Tekee Media Inc.

In April I went to Timor primarily to organise the trip in July when we were to take 4 teachers up and do a concert to launch Hadahur the music school.  Whilst much was done in that trip for that purpose, I was asked spontaneously at the last minute to go to a special thanksgiving festival for the traditional instruments up in Fatubesse. that was amazing, we were in an uma lulic for hours, the smoke from the huge fire cooking inside the house was intense and we had to keep coming out for air, but in spite of nearly gagging several times (even the Timorese with me!) we witnessed a pretty special ceremony with thanks for the lakadou, tohi (big bass drum), babadoks (smaller drums), gongs, and fuis. I witnessed 12 sacrificial chickens and was surprised how silently and quickly they died!  In all a terrific night up in the mountains and I felt very privaleged to be there!

click on the photos below to enlarge them!  babadoks

            Woman playing babadok            gong  lakadou & swords

Manuel Pereira giving thanks for the babadok  Manuel & student playing lakadou

  demonstration of the playing of the Tohi (bass drum)

  a fearsome Tohi warrior!

scholarship to the national Art School in Sydeny doing a bachelor of Fine Arts),  went to Darwin to give a series of workshops for Children as part of the exhibition the Darwin Museum had running from November to July 2009.  Here are afew photos from that trip,  the kids who went had a great time, particularly with the hands on aspects of the exhibition!

click on photos to enlarge.

cave paintings, Tutuala….we spent afew hours hacking through the jungle to get to these it was dark when we made it.

Alfeo and Mellie were our guides for this trip

Fataluca chant sung to us by these old Tutuala women.

Caves like these house bones of ancestors,  quite afew in the cliffs from Tutuala.  The ground is very hard in this part of Timor, which may account for bones being placed in caves.  Our friend was not so happy scaling the cliff down to the cave!

The rest of that trip was devoted to the music school, teaching students,  hunting down those who might support out quest for funding.  We knew we had a singing teacher in Australia interested in starting skype lessons with singers in Timor, so much was done to organise them for skype lessons. Our location at I net was no longer reliable, I net was having too many problems with viruses, so  a lot of time was spent trying to find another venue.  Eventually Centro Juvenile agreed we could use their facility for skype, which has proven quite good overall.