Talks
Forthcoming talks
Where: The Refectory, Holmes Building, Manning Road, Camperdown Campus, The University of Sydney, for the Into the Academy Indigenous Knowledges Symposium Dates: 14th December 2009 - 15th December 2009
In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964: 8), Marshall McLuhan coined the enduring expression, ‘the medium is the message’. He observed that the medium through which a message is conveyed is intrinsic to how it is perceived within its host society, and therefore proposed that media themselves should be the focus of study over the content they carry. McLuhan lived and worked during a period of sustained growth in the prevalence and advancement of broadcasting and reproduction technologies. However, his observations hold as much relevance for the classical media that carry Indigenous traditions of knowledge and practice in Australia. Among the Yolŋu ‘People’ of northeast Arnhem Land with whom I have worked since 1996, these classical media comprise expansive canons of interconnected yäku ‘names’, manikay ‘songs’, buŋgul ‘dances’ and miny’tji ‘designs’ which are passed as property from father to child in each generation. These media are cornerstones of Yolŋu polity, history and identity, and knowledge of their esoteric content stands as evidence of the sovereign rights bestowed upon Yolŋu by the original waŋarr ‘ancestors’ who travelled, named, shaped and populated their many wäŋa ‘homelands’. In this sense, country is also a medium upon which the original ancestors left mali’ ‘shadows’ of their eternal presence, and embedded their rom ‘laws’ for human life and ceremonial observance through the performance of hereditary names, songs, dances and designs.
Ever since GH Wilkins made the first ethnographic observations of the Yolŋu at Miliŋinbi in 1924, written English has been the dominant medium through which the international community has become aware of their existence. Yet the linguistic and semantic complexities of translating Yolŋu concepts into English are grave, while Western understandings of music, dance and design as predominantly artistic media also limit our abilities to recognise them as vehicles for conveying legal and esoteric knowledge intergenerationally just like black print on a white page. In this paper I therefore ask, are we largely missing the point? I will focus on the Yolŋu song medium, manikay, to explore how exclusive esoteric lexicons are set in this oral/aural tradition, and how through their notoriously cryptic nature, they frame Yolŋu understandings of polity, history, identity and sovereignty in a way that confounds Western sensibilities. Ultimately, I will argue that the manikay tradition is a dynamic medium of being and knowing that reflects intimate Yolŋu knowledges of country, ecology, ancestry and lived experience that can be replicated in no other way, and must therefore be understood in terms of its own inner logic. I will explain how this tradition is essential for the ongoing maintenance of Yolŋu law, history and identity in the contemporary world, and what is at stake for human knowledge were it to be lost.
LikePast talks
Currents from a Distant Shore: Birrkili Yolŋu songs of Makassan contact in northeast Arnhem Land
Where: National Museum of Australia Hall, for the Barks, Birds & Billabongs Symposium: Exploring the legacy of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land When: 17th November 2009, 7pm - 9pm
with Djangirrawuy Garawirrtja, Neparrŋa Gumbula et al.
This presentation traces the Yolŋu history of foreign contact in northeast Arnhem Land from the Indonesian seaport of Makassar to the soft sandy shores of Luŋgutja in Arnhem Bay. This is the enigmatic bone-country of the Birrkili Yolŋu, where the safe harbour of Lalaŋura was marked by the Birrkili Blue Flag. The traditional Yolŋu Manikay series for Luŋgutja documents this extraordinary history and the rules of engagement that the Birrkili observed in their dealings with the Makassans. Passages from this Manikay series will be performed against a projected backdrop of striking images taken at Luŋgutja during our fieldwork there in 2005. They drift from the beaches with the sea wasp and the coconut to the abundant waters of Muŋurru, where the Birrkili paddle out to hunt turtle. The notoriously cryptic nature of Manikay lyrics, and the ways that they document such histories will also be discussed at length. We will argue that the Manikay tradition is an experiential medium of being and knowing that reflects an intimate Yolŋu understanding of country, ecology, history and their sacred ancestral resonances, but that must be understood in terms of its own inner logic. It remains essential to the ongoing maintenance of Yolŋu law, history and identity in the contemporary world.
Indigenous Archival Discovery as a Catalyst for New Recording Initiatives in Remote Australia
Where: Manning Clark Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies When: 30th September 2009, 4pm - 5pm
with Neparrŋa Gumbula
There is an immense interest among Indigenous communities in remote Australia in discovering their recorded history. Within this decade, the introduction of new digital media to these isolated regions has enabled copies of rare records and materials held in cultural heritage collections worldwide to be returned home. Their rediscovery after many decades of radical social and economic change has stimulated a new awareness of history among Indigenous communities in Australia, and prompted many local elders to consider what kind of recorded legacy they themselves will leave for future generations.
