When Joji Malani moved from Fiji to Sydney in 1998, he didn’t know that he would eventually form and play an integral part in arguably the most successful Australian band of the last two decades.
Nor did he know that a football club located in a country over 15,000 kilometers away would become such an intrinsic and beloved part of his life.
But as a young Pasifika person growing up in Sydney’s Hill District, Malani’s search for community, belonging, and representation would lay the groundwork for both his future in the music industry and as an Evertonian.
And it started with Tim Cahill.
“Moving to this country and being a Pacific Island person and playing soccer or football, it felt very isolating and out of place, Tim Cahill for me gave me that sense of belonging, so that built that affinity for the club,” said Malani.
“I remember Wayne Rooney bursting onto the scene, this 16-year-old with that goal against Arsenal, that kind of got my interest going, I started watching this team a bit more, but it wasn't until two seasons later we ended up selling him, and part of that Rooney money we got this awesome guy in, a little known character called Tim Cahill who obviously everyone in Australia knows.
“But for me being a Pasifika person, seeing a Pacific Islander person playing on the biggest stage in the world, and not just playing but competing, and doing really well against the world's best, that was so inspiring to me.”
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Cahill sparked the flame for Malani’s fandom, but it went beyond just a single person.
Malani could relate to the working class, no-nonsense nature of Everton, which was in many ways reminiscent of the North West Sydney that he grew up in.
“It felt like a very real place, an unsexy place, and there’s something about places like that that I’m always drawn to,” Malani said.
“I grew up being a Penrith fan in rugby league, and I had a cousin who played Penrith juniors growing up, so I used to go watch him a lot, and there’s just something about those two clubs that felt similar to me, that appealed to me.”
This affinity with the Toffees would only grow through Malani’s adolescence, as he recounted how he would sneak out at night from his boarding school, to watch his team's games live with a small but highly committed group of Everton faithful.
“I used to sneak out at night and go to Cheers Bar down in Town Hall, get in there early before they were checking IDs and I used to stay out, I’d be there either three hours or four hours early depending on when the game was, and for me, that was my highlight, that was what I looked forward to every week,” Malani said.
“From the start, especially through school, it was a real sense of belonging, I didn’t really meet anyone else who was an Everton fan till I was in my late teens… It was just that sense of belonging that I didn’t experience in any other avenue.”
But another avenue of belonging was on the horizon for Malani, in the shape of his band Gang of Youths, which throughout the 2010s would become one of the most decorated and successful music groups in Australia.
Malani looks back on his time with the band fondly, still scarcely believing that what he and a few mates started in a garage could have turned into a world-famous band, that afforded him some of his greatest opportunities.
“It was pretty weird that something a group of random eclectic kids from around the suburbs of Sydney, we used to practice in a garage in Strathfield, we’re here in Surry Hills and a bunch of us worked a bunch of odd jobs a few blocks in this vicinity to make it happen,” Malani said.
Standing inside The Record Store in Surry Hills, Malani is able to point out a number of different locations where he and his old bandmates worked odd jobs.
After walking in and seeing Gang of Youth’s debut album ‘Positions’, he turns it over and shows us the illustration on the back, which he said he drew on a napkin whilst working in a cafe only a few blocks over (this was after he first pretended to hide the album on the stand.)
The photography done on the inside was from his old apartment, and he made sure to include thanks to Everton FC in the album’s acknowledgments.
Everton must have taken note of this too, as in 2019 Malani and the band were invited to visit and perform at the team’s famed training facility, Finch Farm.
“Playing at Finch Farm, being invited to play at Finch Farm was pretty awesome, I think at that point not a lot of people had done that, especially not at Finch Farm, I know my buds at DMA’s - they’re big Everton fans as well - I know they shot a film clip there at Goodison, but yeah we got to film at finch farm and meet some of the players,” Malani said.
“The players look so much bigger in person than on TV, TV is misleading, they’re jacked.”
Being based out of London, Malani had a front-row insight into English football culture. Instead of sneaking out to watch the team play in Sydney pubs, he was going to Goodison to see them in person and then going to local pubs afterward to either celebrate or more often commiserate.
“England is fantastic, the English people are very passionate about their sport, and especially about their football; it's one thing to watch it from afar on tv, but to actually be there in and amongst and around the things and events that surround the game was amazing,” Malani said.
