Latest news with #Anohni
ABC News
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Anohni mourns the Great Barrier Reef in her Sydney Opera House shows
Anohni Hegarty first sang on Australian stages almost 20 years ago, when her band — then called Antony and the Johnsons — played theatre shows that left audiences enraptured. This month, the band — now Anohni and the Johnsons — will play their final Australian shows, as their leader reckons with the environmental impact that comes with her profession. "The reason I don't intend to travel anymore to Australia with large groups of musicians is because it's just not environmentally tenable," Anohni says. "The footprint is too abhorrent. The amount of carbon that I burned to get here … it's football fields full of forests for me to come here with a group." Australian audiences are lucky to even see them here for this last tour, which takes in two nights at the Sydney Opera House at the end of the month. "I was going to cancel this show, honestly. But my intention in the past has been to try turning the opportunity into something that can be of service to Australian people." Previously, this has seen the singer spend time with the Martu people in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, returning years later to march in opposition to a now-scrapped proposal to build a uranium mine close to Indigenous communities in the area. This time, Anohni is focused on the Great Barrier Reef, where she has spent time investigating and documenting its destruction. "I put all the money or the proceeds from the concert into this project, Mourning the Great Barrier Reef, which has been my focus for the last month," she says. "I've been in Queensland filming at Lizard Island with a group of marine biologists and filmmakers, documenting the state of bleaching and acidification that's currently playing out on those group of reefs." This footage will form part of Anohni's Sydney Opera House shows, as will interviews with experts like marine biologist Charlie Varon and filmmaker David Hannan. "Between the songs, there'll be moments of testimony with the different scientists speaking about their experience as stewards of the reef from what they've seen over the last 30 years. "It's really leaning on elder scientists in how they feel now about what they're seeing and where they feel this is headed." This month's trip was Anohni's first opportunity to see firsthand both the beauty and devastation of the natural icon. "It's very emotional. It looks like a war zone. It looks like a city that's been destroyed. It looks like a cemetery. Like, bones everywhere. "There are fish swimming around and they are confused. They make their homes in the architecture of the reef, and because the architecture is still standing, they're still colonising those spots, reproducing and taking shelter there. But those kinds of reefs, once they die, they disintegrate very quickly." Anohni's art is not just beautiful, it's imbued with rich meaning and unflinching commentary on matters of conflict and devastation. She insists she doesn't sing out of protest, she just sings her truth. "I honestly never thought of myself as making protest music," she says. "I just compulsively take advantage of any opportunity I have to say the thing I care the most about. "It's such a rare opportunity that a person like me would have a platform. I wasn't raised in a society or culture where I would ever have an expectation of having a chance to speak. "I grew up in a household where feelings were considered a second-class pursuit. Only women had feelings and that was grounds for their exclusion from conversations — you know, the hysteric woman. "Men supposedly didn't have feelings, but in fact they were just constantly expressing sublimated rage. Meanwhile, [women are] supposed to button our lips. So, I always sought refuge in art and creativity and self-expression and singing as a way of voicing things that we weren't allowed to voice in pedestrian culture." She's an acclaimed artist and an unflinching advocate for many groups, but Anohni doesn't claim any superiority. "I don't really believe in exceptionalism. I'm not any smarter than anyone else. I'm just a very normal person of my disposition, moving through the space trying to do the best I can in this situation." She moves while possessing a seriously impressive tool: her rich, tender, powerful, otherworldly voice. But Anohni downplays this matchless instrument too, claiming she is but a product of those who've come before her. "It's just an amalgamation of great voices," she contends. "I'm of British heritage. One of the great skills of a colonial nation is that they're really good at absorbing other people's cultures. "When black American music came to England in the 50s and 60s, all the kids went crazy for it because it set them free. It was giving them permission to have ecstatic experiences [in] a very, very depressed, miserable post-colonial hellhole that was most of working Britain. "The children were grabbing for dear life at joyful, ecstatic music that black Americans were bringing to their shores. Then, generations of young people copied those voices, and I'm like a third-generation iteration of that. "So, the knowledge that I carry in my voice comes from black singers. On the cover of Anohni and the Johnsons' latest album, 2023's My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, is a portrait of Marsha P. Johnson, a legendary gender-non-conforming gay-rights activist for whom Anohni — a trans woman — named her band. "Marsha P. Johnson was a very exceptional person because she was living a very like 'Jesus as a girl' kind of life. She was giving everything, the shirt off her back. She wasn't going to leave anyone