“There are no riches but the riches of love. And there’s nothing you can’t rise above”. Whether it’s the sustaining invocation to his young son, or the pain and desperation of our forgotten peoples, songwriter and activist Les Thomas sings true to the heart of every listener. His intense lyrical style, and impassioned musical presentation enthral with deftly woven stories that we can’t walk away from. A must see artist”.
In the winter of 2016, Les Thomas experienced the most harrowing crisis of his life. Like some modern day Don Quixote, he was pushed to his emotional and psychological limits during a campaign to close the Don Dale youth detention centre. In the immediate aftermath and near-hospitalisation, he wrote a song called Man on Fire that poetically captured how it affected him, his family and his fellow activists. The song is about drawing on those painful lessons in a way that can give hope and eventually “to the prize, we rise again.”
Anyone who’s been...