This paper will trace the endeavours of Yolngu elders and scholars to locate the recorded legacy of his family and home communities in northeast Arnhem. These rare materials include sound, film and photographs of his parents and grandparents performing traditional ceremonies, and span the films of Cecil Holmes (1963, 1964), the sound recordings of Alice Moyle (1962–63), and photographs and artefacts held in the Donald Thomson Collection at Museum Victoria (1935–37). The earliest of these materials were collected by GH Wilkins, W Lloyd Warner and TT Webb in the 1920s, and are now spread across multiple collections in Australia, the UK, Switzerland and the USA.
The paper will also demonstrate how these investigations have been a catalyst for our concurrent efforts to comprehensively record, for the first time, those same hereditary performance traditions using new digital technologies in accord with the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia.
Where: Manning Clark Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) When: 30th September 2009, 2pm - 3pm
with Neparrŋa Gumbula
In 2002, the Garma Symposium on Indigenous Performance brought Indigenous performers from across northern Australia together with researchers and curators based in universities and major institutions to explore future directions in the research and archiving of Australian Indigenous music and dance. A statement emanating from this symposium called for the establishment of a national project to record and document the endangered and important traditions of Indigenous performance in Australia and for a network of digital archives that would make this material in local Indigenous communities.
Now in 2009 following numerous consultative meetings and pilot projects, the National Recording Project has been responding to this call for several years. Working in collaboration with the Local Knowledge Centre program of the Northern Territory Library, as well as with a number of individual research projects dedicated to the recording and documentation of endangered traditions, the National Recording Project has helped to make available both newly recorded and archival material in a number of communities across the Top End.
This paper will evaluate the various models that have evolved in communities such as Wadeye, Belyuen and Kabulwanamyo as well as plans for further archives. It will outline plans to train local indigenous people to record, document and archive their own traditions, and on the role of national and territory institutions in providing safe backup for the more vulnerable community-based archives.
Where: Federation Hall, Victorian College of the Arts, cnr St Kilda Rd and Grant St, Southbank, Melbourne, with the Australian Art Orchestra for the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia When: 28th August 2009, 2pm - 11pm
Australian Art Orchestra and the National Recording Project present a forum and concert featuring Crossing Roper Bar on Friday, 28th August 2009.
Join us in this afternoon and evening of events exploring the Crossing Roper Bar collaboration between the Young Wägilak Group from Arnhem Land led by Benjamin Wilfred, and the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) led by Paul Grabowsky, which presents traditional Wägilak music and dance from Arnhem Land in an electrifying marriage of the very old and the very new.
FORUM
Registration from 2.20 pm. Forum: 3 pm to 6 pm Federation Hall, Victorian College of the Arts Cnr St Kilda Rd and Grant St, Southbank
Session 1: Meet the Artists Benjamin Wilfred, Paul Grabowsky, Tony Hicks, Evan Wilfred, Daniel Wilfred, Wesley Wilfred, and Aaron Corn (Chair)
Meet the artists in this engaging live exploration of the creative process behind Crossing Roper Bar, the dynamic musical traditions that this work brings together, and the ancestral legacy conveyed by its Wägilak contributors.
Session 2: Indigenous Heritage, Musical Futures An open panel discussion with Deborah Cheetham (VCA), Jason Eades (Koorie Heritage Trust), Vicki Grieves (U Sydney), Lyndon Ormond-Parker (U Melbourne) and Aaron Corn (U Sydney)
This is a free event but seats are limited. To reserve your place, email roperbar@gmail.com.
CROSSING ROPER BAR CONCERT
7.30 pm, Friday 28th August, 2009 Melbourne Recital Centre, cnr Southbank Blvd and Sturt St, Southbank, Melbourne
Having toured Australia and recently recorded at Allan Eaton Studio in St Kilda, Crossing Roper Bar now comes to Melbourne’s new Recital Centre for one night only. In the interest of building awareness of the National Recording Project, Forum participants will be eligible to buy Crossing Roper Bar Recital Centre tickets at the discounted price of $25/$15 (normally $50/$35).
These tickets can be paid for and collected at the Forum event. Cash is preferred but Visa and Mastercard are also accepted.
Enquiries, bookings, registration forms: roperbar@gmail.com
The 10th Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture
Where: Charles Darwin University, Casuarina Campus, Mal Nairn Auditorium When: 15th August 2009, 7pm - 9pm
led by Neparrŋa Gumbula with contributions by Lapuluŋ Dhamarrandji, Gawura Ganambarr, Barratja Gaykamaŋu, Dhamanydji Gaykamaŋu, Muŋgula Gaykamaŋu and Rrikawuku Yunupiŋu
Distinguished Indigenous elder, musician and scholar, Joe Neparrŋa Gumbula, is set to present the 10th Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture at Charles Darwin University’s (CDU) Casuarina campus on Saturday, August 15.
