As far as music projects go, Crown and Country is one of the most innovative ones coming from Australia in recent months.
But this collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists is unlike any other album you’ve heard before.
In fact, it’s not a record in the traditional sense of the word at all. It’s a creative audiovisual project, brought to life by a hypnotic soundtrack and evocative cinematic imagery.
PART 234 OF “AM I EVER GONNA SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN?” A RANDOM COLLECTION OF UNKNOWINGLY OBVIOUS FACTS ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSIC SCENE
As someone genuinely interested in Australia’s First Nations culture, I’m always drawn to projects that combine music and education. However, this release added another layer to my curiosity, making it an even more immersive experience.
The best way I can describe Crown and Country is as part spoken-word performance and part spellbinding audiobook, narrating the origin story of the place we foreigners commonly know as Australia. It is a transcendental, reflective and deeply enveloping body of work that defies convention and any genre classification.
Three elements combined make it so unique: the incredible First Nations storytellers, the mesmerising electronic music score that accompanies their teachings and the visually stunning film setting that further amplifies the project’s message.
At the heart of this realm is the voice of prolific Warlpiri philosopher, teacher and visionary, Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu, from the desert community of Lajamanu in the north Tanami Desert. The Warlpiri are a relatively small group of Aboriginal Australians (approximately 5,000–6,000 people) who live in settlements on their traditional lands in the Northern Territory, north and west of Alice Springs (Mparntwe). Approximately half ot them still speak the Warlpiri language, including Wanta Jampijinpa.
A critically important figure in contemporary Warlpiri philosophy and research, Wanta Jampijinpa is a leader in cultural education and community-based art. A fully initiated elder, he holds rare and exceptional knowledge of the Warlpiri law in the Tanami Desert.
He graduated from the Warlpiri sky ceremonies in the 1980s and was admitted to the highest order of traditional learning by Warlpiri elders in 2008. Thus, he was made the custodian of his relatives’ ceremonies and Country, and the guardian of their songlines. His homeland is Pawu (Mt Barkley), and he is also responsible for looking after Kulpulurnu, a key site for Ngapa Jukurrpa (Rain Dreaming).
Wanta Jampijinpa is passionate about reinvigorating Warlpiri culture by finding traditional principles relevant to contemporary community life.
He has been pivotal in numerous community and academic projects, for example, as Creative Director of the innovative Milpirri Festival. This collaboration between Tracks Dance – a hub for community dance in NT – and the Lajamanu community began already in 2005. Additionally, he’s co-directed several films, like “Milpirri: Winds of Change” (2014) and “Ngapa Jukurrpa – Water Songline” (2016), which is available on SBS On Demand.
He has long collaborated with colleagues at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and acted as a Professor for the Indigenous Knowledge Institute at the University of Melbourne between 2022 and 2024. He was also a Research Fellow at the Australian National University (ANU). To present his research on Warlpiri culture and contemporary values, he has travelled overseas as a Warlpiri international ambassador.
Finally, as a musician, he was a touring member of the influential North Tanami Band in the 2000s.
Wanta Jampijinpa is the son of one of the most senior Warlpiri elders, songmen and lawmen still living in the central desert. Jerry Jangala Patrick OAM is also an important part of this story – his traditional singing grounds the work in Warlpiri ceremony.
Born in the 1930s at Lirrapuntji, north of the Warlpiri community of Willowra, he grew up in the desert in the traditional way. His family walked across the Tanami Desert to Willowra and then Yuendumu in the 1940s. When the government began to relocate people from Yuendumu to the new settlement of Hooker Creek (renamed Lajamanu in 1978), he made the journey on foot. After arriving at the new settlement with his family around 1948, he worked (for no payment) on building the airstrip and as a drover at Waterloo station.
Jerry Jangala is a First Contact Elder who met a party of white people for the first time in the mid-1940s. That included renowned botanist and anthropologist Olive Pink.
Today, he is a highly respected teacher and pastor whose knowledge has helped promote an understanding of Warlpiri culture. Closely involved with numerous academics, he is also the key elder of the Milpirri Festival and the Warlpiri ranger program, as well as a founding member of the Kurdiji Law and Justice Committee who worked in Lajamanu alongside the Australian legal system. He received an Order of Australia (OAM) for his enormous effort in translating the Bible into the Warlpiri language.
