Abstracts

Keynotes

Brenda Gifford | Journey of a Yuin Composer: Change, Challenges and Crossroads

Brenda Gifford is a Yuin woman from south coast NSW. She is part of a hopeful vision for the future of Aboriginal women composers, musicians and diverse people, in positions of power and creative control. In this keynote, Brenda will talk about her own journey as an Aboriginal musician, working and touring with pioneer Aboriginal reggae artist Bart Willoughby and Mixed Relations, and now a classical composer writing for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and beyond. Drawing on decades of experience, Brenda will look at how the industry has changed and how Aboriginal women composers and musicians still face challenges in the music industry: “I feel we are at a crossroads of great possibilities for Indigenous composers and musicians in the classical realm” bg.


Brenda Gifford | Yuin composer, https://www.brendagifford.com/about

Dylan Robinson | thá:ytset: shxwelí li te shxwelítemelh xíts'etáwtxw / Reparative Aesthetics: The Museum’s Incarceration of Indigenous Life

Across the globe, museums filled with glass and plexiglass vitrines display collections of Indigenous belongings. These cases render the life they contain into objects of display, things to be seen but not touched. Alongside the life of ancestors who take material form, thousands of Indigenous songs collected by ethnographers on wax cylinder recordings, reel-to-reel tape and electronic formats are similarly confined in museums. These songs also hold life, but of different kinds to that of their material cousins. For Indigenous people, experiencing these systems of display and storage are often traumatic because of the ways in which they maintain the separation of kinship at the heart of settler colonialism. To re-assess the role of the museum as a place that confines life is to put into question its relationship to incarceration. If the museum is a carceral space, how then might we define repatriation in relation to practices of “re-entry” and kinship reconnection? In what ways might prison abolition apply to the museum? These questions, among others, have increasingly been focalized through the reparative aesthetics of Indigenous artists.


Dylan Robinson is a xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah) artist and writer, and Associate Professor Queen’s University where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts. His monograph, Hungry Listening (Minnesota University Press, 2020), considers listening from both Indigenous and settler colonial perspectives, and proposes decolonial practices of attention that emerge from increased awareness of our listening positionality. His previous publications include the co-edited volumes Music and Modernity Among Indigenous Peoples of North America (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) and Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2016).


Presenters, performances and demonstrations

Anita Asaasira and Mseto Nation Band | From Archives to Repertoire: Mseto Nation Band’s Definition of a “Ugandan Sound”

Presentation and performance/demonstration

For over a decade, Uganda's popular music industry has been grappling with the search for a unique 'sound' that can be locally and internationally identified as Ugandan. For the last half a century, Uganda's popular music has been mainly imitative of other countries' music styles. It has failed to create her own 'sound.' One reason for this is the high level of cultural diversity in the country, which precludes one representative style. Nevertheless, there seems to be a consensus that Uganda's 'sound' should be generated from its rich and diverse cultural musical heritage. So, I sought to explore the potential of archival recordings of Uganda's musical heritage as an untapped resource that musicians could utilize in creating a 'Ugandan sound.' I recruited Mseto Nation Band to reinterpret selected archival recordings and create a contemporary repertoire of music defined through the creative process as 'Ugandan.' In this presentation, I will discuss the band members' evaluation of their creative experience focusing on; definition of the generated 'Ugandan sound', 2) the impact of archival recordings on the 'sound,' and 3) approaches to the creative process.

Anita Asaasira | The University of Melbourne, Australia, and Makerere University, Uganda
Aloysius Migadde (Electric Guitar) | Mseto Nation Band, Uganda
Lawrence Matovu (Bass Guitar) | Mseto Nation Band, Uganda
Ronnie Bukenya (Keyboard) | Mseto Nation Band, Uganda
Julius Sengooba (Drums) | Mseto Nation Band, Uganda
Brian Busuulwa (Vocals) | Mseto Nation Band, Uganda

Bianca Beetson, Vicki Saunders, Leah Barclay and Sarah Woodland | Listening to Country: Exploring the Role of Acoustic Ecology in Connection to Country and Wellbeing

Listening to Country represents an innovative approach to exploring the relationship between Country, sound, and wellbeing among individuals and communities in Australia. The project adopts an Indigenous led, participatory methodology that draws from deep active listening and acoustic ecology to highlight our unique and potentially healing soundscapes, and the transformative potential held within Aboriginal ways of listening. Our presentation will draw on pilot research investigating how the performance and technologies of acoustic ecology and environmental soundscapes enhanced wellbeing and cultural connection for women at Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre, forming the basis for the Listening to Country approach. We will share the approach, and discuss how it is now evolving through an iterative process of knowledge translation and relationship building as we move into the next phases of the research.


