Lou Bennett (musician)


Lou Bennett is an Indigenous Australian musician, actor and academic researching Aboriginal languages and their retrieval.

Early life

Bennett is a Yorta Yorta/Dja Dja Wurrung woman from Echuca, Victoria, Australia.

Career

Bennett started her musical career with her uncle's band "The Shades", before later joining Richard Frankland's band "Djaambi", where she met Sally Dastey and Amy Saunders—Bennett, Dastey and Saunders later formed the Australian Recording Industry Association Award-winning band Tiddas.
After Tiddas disbanded in 2000, Bennett performed with a new band Sweet Cheeks and has worked as a stage actor—the latter has included an autobiographical show Show Us Your Tiddas!. Show Us Your Tiddas! follows Bennett's life as she recounts a series of stories that include the occasion when she revealed her sexuality to her family, her first live performance, moving into an urban environment and her time with Tiddas.
Bennett was a member of The Black Arm Band, a project that she was an artistic director, composer, vocal supervisor and performer for. Bennett also contributed vocals to the 2012 Australian film The Sapphires, following her involvement with the 2004 Melbourne stage production.
In October 2015 Bennett completed a PhD on Aboriginal language retrieval at RMIT University.

Honours and recognition

In 2017, Bennett was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women. She was invited by the University of New England to give the 2018 Frank Archibald Memorial Lecture.
Her "significant service to the performing arts, particularly to music, and to the Indigenous community" was recognised by the award of Member of the Order of Australia in the 2019 Australia Day Honours.

Theatre projects