The father and son’s extraordinary work and deep intergenerational cultural knowledge are perfectly combined in Crown and Country. In this unique project, the poetic, evocative and nuanced teachings of Warlpiri culture are “translated” into an immersive experience of music and film.
Driven by Wanta Jampijinpa’s goal for Australians to embrace their shared heritage of Country, the release offers a glimpse into the depths of the Warlpiri cosmological worldview. Witnessing this intimate conversation with a fully initiated Warlpiri man, listeners are invited to reflect on their relationship to Country, their identity, and their own journey.
To me, the project’s most impactful part is a quietly charged offer of reconciliation, belonging, and re-imagining of a shared future.
Crown and Country is narrated from the point of view of a deep friendship and respect between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. At a critical turning point for desert communities, the last Warlpiri elders who grew up in a traditional lifestyle remember their first contact with colonial Australia. At the same time, the next generations look to find meaning in a shared and contested land. It is a true privilege to bear witness to this transformation.
Electronic music might not be the first genre that comes to mind when you think about the accompanying soundtrack. But the hypnotic soundscape created in collaboration with award-winning producer and composer Marc ‘Monkey’ Peckham, takes the listening experience to a new level.
Described by VICE as “Australian electronic music’s best-kept secret”, Monkey has released on labels in Europe, the USA and Australia, and performed at the world’s biggest festivals, including Glastonbury, Boomtown and Symbiosis.
His second home is the desert. He has worked with First Nations communities on music and culture projects for over 25 years, helping to strengthen, preserve and reinvigorate their knowledge and amplify their voices. He pioneered Transfer of Knowledge projects in the early 2000s, which convert traditional Dreamtime stories into modern songs through youth music workshops.
In 2015, his work facilitating the ‘Barkly Desert Culture’ program won a National Local Government Award in the ‘Arts Animates’ category. It consisted of mentoring First Nations youth in hip-hop music and producing several hip-hop acts that he toured to Sand Tracks and multiple festivals. This resulted in winning a NIMA (National Indigenous Music Award) for Best Community Film Clip in 2014.
His other projects encompass co-producing acclaimed Indigenous women’s band Kardajala Kirridarra’s self-titled debut album. The band fuses electronic music with contemporary First Nations storytelling, and it won the NT Song of the Year in 2017.
Monkey has also recently worked on Groote Eylandt as the Music and Cultural Lead of the Preserving Culture Department of Anindilyakwa Land Council, co-writing the NT Song of the Year 2024, sung in the Anindilyakwa language.
The producer shares a remarkable creative relationship and a deep friendship with the two Walpiri men, spanning 15 years in Lajamanu. It includes work on the Milpirri Festival as the music composer since 2012.
Crown and Country encapsulates years of recordings of conversations between Wanta Jampijinpa and Monkey, accompanied by a very special soundtrack.
Inspired by early 2000s Berlin electronica and rhythm & sound minimal dub techno, the music on the album is steeped in Monkey’s signature hypnotic dub-infused grooves. Listening to it, you are transported into vast desert landscapes and a world of profound beauty and extraordinary ceremonial knowledge. It’s a cosmic journey through a brooding, meditative, synth-laden soundscape.
You’ll soon be able to experience this sonic feast for yourself. The album releases worldwide via ABC Music and French label Akuphone on August 1st, 2025.
But there’s more to it.
To complete the project’s immersive side, the Crown and Country world has also been captured on camera. Cinematographer James Gillot filmed Wanta Jampijinpa, Jerry Jangala, and their grandson/great-grandson Keshawn Patrick on Warlpiri country, with support from another filmmaker, Jeff Bruer. Part of the movie they’ve created is the clip for “Wantarri (Gift)” – one of the tracks from the album.
The entire film, along with an artist talk, debuts as part of the Darwin Festival this year. That will be followed by a community screening in Lajamanu and a feature at the interdisciplinary art festival Now or Never in Melbourne in late August.
So, if you’re keen on exploring Australia’s First Nations teachings, do not hesitate to step into the world of Crown and Country. It is a truly unique opportunity to experience Aboriginal culture in a multidimensional way that creatively fuses tradition and modernity.
Because when First Nations storytelling meets electronic music, extraordinary things happen.
Meet more First Nations-led music projects from Australia:
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