Australian singer Ziggy Ramo is giving an acoustic guitar performance at a small record store in Sydney's Woolloomooloo. His songs — such as the track Sorry from his new album — feature themes of dispossession and colonisation. "Sorry means nothing if you do it again," he sings to fans.
"We're the good guy, we like to pretend." The song includes audio of former prime minister Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology to the stolen generations. "The message of [the song] Sorry is that words have meaning," says Ramo, 29.
Source: SBS / Sandra Fulloon "Saying sorry means you don't do it again. Right. And unfortunately, I think we as a nation are still grappling with really understanding what we're apologising for.
"The outcome of the Voice Referendum highlighted that we have such a different level of understanding and we have such a difference of opinion about some things that are facts, but people don't know them." Setting the record straight is the focus of his new album, part of a multi-media project that includes a book and original artwork. It questions colonial concepts of what it means to be human.
"Our humanity was stripped away during colonisation," he writes in the introduction. "Colonisers destroy, demolish and dominate. They reduce humans to our worst.
" Source: SBS / Sandra Fulloon Ziggy Ramo's ancestors include members of the Stolen Generations. Although raised across Arnhem Land and Perth, he was born in Bellingen NSW, the son of a mother of Scottish heritage and a Wik-Solomon .