The magnanimous rapper Ziggy Ramo recorded his year-defining album, Black Thoughts, in 2015 — but he held on to it for five years, told by the music industry that an Australian public so in denial about their own racist past (and present) couldn’t handle its contents. On May 25th, as a global race reckoning began to take shape, he uploaded the album in full —it’s gone on to be dubbed the most important Australian album of 2020. The 16-track record covers everything from our nation’s rarely discussed slave trade to the mainstream media’s deplorable treatment of Adam Goodes. Shot for SIDE-NOTE by his girlfriend, Vanessa Swedérus, Ramo speaks openly about the long road to reconciliation that his home country has barely begun to embark on.

GO: I wanted to start by talking about your childhood. Your family moved around a lot.

ZR: I was born in Bellingen, and we lived in that area in Bowraville for a matter of months, and then moved up to East Arnhem Land and Gunbalanya.  We were there until I was six, and then moved to Perth, where I did primary school, and then we moved back to the mid-North Coast again when I was 12, and I did the first three years of high school in Nambucca Heads.

GO: I know you can’t ever compare racism and sexism—and obviously the two intersect in many ways—but I remember when #MeToo happened feeling this flood of contradicting emotions—happy that the conversation is finally happening, but then so angry that it’s taken so long, and at the hypocrisy of so many people. Did you feel that way at all watching the Black Lives Matter protests in May?

It’s interesting you mention #MeToo, because the more you think about this stuff, the more you realize that unless you’re a white, able-bodied, cisgendered, extremely wealthy, heterosexual man, the structures of power in our society are oppressing you in one way or another. It doesn’t work to say, Oh, I’ve been through oppression myself; therefore I can’t be oppressing somebody else. I, as a man, have to be able to recognise the privilege that gives me. If I made super misogynistic music, how could I be taken seriously talking about the oppression of Indigenous Australians? I’d be upholding the exact same structures that I’m trying to dismantle.

People tend to fight oppression when it has real life stakes for them, but then can’t connect to it when it’s broader than that. Which is so dangerous, because then you’re dealing with symptoms and not getting to the root issue. Earlier this year we were all trying to deal with our environment, and now we’re dealing with racial justice, but we need to stop being so laser-focused on ‘me’.

We’re always talking about the same thing when we talk about these issues, which is that all these Western power structures that have just been around in Australia since colonization were designed in a time where women and people of colour were literally seen as objects and not humans. We’re making amendments to that system, but it’s kind of like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg, then being surprised when you walk around with a limp for the rest of your life.

GO: I think one of the many things that have been confronting for white people this year was realizing that huge swathes of our own history were hidden from us by our own education system. I read Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor this year, and before that I knew nothing about the British colonization of India. And then in June Scott Morrison got on national television and said that Australia has no history of slavery. And it didn’t seem like he was intentionally lying—I think he genuinely had no idea. In fact, I think most Australians haven’t even heard the term ‘blackbirding’. How did you react to Morrison’s comments? I’m sure you weren’t surprised…

ZR: Not at all. In fact, what shocked me more was that people were surprised by his comments. Of course he doesn’t know. Scott Morrison not knowing his own country’s history is the system working successfully. We were literally treated as a dying race—the government policy was to kill, eradicate and then eventually to assimilate. It’s never been about protecting us, nurturing us, or working in conjunction with us. The Australian government wasn’t designed to govern us, and it hasn’t ever adapted to governing us.

On a personal level, it sucks. Ramo is a Solomon Islander name. My Solomon Islander heritage were enslaved and brought across to work on a sugar cane field. I am literally a symbol of slavery in Australia. You would hope that the leader of your country knows about your history. But if the leader of your country is going through an education system that has never acknowledged or grappled with what we’ve done, and what we continue to do, what can we expect?

GO: Let’s talk about the album. You recorded it in 2015, but were told by the music industry that it would be too difficult to market in Australia. What was the thought process when you decided to release it in June? Did you see a kind of hypocrisy in the way that Australians were reacting to the murder of George Floyd?

ZR: I saw these very intelligent people in Australia doing our typical thing, getting on our high horse and pointing a finger at America. It’s very easy to care about Black bodies that are on the other side of the world, because you don’t have to do anything. You can post on social media, but you won’t actually have to investigate the ways in which you oppress Black bodies in your own country.

Rhys understands the emotional labor we have to carry around, and so he wanted this shoot to showcase me as a complete person. He said ‘I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you’re a big goofball, you’re a bit of an idiot,” – and I am. Even being able to wear luxury brands, I personally never really wear luxury brands, and Rhys said to me, “Non-indigenous artists get dressed in these things all the time without having to buy them!” Doing this shoot made me realize how important is to display those multitudes.

GO: We’ve been talking for an hour and a half now! Thank you for your time.

ZR: I have no idea how you’re going to cut this down.

GO: Is there a note you’d like to leave on?

I’m just very conscious of the fact that my oppression has manifested in me making art and being able to talk eloquently about that lived experience. But other people’s manifests into petty crime, alcoholism or substance abuse, or their being very distrusting and not wanting to educate you, or actually being really, really angry. And your responsibility as the oppressor is to be able to dismantle your bias and come from a place of unconditional love. If you can love me when I can look pretty in photos, or when I make art that you respect, even if you find it challenging, you should also be able to practice unconditional love when we, as a community, do things that you don’t understand and you don’t agree with.

Because we’re all grappling with trauma every single day, and when you’re traumatised, sometimes you don’t have the capacity to hold the hand of the person who is actively traumatising you, sometimes you just want to scream Fuck off. It can come at a great cost to do what I do—I’m not always this light-hearted person, because you carry a weight around with you. So I think it’s really about trying to build people’s understanding about humanity, and about learning to love us unconditionally.

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^{SIDE-NOTE acknowledges the Eora people as the traditional custodians of the land on which this project was produced. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. We extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples reading this.}