Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications
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ItemMoving Songs: Repatriating Audiovisual Recordings of Aboriginal Australian Dance and Song (Kimberley Region, Northwestern Australia)(Oxford University Press, 2019)Repatriation has become almost ubiquitous in ethnomusicological research on Australian Indigenous song. This article provides insights into processes of a repatriation-centered song revitalization project in the Kimberley, northwest Australia. Authored by an ethnomusicologist and two members of the Ngarinyin cultural heritage community, the article provides firsthand accounts of the early phases of a long-term repatriation-centered project referred to locally as the Junba Project. The authors provide a sample of narratives and dialogues that deliver insight into experiences of the work of identifying recordings “in the archive” and cultural negotiation and use of recordings “on Country.” The entanglement of local epistemological frameworks with past and present collection, archival research, repatriation, and dissemination for intergenerational knowledge transmission between spirits, Country, and the living, is explored, showing how recordings move song knowledge from community to archive to community and from generation to generation, and move people in present-day communities. The chapter considers how these “moving songs” allow an interrogation of the fraught endeavor of intercultural collaboration in the pursuit of revitalizing Indigenous song traditions. It positions repatriation as a method that can support intergenerational knowledge transmission and as a method to consider past and present intercultural relationships within research projects and between cultural heritage communities and collecting institutions.
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ItemCultural precedents for the repatriation of legacy song records to communities of origin(Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 2016-01-01)Repatriation of song recordings from archives and private collections to communities of origin is both a common research method and the subject of critical discourse. In Australia it is a priority of many individual researchers and collecting institutions to enable families and cultural heritage communities to access recorded collections. Anecdotal and documented accounts describe benefits of this access. However, digital heritage items and the metadata that guide their discovery and use circulate in complex milieus of use and guardianship that evolve over time in relation to social, personal, economic and technological contexts. Ethnomusicologists, digital humanists and anthropologists have asked, what is the potential for digital items, and the content management systems through which they are often disseminated, to complicate the benefits of repatriation? How do the 'returns' from archives address or further complicate colonial assumptions about the value of research? This paper lays the groundwork for consideration of these questions in terms of cultural precedents for repatriation of song records in the Kimberley. Drawing primarily on dialogues between ethnomusicologist Sally Treloyn and senior Ngarinyin and Wunambal elder and singer Matthew Dembal Martin, the interplay of archival discovery, repatriation and dissemination, on the one hand, and song conception, song transmission, and the Law and ethos of Wurnan sharing, on the other, is examined. The paper provides a case for support for repatriation initiatives and for consideration of the critical perspectives of cultural heritage stakeholders on research transactions of the past and in the present.
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Item[Review of the book Yurntumu-wardingki Juju-ngaliya-kurlangu Yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu recorded by Georgia Curran and Jeannie Nungarrayi Egan; produced by Georgia Curran](International Council for Traditional Music, 2019)
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ItemThabi tools for change: approaching the solo public songs of the west Pilbara(Foundation for Enda, 2015)Colonisation, industrialisation and new policies have brought massive changes to the lives and languages of Indigenous peoples in the west Pilbara region through the twentieth century. Solo-performed songs, composed and performed by Ngarluma, Yindjibarndi, Palyku, Martuthunira, Kurrama, Nyiyaparli, Banyjima, Yinhawangka, Kariyarra, Nyamal and Ngarla speakers, provide a window into these histories of change, upheaval and innovation. This paper presents a preliminary account of the thematic content and musical style of Tabi songs that were composed and/or performed by Robert Churnside (Dowding’s maternal grandfather) in the 1950s and 60s. Transcribed by linguist Carl Georg von Brandenstein (Brandenstein 1975), the song lyrics composed by Churnside and his associates record experiences of the emerging industries, new forms of transportation and travel, infrastructure and people in his and neighbouring countries, and present an intriguing insight into a region and period of musical innovation. The paper considers the ways in which Tabi songs, and legacy records of them, are used as tools to manage environmental change.
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ItemJunba for Yilala: An instruction book(Kimberley Language Resource Centre, 2019)Junba for Yilala was written by Johnny Nyunjuma Divilli in 2017 and 2018 withcontributions from Francis Nunburrngu Divilli, Rona Goonginda Charles, MatthewDembalali Martin and Sally Treloyn.Each year, young Ngarinyin, Worrorra and Wunambal dancers and singers, supported byelders, teach younger community members Junba choreography and practices. Junba forYilala: An instruction book was written by Johnny Nyunjuma Divilli to provide young boysand young men with a resource to support this teaching and learning.In developing the book, Nyunjuma also drew upon contributions from his brother FrancisNunburrngu Divilli, elder Matthew Dembalali Martin, Rona Goonginda Charles, andethnomusicologist Sally Treloyn.The book includes photos that document the revival of skin-based bodypaint designs andtechniques by Divilli, Martin, and others, in 2016. The book also includes transcriptions ofinterviews with key teachers of Junba in the Ngarinyin community conducted by Divilli in2016 and 2017 that document how they learned Junba as children.
