Seaman Dan
Henry Gibson Dan, known as Seaman Dan, was a Torres Strait Islander singer-songwriter and musician with a national and international reputation. After years of performing gigs, he released his first recording, an album called Follow the Sun, in 2000, on his 70th birthday.
Early life
Dan was born as Henry Gibson Dan on 25 August 1929 in the general hospital on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait Islands Region of Far North Queensland, Australia. He was of Melanesian, Polynesian and African American descent. His great-grandfather was a sailor from Kingston, 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.Early career
Dan started his early years mustering cattle in Cape York, and had aspiration's of joining the navy. In the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, 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.Music career
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 was a regular performer at Thursday Island's local hotels and a community musician for decades.His first album, Follow the Sun, was released in 2000, on his 70th birthday.
He 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.
In 2010, Dan semi-retired at the age of 80 years.
Recognition
His album Perfect Pearl won the ARIA Award for Best World Music Album in 2004, and in 2009 won again with Sailing Home.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, Northern Territory.
In 2019 Seaman Dan was honoured at the Queensland Music Awards with the Grant McLennan Lifetime Achievement Award.