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Biographies Photos | Biographies | Reviews
   

Hottentot Brochure.pdf - Download File Size: 1380k

Hottentot Interview.doc - Download File Size: 44k

   
     
Parissa Bouas    
   

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.

       
Carl Cleves

 

 
   

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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