Dili Allstars
CD Launch April 2002

The DILI ALLSTARS are:

Gil Santos electric guitar
Nelito Ribero bass guitar
Colin Badger lead & acoustic guitar, lap steel, dobro, dulcimer, vocals
Paulo Almeida lead vocals
Paul Stewart lead vocals, trumpet
Sonja Parkinson trombone, backing vocals
Colin Buckler drums
Zeca Mesquita congas, percussion, backing vocals

The Dili allstars were born when Paul Stewart and Colin Buckler hooked up with East Timorese musician Gil Santos to record a song to protest the capture of resistance leader Xanana Gusmao by Indonesian armed forces in the early nineties. This was a version of Rose Tattoo’s We Can’t Be Beaten, sung in both East Timorese and English.

Santos and Stewart have had a long involvement with the struggle of the East Timorese people, as one lost a father and the other a brother in the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975.

Before the 1999 Independence referendum, the band formed again when they heard the Governor of East timor was playing pro-Indonesian songs at Dili Airport.

The band’s plan was to give the other point of view some airtime and subsequently recorded the original track, Liberdade and six other songs. With the help of Melbourne University students, 500 tapes were smuggled into East Timor. The songs were welcomed by the locals and had wide exposure during the nervous few weeks before the election … Liberdade is still sung in East Timor to this day.

When East Timorise independence leader Xanana Gusmao visited Melbourne he even joined the Dili Allstars on stage at the National Tennis Centre for a rendition of Liberdade. This track was later included on a Mushroom Records compilation album the band helped put together called Liberdade, which also featured Midnight Oil, Crowded House, Yothu Yindi and Vika & Linda Bull. The CD raised $100,000 for East Timor.

This album followed two previous compilation albums the band put together for East Timor – Love from a Short Distance and All In The Family which also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for East Timor. The money went towards the education of East Timorise orphans through the Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Hilton Deakin.

Because of the band’s long-time involvement with East Timor, the Dili Allstars were invited to appear with popular Australian performers John Farnham and Kylie Minogue at the Tour of Duty concert in Dili, December 1999. The band has also been asked by fellow Australian rock acts Living End and Spectrum to record versions of their songs, which are included on this CD.

The Dili Allstars most recently took part in a theatrical / musical play, Tour of Duty, as part of the 2001 Melbourne International Festival, which was opened by the cast and band of Tour of Duty in Dili.

The songs included on this CD were featured in the Tour of Duty production.

The Dili Allstars plan to release another album of original material in the not-too-distant future.