Ziggy Ramo to live-stream his full-length album in an exclusively commissioned performance for the Opera House's digital season

Sydney – Monday 17 August, 2020: In an exclusively commissioned performance featuring a 10-piece band and specially-made visuals, Ziggy Ramo Burrmuruk Fatnowna will present his debut album Black Thoughts in a live-streamed performance at 9 pm AEST, Saturday 29 August. The performance will be presented as part of the Sydney Opera House's From Our House to Yours digital season as a hip-hop reckoning through love, compassion, dispossession and systemic racism envisioned for listeners from all walks of life.

Sydney-based hip hop and freestyle artist Ziggy Ramo’s full-length album Black Thoughts was completed in 2015 and then personally shelved for five years. It is an opus that journeys through collective trauma and spiritual renewal that was released in response to this year's global Black Lives Matter movement to critical acclaim.

Ziggy Ramo describes: "When I wrote this album I didn’t think I’d be alive to see it released. It’s surreal to think that I’ll now get to put this message on such an iconic stage. I’m humbled to be allowed to share my story on Gadigal Country. I hope this performance can create further conversations that Australia needs to have. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land."

A fiercely rapped reflection of Ramo's pain and passion for unity while weaving a rich tapestry of Aboriginal Songline traditions, Ramo has reimagined the album into a multimedia performance featuring brass, strings and a full live band, augmented by newly commissioned animated illustrations by Kamsani 'Kambarni' Bin-Salleh (2018 WA Young Person of the Year).

Ziggy Ramo – an artist whose political lines and personal life blur into an iconoclastic voice reminiscent of Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, The Clash and Archie Roach – brings to life a powerful new statement of vulnerability and force through the global language of rap in a uniquely commissioned live performance that will make you smile, dance, cry and hold onto your community through the interweaving terrors of COVID-19 and colonial history.

Artist Bio:
Since his first release in 2016, Sydney-based hip hop and freestyle artist Ziggy Ramo’s razor-sharp lyricism and effortlessly cool musical talent have positioned him as an essential voice in Australia’s national conversation. Born to an Aboriginal and Solomon Islander father and a mother of Scottish heritage in Bellingen, NSW, and brought up across Arnhem Land and Perth, Western Australia, Ramo – whose full name is Ziggy Ramo Burrmuruk Fatnowna – defies categorisation. With feet firmly planted on the ground, Ramo rises above the fray. From racial discrimination and toxic masculinity to trauma, mental health and even plain old love, Ramo is insightful, articulate and poignant with infectious energy to match. His musical influences go beyond old-school hip hop greats like Lauryn Hill and Yasiin Bey to include Aboriginal activists such as Charlie Perkins and Gary Foley. His songs reflect the fiery inner-monologue of a person carrying ancestral trauma while navigating the throws of contemporary life, and interrogate issues typically eschewed with gripping humanity and grit.

Ramo’s latest release, Black Thoughts, is an extended version of the artist’s 2016 debut EP by the same name. Written while hospitalised and on suicide watch four years ago, the album is now a source of healing for Ramo – though at the time, he thought of it as more of an obituary. He might have rediscovered strength and hope, but the conditions of systemic racism and injustice that brought him down in the first place are still at play. Recent attention on police brutality against people of colour and Aboriginal deaths in custody in both the United States and Australia bring his work on Black Thoughts into new focus.

Ziggy Ramo’s previous releases include debut EP Black Thoughts (2016), as well as singles Same Script (2017), YKWD (2017), A to Z (2018) and Pretty Boy (2019). In 2017, Ramo picked up West Australian Music (WAM) titles for Indigenous Artist of the Year and Hip Hop Artist of the Year, as well as triple J Unearthed Artist to Watch. He followed up with explosive live performances at Splendour in the Grass and Falls Festival in 2018.

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“A reckoning with Indigenous sovereignty” – The Monthly

“2020’s most important Australian album” – NME

“Uncomfortable, confronting, profound and intensely personal…”  – FBi Radio