Kai Jawa begins – An intercultural collaboration between First Nations Australian and Indonesian artists

Ubiet & Mark Atkins (2019)

Tura is progressing a significant new chapter in intercultural collaboration with Kai Jawa, the first major activation of its Sound Connections program - a long-term initiative exploring how music and storytelling build bridges throughout the Indo-Pacific.

Inspired by deep-time connections between northern Australia and the Indonesian archipelago, the project looks to centuries in which Makassan and other seafarers travelled to the Kimberley and Arnhem Land to harvest trepang, forging relationships sustained by trade, ceremony, language and shared cultural practice. Kai Jawa – the term used by Indonesian traders to describe the Kimberley – considers how such pre-colonial exchanges might inform contemporary creative futures.

From 7–13 December 2025, an exceptional group of artists and cultural leaders will gather in Yogyakarta to develop new music grounded in cultural exchange, reciprocity and First Nations leadership: Miriwoong, Ngaliwurru and Karangpurru songman and composer Chris Griffiths (Australia); composer, vocalist and ethnomusicologist Nyak Ina Raseuki (Ubiet) (Indonesia); Papuan composer, singer and cultural researcher Septina Layan (Indonesia); and internationally recognised Yamatji didgeridoo artist, composer and storyteller Mark Atkins (Australia).

Across a week of workshops at SaRang Art Centre, the artists will share musical knowledge, cultural practices and approaches to storytelling, culminating in work-in-progress showings for Indonesian audiences.

For Griffiths, the project represents both continuity and renewal. “For our people, Wanga is living history – it carries law, country and the voices of our ancestors,” he says. “Kai Jawa is a continuation of the connections our old people once held with the north. I take these songs with responsibility, to share them in the right way and to build relationships that honour the past while imagining new possibilities.”

The residency also platforms the distinctive artistic voices of Layan and Ubiet, whose practices bridge contemporary musical innovation with the preservation of song traditions across Indonesia. It continues Atkins’ previous collaboration with Ubiet, first explored in 2019. Together, the artists bring First Nations and Indigenous lineages – Miriwoong, Papuan, Yamatji, Ngaliwurru and Karangpurru – into dialogue with musical practices from across the archipelago.

Curator, producer and cultural diplomacy specialist Kate Ben-Tovim, who is the Sound Connections Strategic Advisor, will facilitate the collaboration in Yogyakarta. “The deep historical context of Kai Jawa is fertile ground to begin new creative exchanges,” she says.

“This is a collaboration between old and new friends – each bringing their own unique cultural perspectives to a conversation that has been taking place for hundreds of years between First Nations people in Northern and Western Australia and near neighbours in Indonesia”.

Tura founder and Artistic Director Tos Mahoney adds that this residency builds on earlier foundations established through Tura’s 2018–2019 Kimberley Indonesia Project. “Over the next five years, this program will grow to include performances, symposia, documentary outputs, academic partnerships and further residencies, building new cultural networks and reconnecting ancient ones.”

A Kai Jawa work-in-progress showing and artists’ talk will take place on Friday 12 December at 7.30pm at SaRang Art Centre, Jl. Ambarbinangun, Kalipakis 05/02, Tirtonirmolo, Kasihan Bantul.