Dili Allstars
Encyclopedia
The Dili Allstars are an Australia
n and East Timor
ese reggae
/ska
band based in Melbourne
. They are one of the leading voices of support for the East Timorese people and a popular musical group. The band has released two albums, a special edition Portuguese tour CD, an EP, titled Increase the Peace and also tracks for the ARIA award winning Balibo soundtrack album and the Australian Canadian tele movie Answered By Fire.
The band has also contributed tracks to the Kids Under Cover, This Is The Place For A Song, Love From A Short A Distance, All In The Family and Liberdade benefit albums.
) contacted East Timorese musician Gil Santos to record a song to protest the capture of East Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmão
by Indonesian armed forces in the early nineties. This song was a version of Rose Tattoo's
'We Can't Be Beaten', sung in both Tetum and English
. Both Santos and Stewart had had a long involvement with the East Timor struggle as they had lost a father and a brother, respectively, in the Indonesian invasion of 1975.
Before the 1999 Independence referendum, the band recorded the original track 'Liberdade' and six other songs in response to hearing that the Governor of East Timor was playing pro-Indonesian songs at Dili airport. With the help of Melbourne University students, 500 tapes were smuggled into East Timor. The songs had a wide exposure during the lead up to the election, and remain strong in the Timorese memory today. After the referendum, Gusmão visited Melbourne and joined the Allstars on stage at the National Tennis Centre. At this stage, the band included current members Paul Stewart, Gil Santos and Paulo Almeida. However, it also included drummer Steve Morrison (who stood in for and recorded in place of Colin Buckler while he was overseas), trombonist/vocalist Sonja Parkinson, saxophonists Billy Abbott & Jenny Pineapple, keyboardist Cheryl, guitarist/backing vocalist Paul Calvert and bassist Nelito Ribero.
compilation (also titled 'Liberdade') which the band helped to compile. This compilation also featured Midnight Oil
, Crowded House
, and Yothu Yindi
, and went on to raise $100,000 for East Timor. Two further compilation albums were made by the band - 'Love From a Short Distance' and 'All In The Family', both of which also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for East Timor.
Because of the band's long term involvement with East Timor, the Dili Allstars were invited to appear with popular Australian performers John Farnham
and Kylie Monogue at the Tour of Duty concert
, which was attended by thousands and viewed by many more on Australian television. Shortly after the concert, the band released its first major album, Hanoin, which included 'Liberdade', 'Freedom' and The Living End
song 'Revolution Regained', which The Living End had requested the Allstars record a version of, in which ended up on The Living End's single Dirty Man
Significantly, Paul Calvert leaves the line up to be replaced by guitarist Colin Badger. Badger is to become the band's musical director overseeing most of the band's recording sessions. The band later toured Portugal as guests of the Portuguese Communist Party.
. The series dramatised the conflicts surrounding the 1999 East Timor referendum and the struggle for independence.
Driven by the civil crisis in both East Timor and the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, the Dili Allstars released Increase the Peace in 2006. The album 'calls on an end to the violence with a plea to be careful and calm'. The accompanying tour of East Timor and the Northern Territory, however, was postponed as a result of the heightening violence in Timor
and member illness. This period also saw a change of drummers, with Tim Stewart joining, and a change of bassists, with Daniel Golding completing the line-up. After a long period of touring and performance, Dili Allstars went into hibernation as founder Paul Stewart recovered from serious illness and the band saw yet another reshuffle as a number of members left to form Sol Nation.
. The Dili Allstars then performed at East Timor's first ever media awards along with Osme Gonsalves and Mali from Galaxy Band. A new line up of the The Dili Allstars, including ex-Daddy Cool
guitarist Ross Hannaford, original members Nelito Riberio (bass) and Mark Grunden (drums), Painters and Dockers' trumpet player Dave Pace and sax player Clare Murrell, Balibo movie actor and rapper Osme Gonsalves, percussionist Zeca Mesquita, Gil Santos and Paulie Stewart went into the ABC studios at Southbank, Melbourne to record a new version of the Graham Parker
punk classic "Hey Lord Don't Ask Me Questions". Produced by Chris Thompson, this was included on the Balibo movie soundtrack. In his role as musical consultant, Stewart later accepted the 2009 ARIA award for "Best Soundtrack" album.
In 2010, members of The Dili Allstars visited Papua New Guinea and USA to talk about the band's work. Band members Paulie Stewart and Gil Santos also visited São Paulo in Brazil to support the screening on the BALIBO Movie. It was later voted by the public as "most popular" film at the film festival. Later that year, ABC Music approached the band to release a career retrospective, The Best Of The Dili Allstars. This is out now on ABC Music.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n and East Timor
East Timor
The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...
ese reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
/ska
Ska
Ska |Jamaican]] ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
band based in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
. They are one of the leading voices of support for the East Timorese people and a popular musical group. The band has released two albums, a special edition Portuguese tour CD, an EP, titled Increase the Peace and also tracks for the ARIA award winning Balibo soundtrack album and the Australian Canadian tele movie Answered By Fire.
