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Parissa has over 20
years experience as a performer. By the age 15, Parissa was singing,
acting and dancing professionally. She has performed many different
styles of music including Latin-jazz, rock, pop, Calypso and a
variety of ethnic styles, the highlights include a support for
Dizzy Gillespie at Sydney Entertainment Centre, headlining at
the 'Closing Ceremony of the Bicentennial Celebrations' Darling
Harbour. Before moving to the Northern Rivers, Parissa was a long
time member of Sydney acappella group, "Voices from the Vacant
Lot".
Over the past 12 years
Parissa has been a singer/songwriter and percussionist with the
extremely popular 'folk/world music', act The Hottentots, two
time winners of the NCEIA 'Best Album' award for their debut CDs,
"A Small World" & "The Voice of Your Heart". In 2001 they released
"Graceful" which featured on ABC national radio and won them the
'FRESH AIR' award. They have just released a new CD "Turn Back
the Tide" and have already won the Australian Songwriters Association's
Best Coffeehouse Song (Folk/Roots). They perform regularly at
top festivals and venues around Australia and have toured Europe
& Brazil in 1998, and Europe in 2001 & 2004.
Parissa is an extraordinary
singer and songwriter who finds an emotional context for every
genre. In Brazil they named her 'Patativa', after a bird renowned
for its singing. Daughter of a Greek sailor, she inherited his
love of Latin music and honed her formidable percussion skills
whilst touring with an Andean folkloric group.
Parissa has written
some classic, catchy songs that people sing around the country,
such as 'Mother's Song' & 'My Spirit'. In 2000 she co-wrote
the anthemic, 'Put Your Hand in Mine' for the Woodford Millennium
Fire Event Choir of 700 voices, which she also conducted. The
performance before a crowd of 20,000 was beamed across Australia
and to 16 billion people in 61 countries.
At festivals and music
camps across Australia, Parissa's vocal and rhythm workshops are
highly sought after. Recent camps include: RhythmSong WA; Jamberoo
Folk Music Camp NSW; Daylesford Singer's Festival VIC. When not
touring Parissa lectures in Voice at Southern Cross University,
runs group consultations with HSC students preparing for exams
and maintains a busy private studio.
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Carl
Cleves, natural born storyteller, singer, songwriter and guitarist,
was born in Belgium. Even as a child he would entertain his siblings
and schoolmates with his vivid imagination. This oratory skill
won him high grades in his Belgian Law Studies and a scholarship
to South Africa. Meeting with musicologist John Blacking and field
recording traditional African music started off many years of
travel throughout Africa, the Middle East, the Orient, the Pacific
Region and South America, acquiring musical skills and an endless
supply of stories and songs.
Carl's
nomadic past results in highly original songs where languages
and styles are interchanged and blended with great ease. Carl
has performed in almost every continent. His adventurous life
has included stints as an antelope trapper in Uganda, relief worker
in cyclone struck India, radio broadcaster and ethnomusicologist
in Africa and fisherman in the South Pacific. Whilst living in
Brazil, where he worked for the Federal University of Minas Gerais
in research of Folkloric music, he became a popular band leader,
released two highly acclaimed albums of his songs and won National
'Jingle of the Year Award' in1984.
Further
nomadic tendencies led Carl to Australia where he co-founded the
duo, The Hottentots & the dance band, Hottentot Party, with Parissa
Bouas. His original songs have consistently won Entertainment
Industry awards in the fields of folk and world music.
He
speaks five languages and holds degrees in Law, African Music
and Contemporary Composition. Presently, he writes, records, runs
workshops and tours with The Hottentots, lectures in Song Writing
and World Music at Southern Cross University.
Carl
is writing a book which he has started to unveil on this site
under the title Hexagram
56
: The Wanderer.
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