What we call “ethnicity”, Talcott Parsons wrote, is “an extraordinarily elusive concept and very difficult to define in any precise way”. “The root”, said Edna O’Brien, “becomes the grail”; but in fact the grail may no longer be there for the finding. In the words of Bertolt Brecht: wherever I go they ask me: “Spell your name!” In Pablo Neruda’s navigation-inspired words: “Exile is round, it is a circle, a ring. The stars are not your stars.” However much you brought with you, there’s far more you’ve left behind, Paul Taboris’ Song of Exile goes: “The ego shrinks, for how can you prove what you were and what you did? Such is a song that only the singer can hear.”

While emigration is not exile, many may feel bitter about having been constrained to leave because of unemployment (as happened mainly in the 1950s and 1960s), or political turmoil (as happened mainly in the 1970s and 1980s). Others opted to leave and resettle voluntarily. Most initial “survivalist” symptoms - disorientation, culture clash, emargination, discrimination - are similar. It might seem that most Maltese who left for Australia, be it to cut cane in the tropics or heave merchandise on the wharves, didn’t have much at all. But that’s not true to life, not even in “The Lucky Country”.

These last few months have seen a number of celebrations of migrant identity in Australia which deserve recording, offering comparative material for Maltese communities elsewhere in the diaspora. They tend to show that integration may be facilitated by a recognition of the whole person and that a non-ghettoised but critical ethnic mass can be helpful in this adjustment process over time, where the plant may grow and flourish without denying its roots in the original natal soil, or being disloyal to the host country. Such manifestations became a factor of multicultural policy and practice since the mid-1970s in such large, rich and relatively sparsely populated countries as Canada and Australia, where immigration was legally and even financially encouraged – “populate or perish”.

‘Maltese We Remain’

The Maltese Community Council of Victoria, under the compelling leadership of Dr Victor Borg, has held a string of activities to commemorate the 30th anniversary since its founding. The MCCV, housed at the spacious Centru Malti in Parkville beside Melbourne University, is an officially-recognised umbrella organisation for several Maltese-Australian associations in Victoria. Just celebrating their 50th anniversary is the Melbourne-based Green Gully football club, in their green and white striped Floriana-style gear, about which Peter Desira and Richard Curmi write in an anniversary publication launched at the football club a few months ago; the Maltese Historical Association of Australia invited their president Charles Farrugia and the founder of Ajax Floriana FC Harry Moakes to talk about the team’s history.

In and around Melbourne is concentrated the most numerous Malta-born resident community, still numbering some 22,000 at the latest count, but of course many of the children would be Australia-born, so the network is much larger; moreover thousands of Maltese in Australia were not born in Malta but in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. Sydney and its suburbs come a close second to Melbourne; there too we find an active N.S.W. Community Council, the La Valette Social Centre, and various other “ethnic” associations, committees and clubs in different fields. The Sydney area remains the seat of Australia’s only surviving Maltese weekly, The Maltese Herald, edited by Lino Vella, which through its State correspondents, publication, subscription and distribution network keeps up the inter-State contacts. Whereas the Special Broadcasting Services are State-based – the one in Melbourne comprising Joe Axiaq, Marlene Galea, Tony Spiteri and others – it is only this newspaper, which also carries extracts in Maltese, that has kept the “national” Maltese-Australian flag fluttering so far.

The MCCV’s Cultural Festival’s 30th anniversary concert, which on 25 August packed Victoria University’s auditorium in St Alban’s, had some 400 guests rising to their feet at the end of it applauding the performers – singers, dancers, composers, musicians, presenters, who had been backed up by designers, caterers, backstage hands, lights and sound crews, photographers, participants and other helpers. The fare - Malta’s High Commissioner Francis Tabone and his wife Anne attended - comprised a medley ranging from soprano Joan Drago’s Puccini aria to her grandmother’s enchanting Serenata Maltija, which I had not heard before. Other female voices included Michelle Farrugia and the 15-year-old upcoming TV performer Sarah Debono, together with the stage-seasoned compere himself, John Farrugia, his daughter Lisa and his grand-daughter Taylor, a three generation scoop. Other popular singers, who had also made it outside the community itself, usually through TV shows, included Steve Zammit, Aaron Theuma and Manuel Baldacchino.

