ALESA LAJANA

WINNER of the 2010 Queensland Music Award for Best World Music Song, and nominated for Best Blues & Roots Song. A descendant of Spanish Gpypsies, award winning songwriter, banjoist and guitarist Alesa Lajana spent the first 4 years of her life living in a tin hut deep in the middle of the Conondale Ranges rainforest in South East Queensland Australia. At 16, inspired by rebellious world roving troubadours such as Bob Dylan and Paul Kelly, she took up guitar and began to kindle her own burning desire to explore storytelling through song. After finishing secondary studies Lajana was selected for entry into the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts classical guitar Bachelor of Music Degree, under the instruction of Antony Field. Upon being offered a record deal by ABC Classics, Lajana ceased study to release and tour her debut commercial album Celtic Gypsy, a collection of instrumental celtic pipe and fiddle tunes performed on steel string guitar. In 2010 her second album “Secret Garden”, a collection of original contemporary folk/world music songs, was released independently in Australia. A track from the album “The Owl The Fairy & The Grasshopper” was the winner of the Best World Music Song of the Year Award at the Q Song Awards, while the song “Get Me Out of Here” also receivied a nomination for Best Blues & Roots Song of the Year. In 2010 Lajana founded the Hidden History Album Project, a songwriting endeavour established for the creative exploration of post contact Australian history through music. The project focuses on unique historical events that took place between First Nation People and European colonists, with the aim of engaging people with history on an emotional level, so as to cultivate mutual empathy and understanding between the diverse cultures that now make up contemporary Australia. Bio source: “ALESA LAJANA” BIO. Web, accessed 18 Oct. 2015.