behind. Same with [American gay-liberation and trans-rights activist] Sylvia Rivera. "I am not that person. Like, I have a shirt on my back." One thing she doesn't have, and isn't interested in, is hope. "If we need hope that we're not going to die in order to find reason to live, then that's a catch 22 I don't need," she says. That doesn't mean she's not interested in a better future. She believes she knows what that looks like as well, and it's a long way from the androcentric ways of our past. "I believe that, if there is to be leadership that can lead us forward, it will be feminine leadership," she says. "Only circles of mothers, only circles of sisters can lead us out of this. "There's tonnes of beautiful men in the world but, collectively, men are constitutionally incapable of solving this problem. "I heard that Australia has like 57 per cent women in your new parliament, which is a really beautiful start. I would recommend to go to 80 or 85 per cent and then let's make it global, and then we can maybe have the beginning of a conversation about how to help and save ourselves. I don't think we'll be able to do it without that." Anohni and the Johnsons play Vivid LIVE at the Sydney Opera House on Monday, May 26 and Tuesday, May 27.
The Age
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Our comprehensive gig guide for May has you covered
ZZ Top ICC Sydney Theatre, May 13 Long before hipsters co-opted beards, Texas band ZZ Top – singer-guitarist Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard and bassist-vocalist Dusty Hill – were rocking facial hair that would make Hagrid jealous. Hill died in 2021 and Beard is currently unwell, but Gibbons will power on with reliable ring-ins Elwood Francis (bass) and John Douglas (drums). This gig will be two legendary blues-rock acts for the price of one, with George Thorogood and the Destroyers – on their final Oz tour – joining the ZZ boys. Nag Nag Nag Mothership Studios and Marrickville Bowling Club, May 22-24 Now in its 10th year, this three-day inner-west music festival has become an essential event for anyone keen on keeping their finger on the pulse of Australia's underground music scene. On Thursday there'll be sets from Ela Stiles, Lorry, Warm Currency and Wild Desire; Friday's line-up includes Double Date, Rapid Dye and Wet Kiss; Saturday will host Bed Wettin' Bad Boys, The Green Child, UV Race and more. Want to be the person who knows the hottest up-and-coming bands? Get along. Vivid Live: Pale Jay Opera House Joan Sutherland Theatre, May 23 Keeping your true identity a secret and never appearing in public without a red ski mask may sound like an obvious gimmick to create intrigue – which it has – but the artist known as Pale Jay backs it up with great throwback R&B songs that show off his falsetto. At this one-off show for Vivid Live – the first of five festival highlights recommended here – the masked mystery man makes his Australian debut with a string trio. Vivid Live: Sigur Ros with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Opera House Concert Hall, May 23-25 The epic, dreamy songs of Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Ros are about to get even more epic and dreamy thanks to a series of in-the-round shows accompanied by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It's the first time the Reykjavik trio have played at the Opera House, although frontman Jonsi has previously graced the space – he performed a 2019 Vivid Live show in support of his Riceboy Sleeps album. Vivid Live: Anohni and the Johnsons Opera House Concert Hall, May 26-27 At these special performances Anohni will perform music from across her catalogue against a backdrop of cinematic portraits of the Great Barrier Reef, mixed with Australian scientists reflecting on the reef's transformation over the years in a 'ceremony fit for the purpose of grieving a loss of such monumental scale,' says Anohni. Former band member Joan Wasser, aka Joan As Police Woman, is also in town this month, playing at City Recital Hall on May 23. Vivid Live: Beth Gibbons Opera House Concert Hall, May 30 Beth Gibbons' discography may be small – one solo album, two collaborative albums and three albums with Portishead – but her impact has been seismic. An artist who can rightly claim to be the defining voice of trip-hop, Gibbons was last in Australia with (the now sadly inactive) Portishead in 2011; these will be her debut solo performances here, showcasing songs from last year's acclaimed Lives Outgrown LP (Gibbons will perform twice on the night, at 6 and 9pm). Vivid Live: Mount Kimbie Opera House Joan Sutherland Theatre, May 31 Formed in 2008 by Brits Dominic Maker and Kai Campos, Mount Kimbie have genre-hopped over the years from post-dubstep to post-punk and electronic to indie-rock, making them a hard act to classify. Regardless, their music is defined by adventurousness and innovation, the duo now expanded to a quartet as of last year's indie-rock-leaning LP The Sunset Violent. Whether heating up a dance floor or a mosh pit, Mount Kimbie know how to move a crowd. Who will you be seeing this month? Other acts heading our way include the Lemonheads (performing the albums It's a Shame About Ray and Come on Feel the Lemonheads), Chris de Burgh, Alessia Cara, the Offspring with Simple Plan, Eli 'Paperboy' Reed, Montell Fish, Park Rd, Roachford, Train with KT Tunstall, Ravyn Lenae, Jessica Pratt, Marlon Williams, Ichiko Aoba, Alison Moyet and Ezra Collective. Local acts include Wolfmother (playing their debut self-titled album in full), Ian Moss, Ruel, 3%, Holy Holy, Old Mervs, Hot Dub Time Machine, Emily Wurramara, Tyne-James Organ, Ball Park Music, Miss Kaninna and the Cruel Sea. Who will you be seeing? Let us know in the comments.
