NOONGAR singer-songwriter Gina Williams has a crystal-clear picture of what the music is all about and that makes her the perfect advocate for the upcoming National Folk Festival at Exhibition Park.

I catch up with her while she’s at the boutique Blue Mountains Music Festival and find an artist who is passionately dedicated not just to music, but to the revitalisation of the Noongar language of WA, which she had to go back to TAFE to learn as an adult. 

Behind every good lead singer there’s a great guitarist and in this case it’s her music partner of many years, Guy Ghouse, known for his “twinkling instrumentals” and with her, the co-creator of a major work last year for WA Opera.

Williams and Ghouse are no strangers to what they call “the Nash” – the National Folk Festival. They headlined the festival launch in 2014, and have been back since.

This year they’re taking on the lion’s share, performing in the Budawang Theatre at EPIC on the evening of April 7, the Flute and Fiddle at lunchtime on April 8, the Trocadero late at night also on the Saturday and at the marquee in their own show on Sunday night, April 9. They’re hosting a “to learn to talk Noongar” workshop at lunchtime on April 9. 

A highlight of their presentations, she tells me, will be numbers from the kids’ album “Koorlangka”, based on their core principles of Koort (heart), Moort (family), Boodja (land) and Koorlangka (children/legacy).

“Guy and I both understand the importance of family… it’s much more than DNA. It’s about the people that we choose to spend time with and our responsibility to that community – I think folk festivals do that really well,” she says, adding that a large part of what they do is simply sharing the love of good music and powerful storytelling. 

Williams and Ghouse didn’t waste any time during covid-related WA isolation and they staged a commissioned work, “Koolbardi wer Wardong”, for WA Opera, taken from an “old time” story about the magpie and the crow. 

There’s a Canberra connection. They wrote the libretto and the music, then handed it over to Chris Stone, a member of Canberra’s Griffyn Ensemble, whom they’d met at the Nash, to do the orchestration and arrangements. 

They’ve just finished writing a new opera to be staged in Perth during next year and again Stone has done the orchestration.

Meantime, they’re always doing school sessions, connecting with upwards of 1000 children and students a week.

Williams is adamant that their music and their language work is a revolution, but not an aggressive one, saying: “It’s to do with love and peace and generosity and that elevates what Guy and I do,” she says.

After a rocky start to festival planning, which involved the arrival and departure of Jo Cresswell and Dave O’Neill as co-directors, then general manager Suzanne Hannema, it’s now in the hands of new manager Chris Grange, with “CityNews” music writer Graham McDonald as artistic adviser.

While Hannema was still in at the helm, she heard that British enfant terrible Billy Bragg was touring to Port Fairy, Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay, Brisbane and Fremantle, so engaged him for Easter Day, April 9.

A rare “play” in the festival this year is “I Don’t Go Shearing Now”, a musical ode to shearing and the wool industry devised by British singer Martyn Wyndham-Read, who will be joined on stage by legendary Australian historian, singer and actor Warren Fahey and long-time Bushwackers’ and John Williamson Band member Clare O’Meara. The trio will also go “shearing” in Gunning, Braidwood, Carcoar, Dalton and Goulburn.

Likely to arouse a few tears will be Ukrainian bandura player and singer, and Riverina Conservatorium of Music vocal teacher Larissa Kovalchuk, known to Canberra audiences for her hypnotic mezzo-soprano voice. 

Most familiar of all will be laconic Canberra bard Fred Smith, who, with his band, will present material from his back catalogue and from his new collection of story-songs, appropriately titled “Folk Songs”.

2023 National Folk Festival, Exhibition Park, April 6-10. All details at folkfestival.org.au