“I knew from the start of making this album that it would be honouring [Australia’s largest river system] the Murray-Darling Basin, and more specifically the Barwon River that runs through Brewarrina,” DOBBY, aka Wollongong-born Filipino and Murrawarri/Ngemba artist Rhyan Clapham, tells Apple Music. “As I went on and started talking to certain people who guided me, it started becoming about the Bogan River and the Culgoa River. It was the story of these three rivers meeting within a kilometre of each other.” Warrangu: River Story explores the interconnectedness of these waterways and their cultural significance to First Nations people, while also examining the man-made ecological devastation that is destroying the Murray-Darling Basin due to over-irrigation, redirection of the waterways and water theft. To tell this story, DOBBY ventured to his ancestral home—his grandmother was born and raised near Brewarrina; her father was born under a birthing tree on Murrawarri land on the Culgoa at Corella Station—to speak with relatives and First Nations community members. Recording their stories and piecing them into a narrative that flows across the album, DOBBY wrote a score to accompany the interviews, inspired by the rhythm, melody and inflection of his subjects’ voices. He also incorporated found sounds, such as the crack of sticks and stones in the dry riverbeds, flowing water and native birds like the pied butcherbird. Interspersed among these tracks is DOBBY’s organic, free-flowing hip-hop, which nods to Dilla in songs like “Language Is in the Land”, and features him rapping in English as well as local Aboriginal dialects Ngemba and Muruwari (“Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya”). “This is very much an inner learning and a constant journey for me personally, to be able to connect and engage with my language and my culture, and what a way to be able to do it through hip-hop music,” he says. Here, DOBBY unravels the story of Warrangu: River Story, an album seven years in the making, track by track. “River” “[Artist] Brad Steadman is walking me through a dry riverbed, telling me what the Bogan River means in terms of its connection to the Barwon River, and how that connects to the Culgoa, and what that means for us Mob, for us Blackfellas, for us Indigenous peoples. He said, ‘If you stand in this river [the Bogan], and I stand in the Barwon River, the pattern in that water that my feet make will meet up with yours. It’s all interconnected.’” “Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya” “‘Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya’ means ‘the bird names himself’. I recorded the [pied butcherbird] early morning at my Aunty Noeleen Shearer’s house in Brewarrina. That bird is completely unedited. The tempo is not touched, the melody is not touched. So it’s already singing that song. I just wanted to provide the music around it rather than shape the bird to me. It’s my amplification of that bird’s story as it overlooks the river.” “NGAANDU” “Aunty Josie Byno is a proud Murrawarri woman up in Weilmoringle. She’s talking to me at the waterhole at the Culgoa River in Brewarrina. She’s telling the story of what the waterhole meant to her as a kid, and again, I’m just providing what I’m hearing musically and responding underneath her with a bit of piano and a bit of a symphonic soundbed. What she’s talking about is also very part and parcel of what Brad’s talking about with the Bogan River—these rivers are connected.” “Water” “This is what we as community members and small towns throughout the Murray-Darling Basin feel about the entrapment of our water; the privatisation of our water; the over-irrigation; the taking away of water from our community, from our farmers. We are seeing fish die in the tens of millions; we’re absolutely being greedy. Corporate greed is taking over this beautiful Murray-Darling Basin that continues to sustain us, but is under direct threat.” “Matter of Time” “‘Matter of Time’ is my heightened moment of doom and gloom. It’s the realisation that if we don’t pay enough attention and hold these people accountable, then it’s only a matter of time before we’re going to lose this beautiful river system. We’re going to see much more ecological disaster and environmental catastrophe. How much can this river system take before we’ve done irreparable damage?” “BOGARI” “We’ve returned back to the Bogan River. Bogari is the word for the Bogan River. For me personally, it’s that eureka moment, when everything starts to click together. You can hear me say it in this track, because I had this moment when I’m listening to Brad [Steadman] speak and I go, ‘It’s all interconnected.’ There’s a couple of things musically happening as well. The beautiful piano that’s laid underneath his voice starts to click into the same rhythm and pattern that I had underneath Aunty Josie [in ‘NGAANDU’]. So I’m musically connecting the Bogan River, the Bogari, to the Ngaandu, the Culgoa River. Because the patterns in that river will meet up with your pattern in that river.” “Ancestor” “I wanted to use this moment, this platform as a hip-hop artist, to look inwards and have my journey; go into what it means to be connected. A lot of these tracks are about me learning from the community—‘Matter of Time’ is about me outputting to the listener as a call to action—but what was missing was that inward journey. That’s what ‘Ancestor’ represents: What does this all mean to me?” “Rivers Run Dry” “This is my cousin singing, Kelsey Iris. Her story talks about the river in a way that I can’t as a hip-hop artist. Her song is more in her folk style, and she’s singing so beautifully and sadly about ‘the river runs dry, and I cry and I cry and I cry’.” “WAHWANGU” “This feels like the final puzzle piece. We are back in the Barwon River. That’s the name for that river. We start off in the Bogari, go to the Ngaandu, and I come home to Wahwangu, where my family lives. Brad Steadman’s talking about a story of Old King Clyde. [At the end] it’s like credits—it has Aunty Lily Shearer’s voice, Brad Gordon, Uncle Tommy Barker and my Aunty Josie Byno. Finally, it’s got my grandmother in it, Mary Clapham Nee Shearer. A very, very heartfelt moment.” “Language Is in the Land” “‘Language Is in the Land’ is like the centrepiece of this entire project. It’s the amalgamation of all the knowledge that I’ve learned along the way, the stories that I’ve been told, and how I react to them, finally packaged into a call to action: What do I want to leave the listener with? It’s about fighting for these rivers, and it’s about knowing how to be proud and how to take care of our land and waterways. Even if you’re not an Aboriginal person, we all have a right to be proud of this country. What does that look like? It means listening to our First Nations peoples, it means listening to these small towns that are not given their rights to water.” “Story” “It comes back full circle, literally—we went north, east and then back down south, back to the Bogan River, where the story starts. It comes back to Brad and I just continuing that walk down the dry riverbed. You can hear the birds and you can hear that crackling of the empty river. He says to me, ‘You get a story’, which is exactly how he starts at the beginning of the album. And then it finishes.”