WHILE a growing number of councils have opted out of Australia Day celebrations out of concern for their Indigenous communities, the Perth Folk and Roots Club is pressing ahead this year — with an Indigenous musician headlining the evening.

The club will return to the Inglewood Bowling and Sports Club on Monday, January 26, for what it is calling an Australia Day Contact Special Event, featuring Aboriginal singer-songwriter Greg Bridge alongside a multicultural line-up of folk and roots performers.

Club president Keith Anthonisz said the decision to go ahead was shaped by a desire to acknowledge history honestly rather than avoid it.

“I suppose the rationale is that Australia Day is part of history,” Mr Anthonisz said. “There’s a bad side to that for the Indigenous people but there’s also there’s good things that we can celebrate in history through that period.”

He said the idea for the event grew out of conversations with Mr Bridge, a Gija musician from the East Kimberley region.

• Greg Bridge

“Greg Bridge is a musician that we’ve had play at the club before,” he said. “I had a bit of a chat with him and asked ‘would you be interested in doing something’.”

Mr Anthonisz said Australia’s recent history needed to be viewed in all its complexity.

“That was not great for Indigenous people, but the contact between Indigenous people and the people came that came afterwards, it’s multifaceted,” he said. 

“It’s not just all negative. It’s part of our history so we shouldn’t bury what’s part of history. You look at the good and the bad.”

He said the event had been deliberately framed as a “Contact Day”, to create space for engagement rather than denial.

“Yeah, that’s why I called this day the Contact Day so it could be a day where people actually get to meet Indigenous people,” he said. 

Alongside Mr Bridge, the evening will feature Maurice E Gabriel and Friends, blending folk and blues influences with a distinctly multicultural flavour.

“Hats off to our migrant community as well because we got Morris E Gabriel and he’s got a bit of a band going,” Mr Anthonisz said. “He’s a guitarist originally from Kolkata in India but he loves blues.”