Victoria’s iconic multicultural music organisation The Boite celebrated its 40th birthday on June 1 this year, the same date on which the organisation held its first concert in Richmond in 1979.
Educator and musician Therese Virtue has been involved with The Boite since 1984 and has been The Boite World Music Café’s program coordinator for the past 22 years.
“We have been very conscious of the premises on which The Boite was founded and we’ve made a really conscious effort to stay with them,” says Virtue.
The Boite was founded at a time when significant numbers of Greek and Chilean migrants were coming to Australia, many of them refugees. The resistance movements to the governments that were making these people refugees were strongly characterised by music.
“The founders of Boite were often tied up in education, some of them were teachers, so they were meeting these kids coming into the schools with no English,” says Virtue.
“So on the one hand, they saw an educational opportunity for us – the Australian population – to learn about this new cultural stuff that was coming in. On the other hand, they recognised the needs of these musicians to perform and to perform professionally, as they had in their own countries.”
The Boite’s Fabulous 40th Finale Fling is happening on Saturday November 30 at the Abbotsford Convent’s Laundry venue. Ten artists will perform, representing a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Included on the lineup is the Chilean-born Alex Vargas who, as a 15-year-old, performed at the first ever Boite concert.
“Alex is the only person that we’re still in touch with from that very first concert,” says Virtue. “When I began to work for The Boite, he was still performing for The Boite. After a while he became a tour manager for Illapu who are an internationally famous group from Chile who were exiled, and so he travelled with them and toured with them and played with them.
“We haven’t had him in gigs in recent years, but I actually reconnected with him at a party a couple of years ago. He has embraced the 40th birthday with such enthusiasm. It was significant in his life, at that time.”
Also on the lineup, you have shakuhachi player Anne Norman, violinist Ernie Gruner and oud player Yuval Ashkar, Kat Stevens and Pascal Latra exploring the Greek and Mediterranean repertoire, and a half dozen others. Virtue names some highlights.
“Nina Rose Lim is a young woman who’s just released an EP called Patterns. She comes from a very interesting series of backgrounds. On one side there’s Austrian and various other European input, and her father is Malaysian-Chinese. There’s a bit of Indonesian there, too.
“Her songs are very pretty and she’s a good instrumentalist and her trio is terrific. Pat Evans – the luthier of Maton guitars – he’s playing fiddle with her, and Fran Evans is the bass player.”
Longstanding Boite favourites the Melbourne Georgian Choir will provide authentic Georgian music.
“Georgian singing is a weird ancient form of polyphony that comes from the Republic of Georgia, off the far end of Russia. The ensemble is guided by a couple of Georgian ethnomusicologists,” says Virtue.
“The Scottish Fiddle Club is a huge phenomenon. They’re just fantastic. There’s nothing quite like the sound of mass fiddles launching into a tune.”
The Fabulous 40th Finale Fling doubles as The Boite’s year-end fundraiser. Tickets are $30 and just $15 for under-25s. The artists are all volunteering their time to help support the organisation’s pursuits in 2020.
“The Boite has a series of sources of funds which have kept us going,” says Virtue. “Our box office is the biggest contributor, but some of the projects that we take on don’t return enough money to break even. For those things, we seek funding from government agencies. Creative Victoria has been the strongest supporter of The Boite for many, many years. We are deeply grateful for that money.”
The Boite’s Fabulous 40th Finale Fling comes to The Laundry at Abbotsford Convent on Saturday November 30. Tickets are available via boite.com.au.
