In 2001, The Boîte worked with Australian Volunteers International, to bring Cinco do Oriente to Melbourne from Timor Leste, to perform with the Melbourne Millennium Chorus in A Concert for East Timor. The Boîte Director, Roger King, had a long-standing personal interest in Timor, having been a member of the Australia East Timor Association since the organisation’s first meeting in response to the invasion of East Timor (as it was then known) by Indonesia in 1975. At a time when the people of East Timor had endured significant violence and political turmoil in their struggle for independence, the concert was a fundraiser with proceeds donated for community projects in Timor Leste.
Under the artistic direction of Diana Clark, the concert brought together these special international guests, with a line-up of prominent Australian musicians including the Dili Allstars, Deborah Conway and Kavisha Mazzella. This was the first time that Ego Lemos and the band had toured in Australia and represented a milestone moment in Ego Lemos’ musical career.
In 2001, community support for the Reconciliation movement in Australia had also been gaining momentum. The previous year, hundreds of thousands of Australians had walked over bridges as a symbolic show of support for meaningful reconciliation between Australia’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. In a second Melbourne Millennium Concert for 2001, The Boîte presented Winter Dreaming – A Concert for Reconciliation. Featuring artists Kev Carmody, Richard Frankland, Lou Bennett, Carol Fraser and many more, the concert provided an artistic avenue to explore some of the issues behind reconciliation and promote understanding.
