The call of the wild: a primal beckoning that few hear and even less answer. When didgeridoo player Si Mullumby heard the call, it sent him on a life-altering journey of self-discovery.
“Before playing didgeridoo I studied mathematics and physics at uni and then I did medicine,” Si says.
“In a nutshell, I had a psychedelic experience in India on my holidays and in the middle of the night I was on Om beach and I heard the Earth resonate, and it sounded like a didgeridoo. Without ever having played didgeridoo or being interested in didgeridoo in any way I realised I was a didgeridoo player.
“It was a full-blown experience and I went back to Australia, I quit medicine, I asked my uncle if he still had the didgeridoo I saw him playing when I was a child and he did.
"I took that didge, quit my entire life and hitchhiked from Perth, my birthplace, across Australia for a couple of years and ended up living in a tepee in the hills behind Byron. I committed my life to playing didgeridoo and I have never had another job, and that was 22 years ago.”
Si now plays with drummer Matt Goodwin as duo Wild Marmalade and will perform at West End's Boundary Hotel as part of the venue’s new Sunday Chill Sessions (held weekly from 3pm). “I’ve been loving playing in Brisbane the past few years and it’s been a great way to get our sound out to a broad demographic of people,” Si says. “So I’m looking forward to following up with this session.”
As Wild Marmalade, Si says he and Matt like to push each other to their musical limits, with all their live performances being completely improvised: meaning no two songs have ever been played the same twice. “We try and leave people completely unaware of what to expect,” he laughs.
“Our music is totally improvised; we create the gig for every environment, the tempos, where we start, where we build it and how we navigate is totally fresh every time.
“In the past it’s been a curse in a way because we haven’t had songs people remember and go ‘ah, that’s a Wild Marmalade song’, but what we have is a sound and that’s led us to play some pretty epic gigs around the world. People seem to be digging that now; the fresh, spontaneous thing rather than the packaged, arranged and ordered way.”
Although Wild Marmalade have played some of the biggest dance festivals in the world, Si says he prefers smaller gigs – such as the Sunday Chill Sessions – where he can connect on a more intimate level with his audience. “We’ve played all sizes of gigs now and I have to say I like small gigs,” he says.
“I’m a people person; I like to see my audience, like to feel how it’s moving people. In a big crowd sometimes you don’t really get the intimacy and at the end of the gig I can’t tell how much they’ve been dancing.
“My overall concept is not about being the performer; it’s about allowing music to play through me and through us. That stops the division between the band and the audience, we just like to get on a page then enjoy that bit of time together.”
Wild Marmalade join Yarwah at the Boundary Hotel's weekly Sunday Chill Sessions 27 March.