A special attraction was the folk feature scripted by Manuel Casha, who in June this year published his CD Tifkira featuring the late ghannej Frans Baldacchino il-Budaj (www.manuelcasha.com) and some of Casha’s own compositions. The main ghannejja at the concert were George Aquilina Nofs il-lejl and Anglu Buttigieg In-Nice, although Michelle Farrugia and Joan Drago also chipped in with some welcome female voices. Maltese-Australian folk-singers now have a well-organised, accommodating club, where in addition to singing (David Calleja il-perit tells me) folks may also be entertained very well to such delicacies as stuffat tal-fenek. As the guitars strummed and the prejjem rang out, here are some of their authentically native language lines (jotted down in Maestro Clemente Zammit’s biro):

Ghalkemm emigrajna/gibna lkoll dura maghna…

Ommi bil-ghana/kienet tkellem lill-gara…

Komplu ghannu/ghax hu wirt missierietna/bla misthija ftahru bih…

And finally this one, which brought the house down:

Maltin konna/u Maltin ghadna.

The reference to dura evoking the bird watch-out in hunting is used here as a metaphor for a little dwelling or home. The allusion to neighbours communicating with one another through folk singing brings to mind the ghajn tal-hasselin or washing well, as in Fontana or Msida, a poetic folk ritual. The third is a “go” at any lack of self-esteem, invoking pride in one’s ancestral heritage; the fourth an even more vibrant self-assertion: emigration had not dampened much less changed ethnicity. “Maltese we were/and Maltese we remain”. A faithful claim to constancy.

Against a backdrop set showing the Valletta bastions and eight-pointed crosses, one hauntingly evocative rendering was Vince Pulo’s composition The Journey. Sound only. No words. Pulo was the concert’s musical director, with George Saliba as its producer, while the set of zestful dancing girls from Dance Enterprise Karnival, were choreographed by Andrew Micallef. So, identity dies hard after all, in spite of distance and integration to varying degrees. As the mainstream first “mass” migrant generations age, with comparatively few emigrants nowadays, to what extent succeeding generations may carry that flame, or blow it out, is another question.

Beyond ‘banda’ and ‘festa’

Another anniversary celebrated in Australia this summer was that of the Melbourne-based Maltese Historical Association of Australia. As its founding president, I was honoured to be asked to deliver its 20th anniversary keynote conference address, which was held at the Centru Malti, Parkville, and, I am told, drew a record audience.

The subject was Language, Religion and Politics in Lord Strickland’s Malta. Australian newspapers reported and debated goings-on in Malta at the time, when a former governor of no less than three Australian States was involved in an unfolding politico-religious-linguistic drama. The Australian resonance in the press reportage was sometimes personalised and anecdotal, involving for example tensions between Strickland and the archbishops of Melbourne and of Sydney, as well as disagreements between premier and governor especially in New South Wales. There are underlying currents in the sectarian divide between Catholics and Protestants, or Irish and English; or indeed racial connotations with regard to “poms” or “wogs”, including Italian migrants in Australia (who really had little to do with Mussolini’s Italy).

The MHA has come a long way during the past 20 years. It has continued to hold regular public lectures and socials under the leadership of, among others, Joe Borg, George Portelli, Edwina Mallia and now Frances Bonnici. It is professionally organised, with a newsletter directed by its secretary, Dr Brian Zammit, Ph.D. (La Trobe), available online; a website; dedicated photographers in Nino Xerri and Lewis Zammit; logos; ongong contacts and a steady membership. This continuing interest in topics related to Maltese history, in its widest sense, is a sure indication of how ethnicity can be sustained through culturally-oriented, historically-driven endeavours and encounters, which foster socialisation and inter-cultural respect. Such a forma mentis is obviously less parochial, more encompassing, and carries a broader appeal to the intellect, beyond simply the festa or the banda, or even the ghana, and the more stereotyped versions of “Malteseness” usually portrayed by the local media. On their agenda was a baroque music concert being put up with the help of Maestro Richard Divall, a Knight of Malta.

One of the organisations affiliated to the MCCV (which also has the best Maltese lending library outside of Malta) the MHA is interested in Maltese language retention and even language classes but public lectures are normally held in English, on the premise that “Malta” is not necessarily a prerogative of Maltese speakers.

Part II of this article will appear in next Sunday’s Gallarija