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ItemWunggurr nyindi Warrunga jirri, The Rainbow Serpent and the Young Man(Kimberley Language Resource Centre, 2019)The Rainbow Serpent and the Young Man Wunggurr nyindi Warrunga jirri was illustrated and told by Eamarlden Rivers in 2016 in Mowanjum, an Aboriginal Community in the Kimberley, Western Australia. In May 2018 Matthew Dembalali Martin and Pansy Ngalgarr Nulgit retold Eamarlden’s story in Ungarinyin with the assistance of Rona Goonginda Charles, at Mangkajarda wetlands near Mowanjum. The retelling of Eamarlden’s story was translated by Matthew Dembalali Martin, Pansy Nalgarr Nulgit, and Thomas Saunders. The translation was edited by Sally Treloyn to fit the format of Eamarlden’s book. This is a new story in English by a young Nyikina and Ngarinyin dancer and storyteller, retold in Ngarinyin language by elders in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. A young man, chased by his brothers, is protected by the Rainbow Serpent until they join together to dance Junba. The Rainbow Serpent and the Young Man, Wunggurr nyindi Warrunga jirri is a cultural story about bullying and the healing power of Country and dancing.
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ItemJ is for Junba: A bilingual alphabet book in Ngarinyin language and English(Kimberley Language Resource Centre, 2019)J is for Junba was developed by Rona Goonginda Charles and Sally Treloyn as a resource tosupport teaching and learning through Junba in Ngarinyin language speaking communities.Pansy Ngalgarr Nulgit provided Charles and Treloyn with sample sentences in Ngarinyinlanguage for each word in the course of several sessions at Mangkajarda wetlands nearMowanjum. These sample sentences were then transcribed and translated by Pansy NgalgarrNulgit, Rona Goonginda Charles, Thomas Saunders and Sally Treloyn with assistancefrom Matthew Dembalali Martin. Francis Nunburrngu developed illustrations overseveral months.The book follows the format of a typical English-language alphabet book, A – Z, andincludes sounds that are additional to (e.g., rn, rl, rd, ny) and absent from (e.g., c, f, h, k, p, q,s, t, v, x, z) Ngarinyin language and orthography. A guide to reading Ngarinyin language isat the end of the book
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA Distinctive Voice in the Antipodes: Essays in Honour of Stephen A. Wild(Australian National University Press, 2017)The title of this collection honouring Stephen Wild—A Distinctive Voice in the Antipodes—is drawn from his own essay celebrating the 50th anniversary of the journal Ethnomusicology (Wild 2006). While Stephen pondered whether there might be a distinctive voice in the ethnomusicology of Australia and New Zealand, we have turned his question into a statement of fact and applied it to him as someone who very much embodies such a distinctive voice through his writings, influence, and other academic activities. Further support for our appropriation of Stephen’s 2006 title can be found in the frequency with which that article is cited in the contributions here. The chapters submitted for Stephen’s festschrift were written by scholars living in different parts of the world and with a diversity of backgrounds and interests. There is a similar diversity of approaches in the chapters themselves, both reflecting the state of ethnomusicological studies and also the range of Stephen’s own concerns.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableMusic in Culture, Music as Culture, Music Interculturally: Reflections on the Development and Challenges of Ethnomusicological Research in Australia(Universtity of Bergen Library, 2016-06-27)This article provides an account of the response to the modern postcolonial prerogative in intercultural music research from a particular perspective and field: that of a non-Indigenous Australian ethnomusicologist (the author) who conducts research on Indigenous Australian musical traditions with Indigenous cultural performers and stakeholders. The article outlines histories and legacies of ethnomusicological research in Australia centred on its grapplings with the role of musical analysis in the task of understanding music in and as culture. It then provides an account of a new postcolonial discourse of interculturalism in the study of music as culture as it manifests in applied ethnomusicologies that are centred on recording and repatriation. The aim of this is to trace a path from consideration of challenges of the study of music as culture in ethnomusicology, towards a transdisciplinary postcolonial discourse that is applicable to all research concerned with music and contemporary human societies.