Sydney Morning Herald
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Our comprehensive gig guide for May has you covered
ZZ Top ICC Sydney Theatre, May 13 Long before hipsters co-opted beards, Texas band ZZ Top – singer-guitarist Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard and bassist-vocalist Dusty Hill – were rocking facial hair that would make Hagrid jealous. Hill died in 2021 and Beard is currently unwell, but Gibbons will power on with reliable ring-ins Elwood Francis (bass) and John Douglas (drums). This gig will be two legendary blues-rock acts for the price of one, with George Thorogood and the Destroyers – on their final Oz tour – joining the ZZ boys. Nag Nag Nag Mothership Studios and Marrickville Bowling Club, May 22-24 Now in its 10th year, this three-day inner-west music festival has become an essential event for anyone keen on keeping their finger on the pulse of Australia's underground music scene. On Thursday there'll be sets from Ela Stiles, Lorry, Warm Currency and Wild Desire; Friday's line-up includes Double Date, Rapid Dye and Wet Kiss; Saturday will host Bed Wettin' Bad Boys, The Green Child, UV Race and more. Want to be the person who knows the hottest up-and-coming bands? Get along. Vivid Live: Pale Jay Opera House Joan Sutherland Theatre, May 23 Keeping your true identity a secret and never appearing in public without a red ski mask may sound like an obvious gimmick to create intrigue – which it has – but the artist known as Pale Jay backs it up with great throwback R&B songs that show off his falsetto. At this one-off show for Vivid Live – the first of five festival highlights recommended here – the masked mystery man makes his Australian debut with a string trio. Vivid Live: Sigur Ros with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Opera House Concert Hall, May 23-25 The epic, dreamy songs of Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Ros are about to get even more epic and dreamy thanks to a series of in-the-round shows accompanied by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It's the first time the Reykjavik trio have played at the Opera House, although frontman Jonsi has previously graced the space – he performed a 2019 Vivid Live show in support of his Riceboy Sleeps album. Vivid Live: Anohni and the Johnsons Opera House Concert Hall, May 26-27 At these special performances Anohni will perform music from across her catalogue against a backdrop of cinematic portraits of the Great Barrier Reef, mixed with Australian scientists reflecting on the reef's transformation over the years in a 'ceremony fit for the purpose of grieving a loss of such monumental scale,' says Anohni. Former band member Joan Wasser, aka Joan As Police Woman, is also in town this month, playing at City Recital Hall on May 23. Vivid Live: Beth Gibbons Opera House Concert Hall, May 30 Beth Gibbons' discography may be small – one solo album, two collaborative albums and three albums with Portishead – but her impact has been seismic. An artist who can rightly claim to be the defining voice of trip-hop, Gibbons was last in Australia with (the now sadly inactive) Portishead in 2011; these will be her debut solo performances here, showcasing songs from last year's acclaimed Lives Outgrown LP (Gibbons will perform twice on the night, at 6 and 9pm). Vivid Live: Mount Kimbie Opera House Joan Sutherland Theatre, May 31 Formed in 2008 by Brits Dominic Maker and Kai Campos, Mount Kimbie have genre-hopped over the years from post-dubstep to post-punk and electronic to indie-rock, making them a hard act to classify. Regardless, their music is defined by adventurousness and innovation, the duo now expanded to a quartet as of last year's indie-rock-leaning LP The Sunset Violent. Whether heating up a dance floor or a mosh pit, Mount Kimbie know how to move a crowd. Who will you be seeing this month? Other acts heading our way include the Lemonheads (performing the albums It's a Shame About Ray and Come on Feel the Lemonheads), Chris de Burgh, Alessia Cara, the Offspring with Simple Plan, Eli 'Paperboy' Reed, Montell Fish, Park Rd, Roachford, Train with KT Tunstall, Ravyn Lenae, Jessica Pratt, Marlon Williams, Ichiko Aoba, Alison Moyet and Ezra Collective. Local acts include Wolfmother (playing their debut self-titled album in full), Ian Moss, Ruel, 3%, Holy Holy, Old Mervs, Hot Dub Time Machine, Emily Wurramara, Tyne-James Organ, Ball Park Music, Miss Kaninna and the Cruel Sea. Who will you be seeing? Let us know in the comments.