This year’s lecture, entitled ‘Wuŋuli Dhärranhana: Making enduring records work for Indigenous cultural survival’, will be given by Dr Gumbula, and will draw on his consummate knowledge of Yolngu law and heritage.
It will incorporate live traditional music performed in conjunction with women and men of his family, and also captivating multimedia materials prepared by Aaron Corn.
The annual Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture commemorates the Wave Hill Station walk-off led by Vincent Lingiari with his Gurindji people and other groups in August 1966, marking a catalyst for Aboriginal people across Australia to have their rights to traditional lands recognised and for those lands to be returned.
The lecture is part of celebrations for the Eighth Annual Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance to be held at CDU on August 15.
The Symposium will bring together Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and performers from across Australia.
The lecture will be preceded by a performance of the Yanajanak song series from the Awurnbarna/Mt Borrodaile region of northwestern Arnhem Land led by the current custodian, Charlie Mangulda. A biography on Mandawuy Yunupiŋu by Dr Aaron Corn will also be launched.
Where: 8th Annual Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance, Charles Darwin University, Casuarina Campus, for the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia When: 15th August 2009, 2pm - 3pm
with Neparrŋa Gumbula
For the Yolŋu ‘People’ of northeastern Arnhem Land, the Manikay ‘Song’ tradition serves as a record of sacred relationships between humans, country and ancestors. The formal structures of Manikay series constitute an overarching framework of public ceremonial actions, and their notoriously cryptic lyrics comprise esoteric lexicons held nowhere else in the Yolŋu languages. This presentation draws on the expertise of Joe Neparrŋa Gumbula as a leading singer of the Manikay tradition to present songs from the Manikay series for Baripuy. Accompanied by Aaron Corn on yidaki ‘didjeridu’, they will explain how lyrical and formal characteristics of these songs capture intimate details of the Baripuy homeland. They will argue that the Manikay tradition is an experiential medium of being and knowing that must be understood in terms of its own logic, and show how it remains essential to the ongoing maintenance of Yolŋu law, history and identity in the contemporary world.
Where: Historiographical Topics in Music Archaeology and Ethnomusicology, hosted by the Institute of Musical Research, University of London, for the International Study Group on Music Archaeology When: 4th July 2009, 3pm - 5pm
In 1968, the famed anthropologist WEH Stanner coined the term ‘The Great Australian Silence’ to describe the issues that had been left unresolved, perhaps unintentionally, between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians since British colonisation in 1788. This lingering impasse, this ‘simple forgetting’ as Stanner called it, also give rise to a related yet different kind of Silence, the almost complete absence of Indigenous musical traditions from the Australian national consciousness.
Although a small number wax cylinder recordings of Indigenous music from Tasmania, the Tiwi Islands and the Torres Strait Islands exist from the turn of the 20th century, it was not until the survey work of ethnomusicologist Alice Moyle in the 1960s that the diverse breath of Australia’s Indigenous were scoped in any systematic way. And even then, Moyle was only able to study a limited number of traditions, like those of the remote Warnindilyawka, in any detail, while simultaneously concluding that too few recordings of traditions from colonised regions like Tasmania made been made to provide sufficient basis for analysis. Similarly, while pre-20th-century paintings and photographs of Indigenous ceremonies in New South Wales and Victoria do exist, it is almost impossible to know how they might have sounded.
By contrast, the Manikay song tradition of northeast Arnhem Land remains relatively strong among the Yolŋu, and is thought to record the observations of the original ancestors who named, shaped and populated the Yolŋu homelands. Yolŋu consider the sacred language used in Manikay to be the root medium through which their society’s history is passed. Manikay also records histories of contact with foreign seafarer that predate 20th century contact with European Australians, and even refers to deep underwater sites that were last above sea level some 10 millennia ago.
Yet while contemporary Yolŋu maintain that their knowledge comes through an unbroken hereditary line from their original ancestors, the settings of their lyrics in Manikay are incredibly cryptic and fluid. And as tested in a key Yolŋu land rights case of the 1970s, what Yolŋu define in traditional song as evidence of their long ancestry, confounds rationalist concerns for empirical evidence.
This paper therefore explores how Yolŋu knowledge is structured and what assumptions Yolŋu make about their own history through their traditional music to ask what we might yet learn from Australia’s surviving Indigenous song traditions. In the absence of recorded data for so many lapsed Australian traditions, what can Manikay reliably tell us about the human history of this continent prior to the British occupation and, indeed, prior to recorded history elsewhere?
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