But as important as being an Evertonian was to Malani, what was more important was his Pasifika culture, one in which he felt he wasn’t able to immerse himself in properly living so far away from home.
So in 2019, Malani left Gang of Youths, and returned home to Australia, to focus on getting back in touch with his community.
“We were living in London at the time - they’re still based there - and it was looking pretty certain that the band were going to be there for the foreseeable future, and for myself, I just didn't see myself in London,” Malani said
“I definitely loved being closer to football but for me, being a Pasifika person, being close to the Pacific Islands and then also my family and community here, both in and around South West and Inner Western Sydney, is where I saw my future involved with people in those communities.
“Not just the music, I endeavour to do a lot of community stuff, there’s some stuff that I’m working towards, some cool community events happening in 2023, so yeah just being based somewhere that I could interact with these communities, it just wasn’t something that was possible being based in London.”
In the three years since he left Gang of Youths, Malani has been busy. He launched his own music label, Broth Records, and began making music on his own, under the name Pei.
This October, he released his debut solo album ‘Pei’s Pageant’, which he described as himself learning to make music as an individual artist.
“This is just me learning how to make music by myself, it’s me learning how to sing, teaching myself how to sing,” Malani said.
“It’s kind of painful for me to listen now because I made this stuff three, four years ago and I’ve really worked on myself and moved further along with my ability to write and sing, but it’s nice, people can see where I started.”
But of course, his new projects still had to have a link to his beloved football club, which he did through references across the cover art of his album and three singles, most predominantly on the song ‘Themesong’.
“The album cover is the depiction of something that happens in Fijian culture called the Fakapele, which is where a young person will dance at a celebratory event and they’ll put oil on their body and people would slip notes on them, and so every different [single] cover is a different note, and they’re loosely designed to be loosely reminiscent of a Fijian dollar note,” Malani said.
“There’s Everton acknowledgments on each note, but especially for the art for the song ‘Themesong’, which is basically an amalgamation of a Robbie Williams cover art which I just find quite iconic, it stuck in my head ever since I was a kid, it’s like a poster I first saw when I came to Australia in 1998, and it’s ‘Sing when you’re winning’, it’s Robbie Williams in a football team all of himself celebrating.
“I wanted to recreate that, mixed with the Fijian seven dollar note, the only seven dollar note issued in the world, which was issued after we’d won the Sevens Rugby Gold medal in 2016, but yeah, lots of Everton stuff woven through there.”
For the last three years, Malani’s life has changed drastically. He has gone from being part of a huge band to branching out completely on his own and has also had to embrace all that comes with being the head of a music label. He has also undergone some personal changes; he doesn’t drink alcohol these days and has recently started running again, after overcoming a knee injury which by his count he suffered for nearly a decade.
During this time, Everton has also undergone changes of its own, most significantly the introduction of new manager Frank Lampard after a season where Everton came as close to being relegated as they ever have.
“Last season was tough, and we did come close to getting relegated, I think for myself, I’m the kind of fan that tries to be a realist, and for a big part of last season it looked more likely that we’d get relegated, it was really a miracle that we got a result right at the end,” Malani said.
“I think that it’s a shame that off the back of that we’ve had to make some decisions and lose players like Richarlison, and maybe not be able to attract the type of players that we need to take us to the next level, but I think the team is better for it, I think it showed not just to Everton fans but to other people how great our fan base is.
“Given what we were facing, and the position we were in, Frank [Lampard] made a lot of sense.
“I think what’s amazing is Frank seems to be someone who has very high emotional IQ, I’ve always admired managers like him… who really care about working on their emotional intelligence and incorporating that into their managerial style.
“Having someone like him come in, he said something really cool last week, he said ‘I came in as an Everton manager and now I’m an Evertonian’, and he’s got it, I think.”
Music and sports are not always the easiest of worlds to combine, but through his life, Malani has weaved the two seemingly at will.
To illustrate this point, Malani seemed at a slight loss of words when trying to adequately explain his new album. But what he landed on was the perfect note to combine the two threads that exist within himself.
“If you like Everton, you should listen to my album, it’s all I’ll say, it’s the best way to describe it.”