The Guardian
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘People can't imagine something on that scale dying': Anohni on mourning the Great Barrier Reef
Anohni Hegarty is about to go to the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. 'I feel like I'm going to Auschwitz,' she says nervously. 'On the one hand, I'm so excited to go because the landscape is so beautiful, and I know there's going to be so much that's gorgeous. And yet, I'm also scared.' In a week, the British-born, New York-based avant garde singer of Anohni and the Johnsons is flying to Lizard Island, a paradise of powdery sands on the reef, 1,600km north-west of Brisbane. Its luxury villas and bluest of blue waters are a stark contrast to the grim nature of Anohni's assignment: documenting the current state of the world's biggest coral reef. Reefs are hubs of biodiversity, supporting about a third of all marine species and 1 billion people, and crucial to the Earth as both a carbon sink and a home to algae, which produce at least half of the planet's oxygen. The Amazon rainforest, which produces about 20% of our oxygen, is often described as the Earth's lungs; being the size of Italy or Texas, you could call the Great Barrier Reef the left lung and the Amazon the right. But the gigantic reef is not well: it has been hit by six mass coral bleaching events in the past nine years, an alarming trend driven by record marine heatwaves. If coral reefs disappear, scientists warn there will be a domino effect as other ecosystems follow – a step down the path towards mass extinction. Anohni has been thinking about what she calls 'ceremonies fit for purpose', for a loss of this magnitude. When a sudden catastrophe happens, like a terror attack or natural disaster, humanity has worked out ways to process grief and anger en masse: funerals, memorials, protest, activism. But what do we do in the face of a slower death – like the worst global bleaching event on record, which is happening right now and has hit more than 80% of the planet's reefs? 'Where are the ceremonies fit for the purpose of naming and commemorating the times that we're living through?' she asks. 'To see the Great Barrier Reef fall, that's 10,000 9/11s.' 'People can't really imagine something on that scale dying,' she says. For this year's Vivid festival, Anohni is performing two shows at the Sydney Opera House, titled Mourning the Great Barrier Reef, featuring songs from across her career and footage of the reef captured at Lizard Island. With the help of Grumpy Turtle, a production company that specialises in underwater and conservation films, Anohni will be directing the scuba team from the surface in her snorkel. The image of such a poised performer, bobbing along in the ocean, seems wonderfully incongruous even to her. 'I can't believe I'm doing it,' she laughs. 'I feel so privileged just to go. I'm scared and I'm very excited. But I'm with a great team, and they're all very knowledgeable, so they'll help me through it.' Just as a dying star glows more brightly before it goes dark, coral look even more beautiful in distress. Fluorescing – a phenomenon when corals release a garish pigment into their flesh as a sign of heat stress – is deceptively spectacular; and bleaching – when corals expel the photosynthetic algae that give them colour in response to warmer ocean temperatures – turns them a dazzling white. 'It is like when someone's dying, sometimes they show the gold of the soul,' Anohni says. 'They throw their life force into a final expression. That's what coral bleaching is … she's saying goodbye.' She describes a conversation she had with a scientist who went out to visit a dead reef with a group of Danish students, 'and they were all saying it was the most beautiful thing in the world, because they didn't even know what they were looking at was a bunch of skeletons'. Anohni has long been singing about the climate crisis, sneaking this bitter pill into her beautiful, otherworldly songs. 'I need another world,' she sang sorrowfully on 2009's Another World. 