VIVA LA WOOKIE

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This blog is a tribute to RASTAWOOKIE --
undoubtedly the coolest band in Sydney.

To check out some of their tunes, click:
www.myspace.com/rastawookie

To the heart-break of many fans and fellow members of the international gang, the band has decided to break-up.

The following was written late last night
as a tribute after seeing my last gig.


viva la wookie

the first time i met a wookie was as a kid at summer camp.

never having seen a lick of star wars, i was somewhat startled by my first encounter. it was our first day of tree-hugging tutorials in nature class and we circled up around a broad-trunked beauty to listen closely.

a bleating shriek pierced the air and shattered the silence, the booming bellow emanating from an unlikely source—a gawky and unkempt teenager known at camp as wookie.

treated like a misfit and a freak, i heard the wookie’s undulating war cry as an anguished wail against awkward adolescences worldwide.

ten years later when my dear friend miss matilda jane invited me to my first rastawookie gig, i instantly envisioned the wookie kid at centre stage—no longer a tubby teenager, but rastafied and bleating his wookie wurrrrrrrrrrrr wurrrrerrrrrrrrr to a dancehall beat.

the second time i met a wookie, there was not one juvenile misfit… there was a whole herd of them—
thronging like a wildebeast pack to a medley of musical madness. matilda grabbed me by the hand and plunged into the pack, shouting over her shoulder “yer gonna love these guys!”

attempts to articulate their style never quite cut it. reggae. dub. drumnb. international fusion.

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ingredients read as follows:
a melody of mayhem
hectic harmony
a dash of jazzy jammin
and a sprinkle of spunk

rastawookie has the phat beats of the city streets,
flow on the mike you gotta like,
tight brass to make ya shake yer ass,
and the line of a dubified base thas ace.

a quena riff that’ll make you soar
higher than the mountains in Bangalore.
shake it up & mix it more—
check out the rhythm uva dancefloor.

shoulders shake, hips sway, knees wobble, heads bob, and elbows jab the air.
movin in the motion of a rubbadub style…
movin in the motion of a rubbadub style…

there are no steps to the rastawookie chant—
only pendulums of movement sweeping the crowd

doesn’t matter where you really come from…
doesn’t matter where you really come from…

when you rock with the wookie we all one.

we gonna mash it up with the rastawookie jam…
we gonna mash it up. we gonna mash it up….
we gonna mash it up with the rastawookie jam…

diggie-diggie-down
with the rastawookie jam-style
diggie-diggie-down
with the rastawookie jam-style

the confluence of rhythm and movement
blitzes borders & blurs boundaries of sound
no longer the half-caste curse of bilingual babies
much stronger the united verse of a diverse ensemble

VIVA LA WOOKIE

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Photos

Miss Matilda
at a swingin Rastawookie gig

rastawookie
band members