Kanana means “land where the sun sets” in the ancestral language of Noongar woman and Naarm (Melbourne)-based artist Amy Dowd, aka Bumpy. A deeply personal and spiritual album, her debut catalogs her journey to her Noongar Boodja homeland to connect with family and Country, learn about her history and deepen her journey of language revitalization. Key to the project was determining how best to preserve and carry on the language work of her late Nan, who wrote the first Noongar dictionary. “Traveling around with Mum and visiting people who had worked with my Nan, and meeting elders I haven’t seen since I was a baby, or going where Mum grew up on the mission, I came back to Naarm and was like, ‘Oh my God, how do I write about this?’” Bumpy tells Apple Music. “I thought, ‘Well, let’s just start with the experiences that happened. The journey is forever, but let’s start with those moments.’” The foundations of Kanana were laid during Bumpy’s Melbourne International Jazz Festival commission with the Australian Art Orchestra in 2024, in which she molded those experiences into an acclaimed show, Tooni (her Noongar name). “When the project finished I was like, ‘We can’t just leave the works there,’” she says. “We reimagined them with the band we perform with and added some songs that have been in the repertoire that help narrate the story.” From utilizing massed voices and swelling orchestration to replicate the grandeur of the moment she entered the ocean on her Nan’s Country (“Maambakoort,” which translates as “ocean”) to channeling a Wurundjeri dreamtime story on opener “River Skies,” Kanana’s tales of family, Country, and connection are delivered in a funk, jazz, and neo-soul-indebted package that befits an artist who lists Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Erykah Badu, and Emma Donovan as influences. (Donovan guests on the album as part of the “Bumpy choir.”) Here, Bumpy talks Apple Music through her debut album Kanana, track by track. “River Skies” “It’s a dreamtime story from Wurundjeri Country, passed through Uncle Ian Hunter. The sacred kingfisher bird visits every spring at the Merri Creek, and the story passed on to us was that they take past spirits from land Country to star Country to dreaming. And because they’re migration birds, they take it all the way. Arrangement-wise we’re kind of giving lower textures and then into these sprinkly, light, starry [ones], trying to narrate the landscape through the music, beyond the lyrics.” “Kanana” “The word ‘Kanana’ really stuck with me when I learnt it. It reminded me of a memory I had when I was on Larrakia Country and at the Mindil Market. They have the night market and everybody gets a feed and they sit down on the beach. And as the last slither of the sun disappeared, the whole beach just erupted in this cheer and this clapping. I thought, how beautiful that we were all seated for that one moment and were connected and together. Then I thought, ‘What’s that perspective from Kanana, the land where the sun sets?’ I wanted to create this imaginary world where we could see what Kanana sees—a sea of people all together and united. Imagine if we could take that unity into something else. I think the world would be a bit better.” “Maambakoort” “The very first lyrics, ‘I arrive before the sun/I’ll be your introduction to feel something warm,’ are directly pulled from a journal. I got [to the ocean] before sunrise and it was cold, and I felt like I was bringing the warmth. And as I went to the water’s edge on my Nanny’s Country, I was there alone, and it felt like the wind swirled and it got a bit rougher and it felt really dramatic. Then as the light started creeping through, it cleared up and the clouds opened and it actually smoothed out on the water. And it was that bizarre thing that it felt like it recognized me. I felt like I recognized and knew this water deeply. I had a really profound moment. I thought, I have to write a big, dramatic ballad about this because it just left such a big impact. I really felt connected to my history at that point.” “Lessons” “It was something that one of my nans said to me when we were down south. We sat around with a cuppa, and we were just yarning about mission stories and what they remember, and language. And then Nan was like, ‘Time is of the essence, time to learn your lessons.’ That stuck in my brain, and I had a journal entry that was just that over and over again and I thought, that’s a beautiful mantra for this whole album. Because that’s really what it felt like I’m doing, I’m trying to learn what I need to know, and I very much understand the time crunch in that.” “Nan’s the Word” “I wrote this with my brother and my partner, and we kind of had the line ‘Nan’s the word’ in the essence of like, ‘Nan’s the gospel.’ So with this song, we wanted it to be joyous and a celebration. There’s a lot of hardship in so much of the album, but I was like, ‘Let’s just celebrate our Nan and celebrate our Mum and celebrate our aunties and our sisters. Let’s fuel it up and get the choir in, let’s get the horns on it and give it what it deserves.’” “Feel Good” “That was written on a camping trip after COVID. We left the city and were like, ‘Let’s get to the water and cook on the fire.’ It was the most beautiful night, and we all got up on the sand dune, and we could see the sunset and the moonrise. So in the beginning of the track, I’m just narrating what I’m seeing—all of us are standing on this dune together and I was like, ‘The world is crazy, but for right now we’re feeling good, and let’s celebrate in this moment.’ I wanted to ensure that the album had those moments.” “Cosy Comfy” “My brother lives in South Gippsland, and we were literally sitting on his outside couch looking at these rolling hills with a cup of coffee in our jammies. He left the city so we were yarning about how does that feel? What’s the push and pull for you? And this song came out of that. We wanted the outro to have something you can sit right in. We’re like, ‘Let’s just get comfy cosy in this groove and hang out there for a while.’” “Essence” “As the album addresses the audience it’s like, ‘Hey, look what I’ve been learning and it’s made a huge impact for me. Maybe this inspires you to learn yours.’” “Pressure” “‘Pressure’ came off the back of the referendum, and just sitting with those feelings. It feels like, especially in this industry, you’re often the only woman or Black woman in this space, and I guess just talking to the pressure of having your community on your shoulders and having to constantly exert and tell your story and tell people why you deserve to be in these spaces. So it’s talking about struggling with that pressure a little bit. Then it moves into, ‘Well, I’m going to burn it all down and take ownership of my space and who I am.’” “Untangling” “I was like, ‘[The album] has to finish with “Untangling” because of the sentiment of “never lost, yet to be found.”’ That’s another line my Nan said to me when I was over there: ‘It always exists, and it always has existed. And it does exist somewhere. It’s never lost, it’s just waiting for you to go find it.’ Whenever I would feel stuck, especially on a language journey, it’s just that optimistic perspective of going, there is a way through, you’ve just got to work harder and find it. In the second verse I’m speaking to my Nan—‘It’s in my name/To be loved and find you again’—because I’m named after my Nan, my middle name being Rose. And ‘to be loved’ is the meaning of ‘Tooni,’ which is my Noongar name, and then to find you again. So it’s kind of just a big summary of the whole adventure that I went on. That’s why I really love to end with it.”