To mark the 30th anniversary of Christine Anu's version of the iconic hit, My Island Home, Australian world music star Mitch Tambo and his wife Voice of Lele have released a duet and their take on the classic.
Written by Neil Murray and originally released by Warumpi Band, it gained huge popularity and became the unofficial anthem with Anu's performance at the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony in 2000.
With blessings from Murray, Tambo and Lele have put their stamp on the song, drawing on their respective First Nations and West Papuan backgrounds to incorporate the indigenous languages of Gamilaraay and Tok Pisin.
"It was just about coming together to really just share our collective stories and celebrate our union as husband and wife and just really hope to celebrate the spirit of our own ancestors being Aboriginal and West Papuan, and to just tell that story and to share that story of what home means," Tambo told Culture 101.
"It can be your beautiful family. It could be that idea of standing out on a beautiful headland and reflecting of where home is, or just feeling really grateful for where you come from and who you are."
Although there was lots of pressure, Tambo says they couldn't not do it, considering the song's history of singers.
"Warumpi Band [the original performers of My Island Home] are proud black fellas, and then Christine Anu is a proud Torres Strait Islander and a Melanesian woman. I'm a proud black fellow and my beautiful wife is a proud Melanesian West Papuan.
"So for us to come together is kind of a flow-on effect from the two other versions of the song."
The two artists have also released their own solo renditions of the song, with Tambo's exclusively sung in Gamilaraay and Lele's version in Tok Pisin and English.
"My story is a little bit weird in the sense of - I speak fluently in English, I don't speak my language fluently, but I never sung in English. I'd only ever grown up singing in my language, so all I ever planned to do when I stepped into music was just to sing in [my] language and allow that to tell the contemporary story of who I am as a proud Aboriginal man. And then it just sort of grew, and as it grew, I ended [up] diving into English just to allow listeners to get context of what the songs are.
"So it was actually really daunting and scary for me to sing in English. It just felt so wrong and felt so raw, because I never looked at myself as a singer.
"For me to do my version, I guess it's just beautiful to always be able to step out and to just do a song that's predominantly in Gamilaraay 'cause it wasn't that long ago it was forbidden for our people to practice and share culture. So whenever I get that opportunity, it's just a real honour."
Lele encapsulates her emotional journey of finding a home and solace in Australia in her version, he says.
"Because I know my wife's beautiful raw story of coming here as a refugee and all her trials and tribulations, and to really hear her sing and do her version, I could just really feel the essence of her people and her story and that really affected me in a really emotional way."
Tambo says it's not easy to push Indigenous languages into the mainstream, but he hopes to pave the path for future artists to do so.
"The reality is if Ricky Martin or Pitbull come over here and did a concert and did it all in South American [language], no one would bat an eyelid. But there's a real thing of 'wow, what? How does this work? First Nations Aboriginal language, we don't really understand it'.
"We're really at the forefront of trying to push those doors open and make it normalised [so] that us black fellas, we're not just red, black and yellow and red dirt, that we can get out there in the mainstream and contemporary and we can succeed and we can tell story and we can keep our ancestors alive there as well."