The band has also contributed tracks to the Kids Under Cover, This Is The Place For A Song, Love From A Short A Distance, All In The Family and Liberdade benefit albums.
The band
The Dili Allstars are:- Paulo Almeida: Vocals
- Paulie Stewart: Vocals
- Osme Gonsalves: Vocals
- Gil Santos: KeyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, GuitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with... - Colin Badger: Lead GuitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
- Zeca Mesquita: percussionPercussion instrumentA percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
, and Vocals - Mark Grunden: DrumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, and Vocals - Nelito Riberio: BassBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
- Dave Pace: Trumpet
- Clare Murrell: Sax
Formation and early years
The Dili Allstars were formed when Paul Stewart and Colin Buckler (of the notable band Painters and DockersPainters and Dockers
Painters and Dockers are a rock band formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1982. Their best performed album, Kiss My Art, peaked in the top 30 of the Australian Recording Industry Association albums charts in 1988. The album included two top 50 singles, "Nude School" and "Die Yuppie Die"...
) contacted East Timorese musician Gil Santos to record a song to protest the capture of East Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmão
Xanana Gusmão
Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão GCL is a former militant who was the first President of East Timor, serving from May 2002 to May 2007...
by Indonesian armed forces in the early nineties. This song was a version of Rose Tattoo's
Rose Tattoo
Rose Tattoo is an Australian rock and roll band, now led by Angry Anderson, that was formed in Sydney in 1976. Their sound is hard rock mixed with blues rock influences, with songs including "Bad Boy for Love", "Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw", "Nice Boys", "We Can't Be Beaten" and "Scarred for Life"...
'We Can't Be Beaten', sung in both Tetum and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. Both Santos and Stewart had had a long involvement with the East Timor struggle as they had lost a father and a brother, respectively, in the Indonesian invasion of 1975.
Before the 1999 Independence referendum, the band recorded the original track 'Liberdade' and six other songs in response to hearing that the Governor of East Timor was playing pro-Indonesian songs at Dili airport. With the help of Melbourne University students, 500 tapes were smuggled into East Timor. The songs had a wide exposure during the lead up to the election, and remain strong in the Timorese memory today. After the referendum, Gusmão visited Melbourne and joined the Allstars on stage at the National Tennis Centre. At this stage, the band included current members Paul Stewart, Gil Santos and Paulo Almeida. However, it also included drummer Steve Morrison (who stood in for and recorded in place of Colin Buckler while he was overseas), trombonist/vocalist Sonja Parkinson, saxophonists Billy Abbott & Jenny Pineapple, keyboardist Cheryl, guitarist/backing vocalist Paul Calvert and bassist Nelito Ribero.
Further support for East Timor and the Tour of Duty
'Liberdade' was later included on a Mushroom RecordsMushroom Records
Mushroom Records is an Australian recoJrd company formed by Michael Gudinski and Ray Evans in Melbourne in 1972. After its sale in 1998, it merged into Festival Mushroom Records. From 2005 to 2009, it is one of the record labels operated by Warner Bros...
compilation (also titled 'Liberdade') which the band helped to compile. This compilation also featured Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
, Crowded House
Crowded House
Crowded House are a rock band, formed in Melbourne, Australia and led by New Zealand singer-songwriter Neil Finn. Finn is the primary songwriter and creative director of the band, having led it through several incarnations, drawing members from New Zealand , Australia and the United States...
, and Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi are an Australian band with Aboriginal and balanda members formed in 1986. Aboriginal members come from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land...
, and went on to raise $100,000 for East Timor. Two further compilation albums were made by the band - 'Love From a Short Distance' and 'All In The Family', both of which also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for East Timor.
Because of the band's long term involvement with East Timor, the Dili Allstars were invited to appear with popular Australian performers John Farnham
John Farnham
John Peter Farnham, AO, formerly billed as Johnny Farnham , is an English-born Australian pop singer. He was a teen pop idol from 1964 to 1979, and has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist although he briefly replaced Glenn Shorrock as...
and Kylie Monogue at the Tour of Duty concert
Tour of Duty - Concert for the Troops
Tour of Duty - Concert for the Troops was a concert in 1999 in Dili for the Australian troops serving with the International Force for East Timor...
, which was attended by thousands and viewed by many more on Australian television. Shortly after the concert, the band released its first major album, Hanoin, which included 'Liberdade', 'Freedom' and The Living End
The Living End
The Living End are an Australian rock band from Melbourne, Victoria, formed in 1994. The current lineup consists of Chris Cheney , Scott Owen and Andy Strachan...
song 'Revolution Regained', which The Living End had requested the Allstars record a version of, in which ended up on The Living End's single Dirty Man
Significantly, Paul Calvert leaves the line up to be replaced by guitarist Colin Badger. Badger is to become the band's musical director overseeing most of the band's recording sessions. The band later toured Portugal as guests of the Portuguese Communist Party.
