Reconnecting Angela
For Ange Takats, next month’s Shir Madness will provide a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with her Jewish roots.
Walter and Jutta Matters
Ange Takats Pic: Alain Bouvier
Takats’ grandparents were refugees from a Europe heading towards war in the late 1930s when they emigrated to Australia. They met in Sydney in 1940 at a social function in the Maccabiah Hall…which is still today the Darlinghurst nerve centre of the city’s Jewish community. They married two years later.
Her grandmother Jutta was a Viennese ballerina who defected from her dance company during a European tour and who settled into a new career as a nanny and a housekeeper in England. She made Sydney her home in 1939
Her grandfather, Walter Matters, was from Breslau and was interned in Australia during the war for going AWOL to be with wife. They had become Australian citizens and Walter had enlisted, working an an ordnance factory.
Takats told J-Wire: “My mother Norah was born in Sydney and married a Hungarian who was not Jewish. He came to Australia in 1960 I was not brought up with any Jewishness at all…or for that matter, any religion. Nevertheless, I was always aware of an underlying difference between myself and my Anglo-Saxon friends. Let’s just say, they lifestyle in my home was more colorful.”
Takats discovered her affinity towards Jewishness when working for Reuters in Thailand. 32-yr-old Takets added: “I met an Israeli journalist called Guy Sharett and we became very good friends. Through him, I realised that there was something different about me…I felt it was like meeting a brother.”
Ange Takats has spent her working life in journalism having worked for Sky News, National Nine News where she was a reported and later a producer, Reuters in Sydney and Thailand before embarking on a career in marketing and public relations and numbers among her clients Tourism Noosa and the Venetian Casino in Macau. Music has always been her second love and her major pastime.
At Shir Madness, Ang Takats, who lives on the Sunshine Coast at Perugian Beach,will be performing her one-woman show. She told J-Wire: “Some say my style is a cross between Joan Baez and Gillian Welch. I am looking forward so much to this magical day…a day during which I really hope to reconnect with my Jewish roots.”
Shir Madness…Jewish Music Festival…Bondi Pavilion, Bondi Beach, Sydney…August 15…40 bands…four stages…11a.m. – 10p.m.
