First Nations didgeridoo player Mark Atkins and Australia jazz virtuoso James Morrison play a new arrangement of The Last Post atop the Sydney Opera House
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00:00 [Music plays]
00:10 Well this project, it goes back a long time, nearly 60 years.
00:17 It would have been about eight, nine I suppose, and it was all about putting them to rest,
00:23 the old people that had died in action, and for them to be remembered here in this country.
00:29 [Music plays]
00:32 I'm Mark Adkins.
00:34 For my mother's people, I'm Yamaji, Wungai and Witi.
00:39 I'm the didgeridoo player.
00:41 [Music plays]
00:47 I'm James Morrison and I'm a trumpet and bugle player.
00:51 So when I was first asked to be part of a project to get together with Mark
00:55 and do a new version of The Last Post, I thought, this is amazing,
01:00 because we get to pay tribute to the tradition by using that piece of music,
01:05 but to stand on top of the sails of the Opera House, you know,
01:08 together with didgeridoo and trumpet, playing this as the sun rose
01:12 and bringing those instruments together, like that Indigenous culture,
01:16 that ancient sound with the sound of the bugle, really, without any words,
01:22 says something about people coming together.
01:26 [Music plays]
01:30 [Music plays]
01:56 Anything that brings us together is necessary, and that does.
02:00 Just listen to it. We're united. We're together.
02:04 My name is David Alan Gordon-Williams.
02:07 I'm 76 years old. I'm a Bundjalung man.
02:11 I did 30 years in the military.
02:14 I'll tell you, this is inclusive for Australia.
02:19 The new arrangement is an opportunity to include our First Nations people
02:25 in that ceremony.
02:27 So my name's Geoff O'Brien.
02:28 I'm the State Secretary for RSL New South Wales.
02:31 I was a medic in the Australian Army in the mid-90s.
02:35 We don't necessarily always recognise the unique role
02:39 the First Nations people played in the ADF.
02:42 I think if you speak to a lot of First Nations veterans,
02:46 you'll find that their experience is a lot more inclusive in service
02:51 than it was outside of service.
02:54 The whole idea of the arrangement is to equally represent First Nation
03:00 and Australian soldiers and kind of create in the arrangement
03:04 that sense of camaraderie that was on the battlefield.
03:07 I'm Ricky Bloomfield.
03:08 I was the audio engineer on this project and co-produced it
03:12 with Mark and Chelsea.
03:14 My name's Chelsea Atkins, and for the last two and a half years
03:21 I've been the project manager of the last post First Nations
03:24 inclusion project.
03:26 You know, what I'd really hope to see would be new traditions
03:31 getting created within ANZAC ceremony and events
03:35 and acknowledgements.
03:37 Not taking away from the old and the tradition,
03:40 because that's so very vital and important.
03:43 It's having an inclusion into it.
03:46 It's really, it's the beginning of something that should have been done
03:50 and said a long time ago, but as they say,
03:53 there's no time like the present.
03:56 [silence]
03:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]