For two non-indigenous artists to take a story that has deep meaning for an indigenous community and turn it into a dramatic cantata is an exploit fraught with danger. Australian culture is littered with attempts by white artists to incorporate indigenous themes into their works; works which have foundered due to their authors’ patronising assumption that they can appropriate the trappings of another culture and use them as decoration for what are essentially European-style creations.

This is a snare that Steve Hawke and Paul Stanhope have triumphantly avoided with Jandamarra, a retelling of a story from the Bunuba people of the Kimberley. The concept of a dramatic cantata is of course a European one, but Hawke, whose connection to the Kimberley stretches back over thirty years, has worked closely with the Bunuba to tell this story of theirs.