Harry Jakamarra on his times on the road, his upcoming EP and a fascination with Indian slide-guitar
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Harry Jakamarra on his times on the road, his upcoming EP and a fascination with Indian slide-guitar

Harvesting his skills in song writing, banjo and guitar, Harry Jakamarra has also developed a fascination with Indian classical slide-guitar. The result being a truly raw and unique sound, which many describe as ‘Gothic-Australiana’.

Inspiring this unique sound, many of Jakamarra’s songs are actually inspired by his extensive travels and time on the road. “A large part of the songs I’ve sort of been writing for the last four or five years are while I’ve been on my own,” Jakamarra says. “I live in a house truck, it’s an old fire engine that’s been turned into a house and I’ve been on the road a lot for the last few years. A lot of the songs are actually inspired by various places, like ‘Salt Creek’ is a song I started writing when I was driving through Salt Creek and I thought it sounded like a pretty good name for a song.

“I’m a big fan of Malian music – I actually went to Mali to go to some incredible music festivals in the desert, which actually haven’t happened since because civil war started at the tail end of the festival and Mali – well it’s still on the road to recovery,” he says, “African music is a big influence – we used to play a lot of African music at home and lots of Bluegrass as well. It’s a pretty strange mix. I’m also quite interested in Indian classical music – I went and studied classical music for a while in India and that taught me a lot about melody.”

In the lead up his upcoming EP, which features guest appearances from Ben Franz, bassist of Australian folk rock band The Waifs and Melbourne singer-songwriter, Liz Stringer, Jakamarra worked alongside Australia songwriter, singer and guitarist Jeff Lang, who played a role as engineer/producer for the project. “It was amazing to work with Jeff. I’ve been a huge fan of his since I was like 13. Someone gave me a CD of him playing and it completely blew my mind – so it was a bit of a dream come true getting to work with him.

“He didn’t want to add too much, which was really nice. He kind of let me do my thing but had some great pointers as well. He produced in a very subtle way – he definitely didn’t over produce which I really liked because I like things to be really peeled back and to let the strength of the song be in the forefront,” Jakamarra says.

Growing up in Broome, WA, Jakamarra was inspired to pick up the guitar after seeing Australian country and Aboriginal rock band, Warumpi Band, perform on TV when he was a child.

“I saw them play when I was a kid and I just thought it was the most awesome thing ever. It was like, you know, watching them on local TV, just dancing around in my undies with my little plastic guitar – that’s how it all began.”

With songs consisting of narrative based lyrics which are highly powerful and carefully crafted, Jakamarra explains the complexity of song writing and the truth the comes from within them.

“Song writing is so complicated, it takes so many years to be a good songwriter – this is definitely a very particular set of narrative songs, so hopefully people just really like the stories. They’re not happy stories – but hopefully there’s some kind of universal truth in these stories that people can take away.”

When & Where: Major Tom’s, Kyneton – May 6, Del Tauro House Concert, Jan Juc – May 13 & The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood – May 9, May 16, May 23 & May 30

EP Release: May 9

Written by Helena Metzke