for a weekly radio show called Femme Fortisimo on Maine fm.

This must have been about a year ago, because Naidoc week has rolled around again and with this years ‘Heal Country’ theme, it couldn’t be more timely to bring up this sticky song and talk about the messages behind the music.

“Some things stick like spinifex gum
Like ants on honey like money on scum

And the rich gone digging down to kingdom come
And the double economy favours one
And the sum’s so high that below’s just crumbs
Some things stick like spinifex

Hurry back here, hurry back here
Hurry back home, hurry back home”

What makes this particular song from Spinifex Gum so important according to us is that while pointing out the flaws in our money system, the song always leads back to a solution: Hurry Back here, Hurry back home.

Spinifex Gum are calling us back to country. All of us.

“Some things stick like spinifex gum
When the media come better run, run, run

Like a catch phrase hanging on the premier’s tongue
Like a red match struck on an opinion bomb
It’s a spider’s web way the story’s spun
Some things stick like spinifex“

When the media come, better run, run run: what better way to say it? Where there is a story to be told, there is an audience to be polarised. This is the sad truth when it comes to mainstream journalistic conventions and media dramatisation.

If you don’t run, run, run you might find yourself caught on camera, doing the dirty work of the media corporation – whichever one happened to arrive on scene first.

A catch phrase hanging on the premiers tongue: we know those all too well in 2021; and with that in mind, everything that follows is like a red match struck on an opinion bomb.

Spinifex Gum point out the web we’re all caught in, referencing mother nature so artfully, then inviting us back home to the land once again.

“Hurry back here, hurry back here
Hurry back home, hurry back home“

The song continues with various references to language, dance and culture before ending on a high note by ultimately reminding us that:

“the future sees in the eyes of the young
Some things stick like spinifex gum!“

Discover more from Spinifex Gum here.