My music is centred around my cultural identities, so I’ll start there. My name is Rhyan Clapham, I’m a proud First Nations Murrawarri and Filipino hip-hop artist. My mother is from Tacloban in the Philippines and my father’s mother (Murrawarri) was born and raised in Ngemba Country in Brewarrina, NSW. 

Rhyan Clapham

Rhyan Clapham. Photo © Luke Currie Richardson.

I want to briefly explore new music and non-traditional compositional practices through my personal approach, but in order to do that, I first have to ask the question: “traditional” according to whom?

First Nations Australian music was never written down. Songs were passed down orally from generation to generation for over 80,000 years, each song containing stories of our Dreaming, lore and ways of the land, sky and waterways. Our music was and continues to be heavily embedded into our Culture. Songlines detail important landmarks and totems, and other songs would accompany dances for ceremony or Dreaming stories about surrounding ecological sustenance and maintenance. Thus, “tradition” is a word with a very different meaning to us. 

With regards to my approach to music, I come from...