Back in 2010, I was struggling with the tide at Woodford Folk Festival on my way to catch a band that had taken the week by storm. I had heard their name bandied about, and had vague memories of hearing them broadcast onRageand triple j, but was otherwise coming into the performance blind.
Trudging through the flooded streets with thousands of other sodden festival folk, however, one thing was undeniable – Blue King Brown had a whole lot of people excited, and it took no time at all to understand why. A sea of dancing people sprawled back from the stage stretching off into the night, with the maestro in the middle, Nattali Rize (then known as Natalie Pa’apa’a), inciting everyone to their feet. Her voice was incredible – but as she explains it, singing is not a talent that came easily.
“I feel very lucky,” Rize admits. Her answers are warm and direct, and while most people tend to speak in sentences that spatter about like beads of spilt ink, Rize is strikingly clear in what she has to say. “I still consider myself very much a student in the world of singing. My first love was guitar and I picked that up quickly, could play it easily. It felt very natural, and when I first started trying percussion I felt the same. But when it came to singing, suddenly this thing was fucking hard. I couldn’t just open my mouth and sing, and I felt kind of bad about it. But now, I see my voice as having had a real journey. I practise singing more than any other instrument; I try and push myself daily to become a stronger singer. And I feel now as though I’ve broken through a level and started to open up, and to be honest I really think that only happened while I was in Jamaica. Just trying new music, finding different styles and spending time alone in the studio. I do a lot of my vocal recordings myself, because then I can really hone in on exactly how I want it. After doing that, I feel like my voice is stronger now and has a bit more of a unique sound to it, but at the same time I still feel like I can still get better. I can still reach forward.”
Today, Blue King Brown are in the midst of touring their latest album, Born Free, four years after their last release, Worldwize, Part 1: North & South. Prior to that, we had another four-year gap since Stand Up. One can only assume that the next record will drop like clockwork at the close of 2018.
“I know!” Rize laughs. “There’s been no planning. It’s a balance for us between touring and the studio. Trust me, I’d love to have albums out in half that time. It’s more a case of you look around and, ‘Woah, four years have gone by? Holy shit!’ But that’s the nature of the beast with us. We don’t do a lot of writing on the road, and we’re on the road a lot. Time is key, time is the master, and we just have to roll with it. And we don’t want to release anything unless it’s the best group of songs out of all that we’ve written. These have to be the dopest tracks, and have to be able to hold strong in our minds as well as other people who hear it.”
This sense of strength-in-numbers sits close to the heart of Blue King Brown. From their fledgling days in Byron Bay, developing a communal sound has been pivotal to their motivation, and forging a genuine bridge between performer and listener is something that seems to resonate with Rize more so than with many other touring artists. The impact – or rather, the potential – of their songs in affecting positive change and social justice acts like a pilot light for the band.
“Music is a huge part of my life, like everyone,” Rize says. “Everyone is music. It makes up our memories, our good times and bad times, that’s its power. You can enjoy it by yourself, and other times it’s something you share with as many people as you can, like we try and do now. I guess with Blue King Brown we have come to be a group that is known for the lyrical content, and also for actually being activists. I speak at a lot of rallies, we perform at a lot of benefits. For us, we’re just doing what we feel in our hearts and souls is part of our purpose as human beings.
“It was never a preconceived concept that Blue King Brown would be a particular kind of band. We just got together wanting to make kick-arse music that people would dance to and connect with. I’m passionate about human rights, about justice, and so of course that will come through in our music. I guess it’s up to other people to say where we stand in the tradition of protest songs, but even that term ‘protest songs’ makes me cringe a little. It boxes the music into some label, whereas I think that we’re approaching a new era where we’re not protesting as much as we are offering empowerment and a movement for truth.
“We’re all born equally. A government doesn’t have any power unless you give it to them, and you give it to them every time you go to the polling booth. It’s the same with any authority. They only possess it when you’re willing to recognise it, where in reality, they don’t. We are all equal. “For us, music is a way we offer that spark to be yourself, and who we are as people all wanting a better future.”
As the title of Born Free suggests, this is a theme that stretches across the entire album. Blue King Brown’s rising popularity suggests it’s not simply the beats that are keeping people listening; it’s the frank, joyous sentiment to stand up and be unshackled. Their sound is enthusiastic and catchy as hell, though as Rize is first to admit, it has taken time for this country to finally embrace what the music has to offer. “Australia is so far behind in the whole reggae genre,” she laughs.
“Ska, reggae, dancehall, all of it. But slowly and surely it’s creeping forward. We love bands like the Melbourne Ska Orchestra, it’s so good to see them having such a broad reach. People actually really like it when they hear them; I think they just haven’t had much access to it in the past. I mean, even if you only go as far as New Zealand you can find reggae songs at number one. Reggae is huge everywhere outside of Australia, and so one of the things we hope to do is to see reggae and ska flourish in this country. It’s a main part of our mission. We’d love to see more Jamaican reggae come to Australia, more Hawaiian reggae, Irish reggae, more US reggae. We’re not there yet, but it’s building, slow and inevitable. We just have to keep getting the sound out there.”
Born Free out now throughMGM. Catch Blue King Brown alongsideKahl Wallis atMetro TheatreonFriday January 16, tickets online.Also appearing alongside The Black Keys, Zac Brown Band, Alabama Shakes, Train and many more at Bluesfest, Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Thursday April 2 – Monday April 6, tickets here.
