The main focus of CICADA is to develop strategies and networks to assist emerging Indigenous artists and managers to break into the mainstream music industry. In its first round of music development workshops, run from Gadigal information service in Redfern, it supported and worked with local Indigenous artists, Stiff Gins and Street Warriors, as well as Busby Marou from Queensland and Leah Flanagan from the Northern Territory.
Vicki Gordon, the founding president of Cicada International Inc., has spent the last two years consulting with mainstream music industry professionals and Indigenous organisations and artists to develop a five-day “live in” Professional Music Business Development Camp. Entitled Nurlu Jalbigan (which means “a celebration of music” in the Yawuru language), it is to be held in Broome next year and presented in partnership with Goolarri Media. Its unique and ground-breaking opportunities will help to build relationships between the general Australian music industry and Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and managers.
It is hoped that this will help to raise the profile of Australian Indigenous artists on local, regional and national levels. It will also allow established Indigenous artists to mentor emerging Indigenous artists, to not only teach them how to present themselves in a professional way, but to learn the ins and outs of an industry that consumes so many people.
The camp has been receiving massive local support from Indigenous groups and artists including Christine Anu, the Gadigal Information Service NSW, Too Solid WA, the Jimmy Little Foundation and CASM; as well as mainstream support from big names such as Michael Chugg, Neil Finn, Marianna Annas of ABC Music Publishing, and Carlo Santone from Blue King Brown.
