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The Briscoe Sisters.
The first time North Queensland duo The Briscoe Sisters came
to Adelaide was for a school excursion in the 1990s. The second
time will be their appearance at this year's WOMAD. In between,
they have released one CD-EP entitled 'Check It Out', transformed
from a trio to duo (Naurita and Deline Briscoe), added a band
and supported many big name acts such as Midnight Oil, The Cat
Empire and Kev Carmody.
Add to all this an abundance of critical acclaim for their strong harmonies and mix of rootsy soul, funk, gospel and ballads, and it's a set of impressive achievements for an act which in many ways is still just starting... the EP is now about 18 months old, but a new as yet untitled live CD will be available at WOMAD, featuring their new band Heyoka, which happens to include two of their brothers in the line-up.
The live sound will therefore be quite full, with guitars, keyboards, percussion, bass and drums - "We have as much fun as we can while we're up there on stage," says Deline. What about the trademark harmonies though, which bring to mind their heroes Tiddas? Do they come naturally or need a fair amount of work?
"Our mum and her two sisters used to sing together so it's pretty much just natural harmonies I guess," explains Deline. "With the dynamics as well, we're practically twins, one and the same person, me and Naurita because we sing the dynamics exactly like each other."
Adds Naurita: "A lot of our dynamics are usually formed from onstage rather than practising. We think, "Oh that was good tonight, we'll keep that one!"
The lyrics of the title track to 'Check It Out' focus on revenge on an ex-boyfriend, though Deline confirms the song is based on nothing more than a vivid imagination. She is also keen to use her music as a vehicle to express ideas she considers need to be brought to light...
"Like child sex abuse, no-one really speaks about that. I think if there's one thing I can change through music is to stop suffering of sex abuse. One song I wrote for that, Reason To Stop, every time we've sung it people have been, I guess, freed from their experiences and it's empowered them. That's one thing that I'm really grateful about, is that my message does get across to people."
As well as singing in English, the pair often uses their language Kuku Yalanji, although of course most people outside their own area will be unfamiliar with it. This doesn't necessarily affect the listener's appreciation of the music, however.
"We recently won a trip to Sydney," says Deline, "and we went through this tunnel where there was this Japanese man busking and he had this little placard in front of him saying "I believe music crosses all borders". So we sat down and had a jam - he was singing in Japanese and we were doing harmonies with him.
"I was taking that onboard and just saying 'Yeah it does', and then yesterday we were in Brisbane. We were in a limousine and the driver was like, "sing us a song"; we sang a song in our language and he was crying. He doesn't know what we're singing about... I explained later what we were singing about and he said "You made me cry!" So yeah, music does cross all borders regardless of what language you're singing in, what style you're singing to."
Distribution for the new CD will be largely via their new website; unfortunately the host of their previous site went bankrupt so the new site was still in progress at the time of speaking. "I guess we'll be self-distributing!" is how Naurita sees it.
"One thing we're very wary of is someone trying to change what we do. We want to keep it real, it's more about the music. Later on, we'll be picking artists that aren't heard of that we admire. We're going to look into doing stuff with them, selling their CD on our site and stuff like that as well. Just people that we know and we respect as artists. This music needs to be heard, so why not!"
The Briscoe Sisters with Heyoka will perform twice at WOMADelaide 2006. When asked why people must check them out, Deline offers the following advice: "Because we have a totally new indigenous sound for Australia and if you don't hear it at WOMAD, you've got to wait for the next WOMAD to hear it I guess, unless you're travelling around with us.
"I don't think anyone else sings what we do and we sing in our language. There's not many people from our area that are doing what we're doing. If you've never heard the Kuku Yalanji language, this is the best place to come and hear it."
Lest anyone get the wrong idea concerning the nature of their performance given the experience of the limo driver, Naurita is quick to confirm, "We make people laugh too!"
Michael Hunter
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The Briscoe Sisters play at WOMAD Fri 10 to Sun 12 March - on Fri and Sun night sessions.
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