For some artists, a hit single can be a monkey on their back – especially if it’s a cover of another artist’s song. This is not the case for Christine Anu, who will almost certainly always be best known for her version of My Island Home, the 1987 Warumpi Band classic originally written for the group’s late singer George Rrurrambu Burarrawanga, a Yolŋu man from Elcho Island.
The resonance isn’t lost on Anu, a Torres Strait Islander by descent. “What a privilege and honour it was,” she says. “This song was loved very much and very deeply by a whole audience before it even became a song that I knew about.”
Anu’s version, re-titled as Island Home and released in 1994, made her a star, propelling her 1995 debut album Stylin’ Up to platinum status in Australia. The album’s effervescent fusion of pop, R&B and traditional songs earned her an ARIA award. “She had that Neneh Cherry kind of brashness and confidence,” says its producer, David Bridie.
But it has taken the best part of another 30 years for Anu to make an album that fully reflects her heritage and status: her mother is from Saibai, just south of Papua New Guinea; her late father is from Mabuiag in central Torres Strait. The resulting record, Waku – Minaral A Minalay, includes many songs originally written by her grandfather, Nadi.
“Waku” refers to the pandanus mats that, for Torres Strait Islanders, signify a life’s journey from cradle to grave, Anu says, and their construction is a metaphor for family and community. “Minaral” means colours, “minalay” patterns. “It’s like the tapestry of our lives is all woven together,” Anu says. “It’s not just ornamental.”
There have been many threads to Anu’s life since Stylin’ Up. She performed Island Home at the Sydney 2000 Olympics closing ceremony and has appeared in film and TV, including Moulin Rouge and The Masked Singer, and on stage in the musicals South Pacific and Hairspray, among others.
But as a recording artist, she had stalled. After a couple of albums of original songs in the early 2000s, Anu has largely released compilation and cover records: a children’s album, a Christmas album, live albums. “I don’t think I was ready for any new material,” she says. She needed to reconnect with the voice from her debut.
In that sense, Stylin’ Up had become a monkey on her back. She even approached Bridie to re-record the album for its 20th anniversary, which he declined: “I just thought it was good the first time,” he says. Eventually she recorded a live in-studio version. “And David was right!” she says.
It was her appearance on SBS ancestry show Who Do You Think You Are? that led Anu to discover her own deep musical roots. A German ethnomusicologist, Wolfgang Laade, had recorded her maternal grandfather Nadi Anu, a Saibai songman, singing his own compositions. The story of Nadi, and his songs, form the backbone of Waku – Mineral a Minalay.
It also reconnected her with Bridie, as well as most of the musicians who made Stylin’ Up, to make an album that is clearly a descendent, rather than a remake. “Maybe it took her this long to feel confident and driven to dive back into her Saibai heritage,” Bridie says.
The results are a triumph for both, especially Anu. Waku is a grown-up, bilingual album by an singer in full command of her identity and artistry. But it wasn’t made without difficulty. For the language songs on Waku, Anu – who had been hurt by accusations that she had exploited her cultural heritage for commercial gain on Stylin’ Up – knew she needed the authority to sing them. She was reassured by an uncle and elder, Jensen Warusam, who also acted as a translator and researcher.
As well as being a decorated second world war corporal, Nadi was a seaman and trochus lugger. Several songs are about the constellation Tagai, through which he would navigate. “He was probably spending a lot of the night watching Tagai above – the stars, the clouds, the sun, the rain and the moon cycle,” Anu says.
With Waku finished, Anu has finally been able to reconnect the threads of her early career to her family lineage. “You lay down the mat, and you’re walking along all of that cross-stitching and all of the beautiful patterns and colours of the stories that Grandad has created. And then after somebody goes, you roll up the mat, and you hand over those stories.”
First published in the Guardian, 28 July 2024