About the artist
Maatakitj songs serve as public service announcements for Country and defiant acts of Indigenous language activism. Maatakitj (AKA Clint Bracknell) is Noongar song-maker and guitarist from the south coast of Western Australia. His stage name means ‘legs like spears’ in Noongar language, his mother tongue.
He works as Professor of Music at the University of Western Australia, activating deep connections between song, language, and landscapes.
Performing as Maatakitj, he has composed for and performed with the world-renowned Kronos Quartet, toured Australia with five-time Grammy Award winner Angelique Kidjo, and produced his debut Noongar language album Noongar Wonderland with ARIA Award winner Paul Mac. Recent tours have seen Maatakitj play at the Jamba Nyinayi Festival in Coral Bay, WA and at World Expo Osaka, Japan alongside and an ensemble of acclaimed Noongar performers.
After being nominated for ‘Best Original Score’ in the 2012 Helpmann Awards for his work on Shaun Tan’s The Red Tree (Barking Gecko), Bracknell went on to compose for Australian theatre over the ensuing decade. His composition and sound design credits include York (2021), Water (2019), Skylab (2018) and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (2016) for Black Swan STC, and Hecate (2020) and King Hit (2014) for Yirra Yaakin. His music is also featured on international advertising campaigns, television programs and the feature film H is for Happiness (2019).
Bracknell co-produced the podcast series Song With No Boss for ABC Radio National and is co-translator and lead voice actor in Fist of Fury Noongar Daa, the audacious and ground-breaking Noongar language dub of the 1972 Bruce Lee film. He also co-translated Hecate, the lauded Noongar-language adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Both Noongar translation productions were firsts for Indigenous languages of Australia and continue to generate international interest. As co-director of Noongar creative company Boomerang and Spear with award-winning Noongar artist, his wife Kylie Bracknell, Clint co-convenes major live arts events and co-wrote the book Shakespeare on the Noongar Stage (2024).
Bracknell is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and serves on the First Nations board for Creative Australia. He was awarded the 2021 ECU Vice Chancellor’s Research Engagement Award and the 2020 John Barrett Award for Australian Studies. He presented the 2019 Australian Academy of the Humanities Hancock Lecture and is a current Future Fellow of the Australian Research Council. The Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia (2024), co-edited with Amanda Harris, is Bracknell’s latest book.