'This one's nearly gone.' On 4 Degrees, released as world leaders met for the 2015 Paris climate conference, she sang her grim vision of the future: 'I wanna hear the dogs crying for water / I wanna see the fish go belly-up in the sea / And all those lemurs and all those tiny creatures / I wanna see them burn, it is only four degrees.' She has grown used to being seen 'as a kind of a Cassandra on the sidelines'; the prophet doomed to be ignored. Still, she is 'so grateful' for being alienated in a way – as a trans artist, as a climate activist – 'because when you have an outsider status, you have an opportunity to see the forest for the trees'. Her songs are often about how everything is connected: patriarchy, white supremacy, late stage capitalism, climate change denial, public surveillance, centuries of extraction and environmental degradation, and societies built on religions that preach that paradise is elsewhere, not here – 'all this unwellness that we have woven together', she says. Naomi Klein recently described Anohni as 'one of the few musicians who have attempted to make art that wraps its arms around the death drive that has gripped our world'. Anohni has a special connection to Australia: in 2013 she was invited to visit the Martu people of Parnngurr, in the West Australian desert, 'an experience that changed me forever'. When she asked one Martu woman where they believed people went after death: 'She just looked at me like I was an idiot and said, 'Back to country'.' This 'deeply shocked' Anohni, from a British and Irish Catholic background. 'She had a profound, peaceful acceptance of this animist reality,' she says. 'I was raised in a society where they believed that only humans had souls and that this place was basically just a suffering ground where we had to mind our Ps and Qs. I no longer believe that.' In 2015, she played two concerts at Dark Mofo to raise proceeds for the Martu's fight against a proposed uranium mine on their ancestral lands; the following year she joined them on a 110km protest march in the outback. She even willingly entered Australia's most hostile environment – Q&A – where she memorably blasted a panellist for opposing wind turbines, telling him: 'You're doomed and I'm doomed and your children are doomed.' 'I screamed at those fucking wankers, and made a fucking fool of myself,' she says, smiling, 'and I was torn a new arsehole in the Murdoch press.' But at the same time, she was inundated with messages of support from all over the country. 'I was proud of the chance to be of service to Australians,' she says. Still, she agonises over her own impact on the environment, even the decision to go to Lizard Island. She is not assigning blame to anyone else – if anything, her finger is directed firmly at herself. 'Just coming to Australia is an intolerable equation – the amount of oil that I burn to get there,' she says. Now if she performs in Australia, she does it for a cause and leaves the proceeds behind 'because there's no way morally to justify it any more'. For the Vivid project, Anohni is also interviewing eight 'incredible' scientists about what they have observed on the Great Barrier Reef, including Dr Anya Salih, an expert on reef fluorescence, and the 'Godfather of Coral', Prof Charlie Veron. 'They're the ones who have stewarded the reef, who've watched her and cried with her as she's declined,' she says. She admires that they don't hide their grief; as Veron told the Guardian back in 2009: 'The future is horrific. There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise.' 'Australia is pioneering in this oeuvre of environmental feeling,' Anohni says. 'It's could be something to do with the Australian temperament. It's more expressive. It's stoic too, but there's room for feeling. The English scientific community is very, very cruel in that regard – any expression of emotion is grounds for exclusion from any conversation of reason.' It is her hope that her Vivid shows will be fit for purpose – to show people the reality of the reef and give them a space to both marvel and grieve. 'But to grieve doesn't mean that a thing is done – to grieve just means that you're recognising where we are,' she says. 'For an hour and a half you can come to the Great Barrier Reef with me, and we'll look at it and we'll feel it. Without understanding what we're looking at, there's no hope of finding a direction forward. It's actually a profound gesture of hope.' Anohni and the Johnsons will perform Mourning the Great Barrier Reef at Sydney Opera House on 26 and 27 May as part of Vivid festival
