Bula Bob

Friday, April 27, 2012
Composer honoured

An “enigmatic” academic, composer and writer from Fiji is the recipient of the Manifest Creative Arts Festival’s most prestigious award this year.

Gabe Reynaud Award recipient Robert Wolfgramm. Credit: Jordan Lee.

Dr Robert Wolfgramm will receive the Gabe Reynaud Award during a ceremony also named in honour of the pioneering Seventh-day Adventist filmmaker. The award recognises excellence in using the creative arts for ministry.

Robert is editor-in-chief of the Fiji Daily Post and of the New Fijian Translation Bible. The former lecturer in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University wrote a “Trends” column for the magazine, Signs of the Times (2001-2007), winning an Australasian Religious Press Association award for “Item or feature that shows most originality” in 2002 for his “Letter from the future” (published in June 2001). Then editor Dr Bruce Manners describes the column as a “creative, popular and, often, challenging read” and Robert as “demonstrating a heart for social justice.”

Robert’s music, most of which he wrote, recorded and performed during the counterculture movement, also challenged. He co-wrote, mostly with Lowell Tarling, three musicals, Apocalypse Rider (1999, 2000), Persecution Games (1985) and Threedom (1971-1972), and pioneered in Melbourne what is now contemporary Christian music, co-founding Galilee Records (1977). The label’s three albums, composed mostly of songs written by Robert and Lowell, were “influential,” says Associate Professor Daniel Reynaud, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Theology at Avondale College of Higher Education. “Contemporary Christian music existed, but it was produced in other countries by other people. Bob brought it home.” And gave it depth.

“He’d grown up in a legalistic culture but discovered [partly through the influence of those he met at Avondale, where Robert studied teaching and theology] the freedom of the gospel,” says Daniel. “He used culturally relevant forms to communicate this liberating truth.”

Share

Brenton Stacey
Author

Brenton Stacey

Twitter LinkedIn Profile

Brenton is Avondale University’s Public Relations and Philanthropy Officer. He brings to the role experience as a communicator in publishing, media relations, public relations, radio and television, mostly within the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific and its entities.