"Viva La Musica"
The band consolidated their position with the 2004 release, Viva La Musica. By this stage, Parkinson was no longer playing with the band, and drummer Buckler had been replaced by Mark Grunden. The album remained true to the band's protest roots ('Rise Up', 'Peace & Unity' and 'Advance Australia Where?'), their East Timorese heritage (with traditional Timorese song 'O Hele Le' included as the first track and as a reprise) and their growing reputation as a party band ('That Girl', 'Thank You Mama').Answered By Fire and the "Increase the Peace" tour
The Dili Allstars' profile was raised further when band members acted in, and provided music for the two-part, 2006 Australian/Canadian mini-series Answered by FireAnswered by Fire
Answered by Fire is a two-part mini-series based on the 1999 East Timor conflicts that led to East Timor's independence. The mini-series was based on "Dancing with the Devil, A personal Account of Policing the East Timor Vote for Independence", which was written by David Savage, an Australian...
. The series dramatised the conflicts surrounding the 1999 East Timor referendum and the struggle for independence.
Driven by the civil crisis in both East Timor and the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, the Dili Allstars released Increase the Peace in 2006. The album 'calls on an end to the violence with a plea to be careful and calm'. The accompanying tour of East Timor and the Northern Territory, however, was postponed as a result of the heightening violence in Timor
2006 East Timor crisis
The 2006 East Timorese crisis began as a conflict between elements of the military of East Timor over discrimination within the military, and expanded to a coup attempt and general violence throughout the country, centred in the capital Dili...
and member illness. This period also saw a change of drummers, with Tim Stewart joining, and a change of bassists, with Daniel Golding completing the line-up. After a long period of touring and performance, Dili Allstars went into hibernation as founder Paul Stewart recovered from serious illness and the band saw yet another reshuffle as a number of members left to form Sol Nation.
Balibo
After Paulo Almeida, Colin Badger, Tim Stewart and Daniel Golding formed world music outfit Sol Nation, Paul Stewart and Gil Santos were employed as musical consultants on the 2009 film, BaliboBalibo (2009 film)
Balibo is a 2009 Australian feature film that follows the story of the Balibo Five, a group of journalists who were captured and killed whilst reporting on activities just prior to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. The film is loosely based on the book Cover-Up, by Jill Jolliffe, an...
. The Dili Allstars then performed at East Timor's first ever media awards along with Osme Gonsalves and Mali from Galaxy Band. A new line up of the The Dili Allstars, including ex-Daddy Cool
Daddy Cool
Daddy Cool may mean:* Daddy Cool , a 1970s Australian rock band, reformed since 2005* Daddy Cool, a book by Donald Goines* "Daddy Cool" Daddy Cool may mean:* Daddy Cool (band), a 1970s Australian rock band, reformed since 2005* Daddy Cool, a book by Donald Goines* "Daddy Cool" Daddy Cool may mean:*...
guitarist Ross Hannaford, original members Nelito Riberio (bass) and Mark Grunden (drums), Painters and Dockers' trumpet player Dave Pace and sax player Clare Murrell, Balibo movie actor and rapper Osme Gonsalves, percussionist Zeca Mesquita, Gil Santos and Paulie Stewart went into the ABC studios at Southbank, Melbourne to record a new version of the Graham Parker
Graham Parker
Graham Parker is a British rock singer and songwriter, who is best known as the lead singer of the popular British band Graham Parker & the Rumour.-Early career :...
punk classic "Hey Lord Don't Ask Me Questions". Produced by Chris Thompson, this was included on the Balibo movie soundtrack. In his role as musical consultant, Stewart later accepted the 2009 ARIA award for "Best Soundtrack" album.
In 2010, members of The Dili Allstars visited Papua New Guinea and USA to talk about the band's work. Band members Paulie Stewart and Gil Santos also visited São Paulo in Brazil to support the screening on the BALIBO Movie. It was later voted by the public as "most popular" film at the film festival. Later that year, ABC Music approached the band to release a career retrospective, The Best Of The Dili Allstars. This is out now on ABC Music.
Hanoin (2001)
- Brother
- I'll Be Gone
- Black Angel
- Freedom
- Alive
- Revolution Regained
- Dengue Fever
- Liberdade
- Stranded
Viva La Musica (2004)
- O Hele Le
- Runaway
- Thank You Mama
- Peace & Unity
- That Girl
- Nothing Tastes Better Than The Neighbour's Chicken
- Rise Up
- Innocent Child
- Advance Australia Where?
- Beautiful Smile
- Have You Ever Been Blown Ashore?
- Sempre Contigo
- O Hele Le (Reprise)
Increase the Peace (2006)
- Increase the Peace
- No Woman, No Cry
- O Hele Le
- Cool World
- My Soul Flew Out the Window