Human?, the new record from Wik artist Ziggy Ramo, is a considered continuation of his previous work. But it also feels like an endpoint, an ultimatum of sorts.
Part three of an unofficial trilogy, the record explores similar themes to Black Thoughts & Sugar Coated Lies: namely, the continued Australian settler colonial project and its manifestation in intergenerational trauma.
On Human? there’s a tiredness towards a system that has still not changed, a realisation that it’s “not broken it’s working for certain.” Alongside the record's new material, two tracks from Black Thoughts have been reimagined on Human?, the hip hop production of Ramo’s earlier work substituted for a new minimalism; a few guitar chords, the occasional string section or drum patterns. It’s Ziggy Ramo at his most intimate, we’re sharing a room with him as he bares his closest thoughts; this genuine unveiling also being an invitation to take this journey of re-discovery with him.
While musically the record is Ziggy Ramo’s most stripped back recording to date, it’s hardly small in vision. Human? is a multimedia project, released alongside Ramo’s debut book, and a series of artworks by his sister Brydi Fatnowna. Part memoir, part non fiction, the book is an intentional investigation of how history “leaks into” Ziggy Ramo’s life, how the historical and personal cannot be separated for the Original Peoples of this land.
The full title of the book is Human? A Lie that Has Been Killing Us Since 1788. In it, and on the final eponymous track on the album, Ziggy Ramo makes clear how Australia as an imagined and material construction is built on the continued dehumanisation of its Original Peoples, manifested through genocide, dispossession and institutionalised racism. But he also explores a Fanonian understanding of colonisation as an inherently dehumnanising process for all parties; one that builds a hierarchy of human and non-human that degrades humanity as a whole. Ultimately, Human? is a promise that it’s not too late, that an anti-colonial, anti-racist struggle is the most essential and most important of all issues: that of “reclaiming our humanity.”
Words by Lindsay Riley