Mission Songs Project

(Australia)

Mission Songs Project
Mission Songs Project

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Singer, composer, story-teller, Jessie Lloyd’s Mission Songs Project is the fruit of two years of travelling around Australia, talking with elders and collecting the disappearing secular songs sung by Indigenous Australians forced to live on the Christian missions and state-run settlements, many of them taken from their families as children. Restricted from practising their culture and talking their language, new songs appeared, using Western instruments and sung in English. Most of the songs Jessie Lloyd collected stem from the 1920s and ‘30s and the sound of the music is, at surface listening, upbeat and happy, yet the subject matter is often about loss and separation. The project aims to revive these songs and tell the stories behind them. It has performed to Indigenous audiences around Australia, as well as folk music festivals and mainstream cultural events.

Jessie Lloyd - vocals, guitar
Candice Lorrae - vocals
Kristel Kickett - vocals