A call to open ears, fusing ancient and contemporary.

Yolngu manikay (song cycles)—an oral tradition from Southeast Arnhem Land that’s over 40,000 years old—in conversation with a Korean vocalist and minimalist jazz.

“The songline and raki, they pull. Two things. They pull you or they can touch you. You’re not singing from your head, you’re singing from your heart.” — Daniel Wilfred

Yolngu manikay exist to cross vast stretches of time and space and connect to raki, the spirit that pulls all together. These songlines form the heart of Hand to Earth. Trumpeter and composer Peter Knight from the Australian Art Orchestra developed the project over more than a decade and half—travelling, listening and improvising within the spark of instant rapport between Yolngu songman Daniel Yipininy Wilfred and Korean vocalist Sunny Kim. Kim sings in English and Korean while intoning gestures that invoke raw elemental forces. Their vocal approaches are melded into the atmospheres created by trumpeter/composer Peter Knight, David Yipininy Wilfred on yidaki and Aviva Endean on clarinets, woven into minimalist soundscapes reminiscent of Brain Eno and Jon Hassell. It’s a collaboration that opens its ears to the world’s oldest continually practiced music and taps into the essence of human connection and transports the listener to previously unimagined places. They’ll be opening the Forum upstairs space for RISING in a very special performance.

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Natalie Mering said it best herself when she described her folk project as “nostalgic futurism”. It evokes golden sounds of the ‘70s—the songcraft of the Carpenters and the aching, baroque pop of Judee Sill. But where Sill had her mind set on religious rapture and redemption, Mering has her sights set on more grounded connections in a tech-jangled world.

Weyes Blood is in the middle of a three-album trilogy—beginning with 2019’s Titanic Rising and following up with last year’s And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow—that’s a vivid, gorgeously arranged missive for moments of companionship. Reach out and sway.