{"id":3545,"date":"2007-03-07T09:06:21","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T09:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/03\/cant-get-the-words-outta-my-head\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:47:05","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:47:05","slug":"cant-get-the-words-outta-my-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/03\/cant-get-the-words-outta-my-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Can’t get the words outta my head"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several Indigenous Australian music stories.
\nLast year’s Stanner Award<\/a> went to Allan Marett<\/a> for his ethnomusicological study, Songs, dreamings, and ghosts: The Wangga of North Australia<\/em><\/a>: Wesleyan University Press (2005). This is an award<\/a> for “the best published contribution to Australian Aboriginal and\/or Torres Strait Islander Studies that is considered by Council to be a significant work of scholarship in Aboriginal and\/or Torres Strait Islander Studies and which reflects the dynamic nature of Professor Stanner’s life and work.”
\nAnd the award ceremony was moving. Yes there were speeches. And then Allan explained how the wangga<\/em> songs link the living and the dead (and check out also the radio program Ghost songs<\/em><\/a>). He showed three short clips of performances of wangga<\/em>. Then Joe Gumbula<\/a>, a Yolngu scholar and musician, and the first Indigenous Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, sat down on the floor with his didgeridoo. Allan sat down next to him with clap sticks, and they performed two songs, Allan singing. Many traditional Indigenous Australian songs are HARD, hard to learn the words of, and hard to sing, but he made it seem effortless. Two scholars and musicians, Yolngu and non-Indigenous-Australian, performing traditional songs together. A future for us all.
\nAnd then the other way around. Indigenous Australians have been writing and performing modern Anglo-Australian songs in traditional languages for a while now.<\/p>\n


\nMissionaries started the trend – circulating cassettes of hymns. Then came a song which was immensely popular right across Central Australia, Jailanguru pakarnu<\/em> (out of jail), written by Sammy Butcher and Neil Murray, the first (1983) rock song in a traditional Australian language (Pintupi\/Luritja) – and sung by the Warumpi Band<\/em><\/a>[1]. That was followed by the phenomenal success of Yothu Yindi<\/a> singing in Arnhem Land languages. And after that lots of bands took off, singing in their own languages.
\nAnd now some groups are podcasting their songs – thanks to Kim Christen at Long Road<\/a>, I listened to a podcast of a Warlpiri song – at Winanjjikari<\/a>. It’s sung by Brian Murphy and the Nomadics. In 2001 Brian talked about what he sings about:<\/p>\n

“My songs are in English, and in language. I sing about the land, and about the lives of our people, about domestic violence, car accidents, about alcohol related problems, about families leaving their children behind while going out drinking. I sing songs about how to solve these problems.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Google cache of http:\/\/www.ntl.nt.gov.au\/dcdsca\/intranet.nsf\/Files\/CA_Artifacts\/$file\/artifacts_jun01.pdf]
\nIn keeping with his theme, listen out on the podcast for the all-encompassing pity\/empathy word wiyarrpa<\/em>, a meaning (but not form) which is widespread across Indigenous Australia.
\nYou can buy CDs from some other Warlpiri bands at the CAAMA website<\/a> or at Skinnyfish<\/a> (which also distributes CDs of traditional music). Lajamanu Teenage Band, North Tanami band, Watjilarringi (Homesick) and the Yuendumu bands Blackstorm, Rising Wind, as well as solo albums (Jimmy Langdon’s “My spinifex country”). Lots of bands! Lots of Warlpiri songs! No sleep at Yuendumu, especially when evangelists with loud-speakers start competing with them.
\nAnd then, thanks to a Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> ‘Stay in touch’<\/a> piece, I came across this Ngaanyatjarra music website<\/a>. Lyrics, alas, are greyed out. This is how the podcast site started: <\/p>\n

“I’ve been going out to the Ngaanyatjarra lands<\/a> for five years now, primarily to do songwriting and recording,” says [John] Gordon, […]. “Mainly with the young fellas, who love music with a passion. That, and AFL. English is very much the second language for them but music bridges a gap. In August I took a basic recording set-up out there and we began recording in Warburton, the main community and original mission.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’ll be interesting to see how these podcast sites pan out – how many downloads, and where, and whether community members start burning CDs or buying iPods, and can small communities sustain them – putting up songs frequently could be all too hard. .
\nBuzzing around my head are shreds of lyrics for songs in several languages – sometimes the only words of a language that I really remember. So having heaps of good and interesting and enjoyable songs (ancient and modern..) in communities is not just for pleasure, but is also important for keeping languages strong.<\/p>\n

\n

\n[1] Neil Murray’s autobiography, Sing for me, countryman<\/em> (Rydalmere, N.S.W.: Sceptre 1993) gives a startlingly honest and vivid account of what it was like for a young Anglo-Australian man working with the Indigenous band members to try to create a band, and the kinds of clashes that occurred. The Desert Princess stuff could have done with editing, but, generally, it is more evocative and interesting than writings about Indigenous Australia by travel-writers such as Bruce Chatwin and Nicolas Rothwell. The reason, no doubt, is that Murray was a participant and not just an observer. But, hey, that scale of participation takes more courage than many of us have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several Indigenous Australian music stories. Last year’s Stanner Award went to Allan Marett for his ethnomusicological study, Songs, dreamings, and ghosts: The Wangga of North Australia: Wesleyan University Press (2005). This is an award for “the best published contribution to Australian Aboriginal and\/or Torres Strait Islander Studies that is considered by Council to be a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australian-linguistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4371,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions\/4371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}