Seaman Dan


Henry Gibson "Seaman" Dan , known as Seaman Dan, an Indigenous Australian, is a Torres Strait Islander singer-songwriter with a national and international reputation whose first recording was released in 2000. His album Perfect Pearl won him an ARIA award for Best World Music Album in 2004 and in 2009 won again with Sailing Home. In 2014 at the age of 85 he released A Caribbean Songbook, his tribute to the music of the West Indies. In 2016 at the age of 87 he released An Old Man of the Sea, which was a finalist for an ARIA Award in the World Music category.

Early life

Seaman Dan was born on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait Islands Region of far-north Queensland, Australia in 1929. His great grandfather was a sailor from Jamaica in the West Indies and his great grandmother a chief's daughter from New Caledonia. Another grandfather came from the island of Niue in Polynesia. In the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Seaman Dan worked as a boat captain and pearl diver, gathering pearl and trochus shells across the north of Australia. He also did jobs such as mineral prospecting and taxi driving.

Singing

Dan's singing came from family, friends and associating with talented musicians in his multi-cultural maritime working life, creating a fusion of music from Australia, Melanesia, North America, Africa and Polynesia. Notably the Thursday Island 'hula' style. He has been a regular performer at Thursday Island's local hotels and a community musician for decades.
In its citation on awarding Dan the Australia Council for the Arts Red Ochre Award in 2005 for his outstanding contribution to the development and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and culture, the Council claimed he was a charismatic and consummate performer who blended traditional Torres Strait Islander and pearling songs with jazz, hula and blues. In 2013, he received a Hall of Fame Award at the National Indigenous Music Awards in Darwin. In 2019 at the age of 89, he received Music Queensland's Grant McLennan Lifetime Achievement Award.
He has performed in Japan and throughout Australia, most notably at the National Folk Festival, Port Fairy Folk Festival, Darwin Festival, Adelaide and Adelaide Fringe Festivals, Laura Dance and Music Festival, Tasmania's 10 Days on the Island Festival, NAIDOC Ball, and at the National Museum of Australia's Tracking Kultja Festival.
Dan semi-retired at the age of 85 years.
In 2019 Seaman Dan was honoured at the Queensland Music Awards with the Grant McLennan Lifetime Achievement Award.

Discography