Linda Barwick

Communities of interest: issues in establishing a digital resource on Murrinh-patha song at Wadeye (Port Keats), NT

Linguistics and musicology, along with other fieldwork-based disciplines, have obligations to facilitate access to research results by the communities whose cultural heritage is recorded and analysed, especially when the languages and musics in question are otherwise little documented, have few speakers or performers, and are threatened by the global dominance of English. This article presents the early results of our planning for establishment of a digital resource to preserve and make accessible recordings and other documentation of Murrinh-patha public dance-songs at Wadeye, a remote Indigenous community in Australias Northern Territory. With the recent establishment of the Wadeye Knowledge Centre, copies of recordings previously left in the community by researchers have been digitized and made available through computer workstations. Many of these digitized recordings, however, have poor or no documentation and thus are difficult to locate and access. The most urgent task is to work with elderly performers and composers to assemble metadata about the oldest recordings of songs and who composed and performed them. In order to maximise local accessibility and use, both elders and young people will be involved in planning and creation of a bilingual search interface to the collection. Planning must also consider sustainability issues through integration with other local initiatives, appropriate use of open standards and formats, locally sustainable technical platforms, and regular backup and maintenance.

Musical Form and Style in Murriny Patha Djanba Songs at Wadeye (Northern Territory, Australia)

This is a postprint of the authors accepted manuscript with page numbers edited to match the published version.

Marri Ngarr Lirrga Songs: A Musicological Analysis of Song Pairs in Performance

Abstract This essay discusses a set of lirrga songs performed for Allan Marett in I998 at Wadeye in Australia’s Northern Territory by a group of senior Marn Ngarr men comprising the singers and composers Pros Luckan and Clement Tchinburur, the ritual specialist John Nummar and the karnbi (didjeridu) player Benedict Tchinburur. The texts of these songs and information about Marri Ngarr language are presented in the companion essay by Lysbeth Ford in this volume. The song session was performed for Marett to teach him about Marri Ngarr songs, and to document lirrga songs for future generations. After chscussion of the historical origins of the lirrga genre and metaphors ofhminality presented in the song texts, the essay attempts to understand the aesthetic intentions of the composers and performers through analysis of the musical conventions used in the genre and the performers’ shaping of the session by juxtaposition of contrasting rhythmic modes and song subjects.

Transcription as deflowering: Collection practices in Italy, pre-1939

Abstract This paper focusses on the interaction between transcribers and performers of traditional songs before the ready availability of sound recording. What acts did the collectors perform to produce the written documents that are our only record of the performing traditions of that time? How did they represent this activity to themselves and others? Although the purposes for which these documents were made may be no longer relevant, exploring how they were shaped by the historical context of their collection may enable contemporary researchers to revalidate an often rejected resource, as well as reminding us that our own work is shaped in similar ways.

Sustaining women's yawulyu/awelye: Some practitioners' and learners' perspectives

In 2010 the authors visited various Central Australian communities, including Willowra, Tennant Creek, Alekarenge, Barrow Creek and Ti Tree, to interview some of our research collaborators past and present about how they saw the present and future of their yawulyu/awelye traditions. Yawulyu (in Warlpiri and Warumungu) and Awelye (in Kaytetye and other Arandic languages) are cognate names for womens country-based rituals, including songs, dancing, ritual objects and knowledge surrounding particular country and Dreaming stories. In the course of our research we spoke to women from different communities, different age groups, different language groups, and different clans, seeking to open discussion about past and contemporary practices of learning, performing and teaching this performance-based knowledge, to help us understand what the practitioners saw as the most fruitful ways of sustaining the traditions, as well as what difficulties they saw in their way. In this article we present statements from many of the women interviewed, highlighting the key issues that emerged and discussing the importance of recordings and other documentation of performances for the future sustainability of the various yawulyu/awelye traditions discussed.

Same tunes, different voices: Contemporary use of traditional models in the Italian folk ensemble's Ballata grande per Francesco fantin (Adelaide 1990)

Abstract This paper discusses the Ballata grande per Francesco Fantin, a piece of musical theatre performed by the Italian Folk Ensemble (IFE) in Adelaide in March 1990 to accompany a photographic exhibition on the life and death of the Italian anarchist, killed by Fascist countrymen in 1942 in South Australias Loveday Internment Camp. This quintessentially Australian Italian story is recounted through a mixture of spoken word and narrative song: for the latter, the IFE set new words to melodies taken from the recorded repertoire of the cantastorie (travelling popular singers) of Northern, Central, and Southern Italy. Through discussion of the textual and musical changes evident when comparing the IFEs performance with the source recordings, issues of reproduction and adaptation of traditional musical practices are addressed. The focus of the musical discussion is on the extent to which the Ensembles performance has in fact maintained the ‘same tunes’, while the textual analysis points to the ways in w...