Bianca Beetson (Kabi Kabi) | Griffith University
Vicki Saunders (Gunggari) | Griffith University
Leah Barclay | University of the Sunshine Coast
Sarah Woodland | University of Melbourne


Clint Bracknell, Trevor Ryan and Roma Yibiyung Winmar | Mayakeniny: Increasing Community Access to Noongar Song

This presentation describes the development of a new online resource increasing community access to Noongar song content. It showcases work developed via one of three different revitalisation modalities: 1) The translation of well-known children’s songs has been integral to language education efforts in the southwest over the past three decades and spearheaded by language teachers like Roma Yibiyung Winmar. Song is effective in language learning contexts and translated children’s songs allow for broad and unrestricted public engagement with the Noongar language. 2) Written records from the nineteenth and early twentieth century feature lyrics for over seventy Noongar songs. However, an absence of musical notation, audio recordings and oral transmission means that it is impossible to know exactly how these songs would have been originally performed. A project instigated by the City of Perth and its Noongar Elders advisory committee to recompose two Noongar songs based on lyrics recorded in 1830 required the articulation of an aesthetic framework to guide the development of new melodies in something like the old Noongar style. This framework is based on historical details about Noongar performance and the analysis of a small number of audio recordings of Noongar singing from the mid-twentieth century onwards. 3) The framework has underpinned the development of completely new songs. Rather than drawing on archival lyrics for musical inspiration, new Noongar works are being created in response to Country.

Clint Bracknell | Edith Cowan University
Trevor Ryan | Edith Cowan University
Roma Yibiyung Winmar | Edith Cowan University

Liz Cameron, Gretel Taylor, Enid Nangala Gallagher and Lorraine Nungarrayi Granites | Barefoot on Country: Cultural Dance Participation and Social and Emotional Wellbeing

“Doing the dances tells you who you are and where you are from. Like you’ve got nothing inside you if you don’t know.” - Nangala, 19-year-old participant, Southern Ngaliya project, Yuendumu, Northern Territory (interview with Taylor and O’Connor, 2012). There is strong suggestion that participation in cultural dance facilitates social, health and spiritual benefits through embodied connection with cultural identity and Country. These benefits include powerful ramifications for individual self-esteem, intergenerational relationships and the wellbeing and resilience of communities (Dunphy and Ware, 2019, Smith, 2000). We consider these interconnected effects through the frame of Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB), which can be defined as ‘a multidimensional concept of health that includes mental health, but which also encompasses domains of health and wellbeing such as connection to land or Country, culture, spirituality, ancestry, family, and community’ (Gee et al., 2014). This presentation includes excerpts from recent online yarning sessions with Warlpiri women, who are core members of Southern Ngaliya, a successful women’s dance project that has been running for over a decade, to reflect upon wellbeing effects of participation in these intergenerational dance camps on Warlpiri Country.

Liz Cameron | School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University
Gretel Taylor | School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University
Enid Nangala Gallagher | Southern Ngaliya Dance Project
Lorraine Nungarrayi Granites | Southern Ngaliya Dance Project




Genevieve Campbell and members of the Tiwi Strong Women's Group | Tiwi Yilaniya: Healing in Song and Ceremony

Presentation and performance/demonstration

The practise of mortuary-related ceremony and associated rituals remains central to 21st century life on the Tiwi Islands, Northern Australia. Essential to this is the Yilaniya ‘Smoking’ ritual. Comprising songs that create direct conversation between the living and the dead, Yilaniya documents the deceased’s country, kinship and family relationships and their new place amongst the ancestors. This encourages their spirit to leave, allowing the living to move on and heal, with the loss properly acknowledged. The impact of colonial rule over the last century has resulted in changes to the logistics of mortuary rituals. Yilaniya - traditionally male-led and having a specific ritual function - is now widely also called ‘Healing’, is increasingly sung by senior song-women and has expanded to include new song forms and crossovers into Christianity. Through examples of old and new forms of Yilaniya songs we will explain how this has resulted in a blurring of traditionally gendered roles in song composition and custodianship as well as broadening the motivations and understandings of ‘Smoking’ and ‘Healing’ beyond their ritual context - both in their own right remaining pivotal to the spiritual and, perhaps more importantly, the social health and wellbeing of the Tiwi community.

Genevieve Campbell | Sydney Environment Institute, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Members of the Tiwi Strong Women's Group | Tiwi Strong Women's Group

Sam Curkpatrick and Daniel Wilfred | Shimmering Brilliance: A Yolŋu Aesthetic of Collaboration and Creativity

In Yolŋu art, the aesthetic of bir’yun (shimmering brilliance) is the visual play created by the fine crosshatching that fills a painting; bir’yun brings symbolic representation to life by generating movement and energy. A parallel aesthetic might be discerned in Yolŋu manikay (song), in the dense interweaving of voices. The ŋaraka (bones) or basic forms structuring song are enlivened through this complex heterophony. The experience of bir’yun is enriched as new voices and colours (timbres) are woven into the mix, suggesting a productive approach to creativity and collaboration between Yolŋu and Balanda (non-indigenous) Australians. Depending on travel restrictions, this paper will be given in conversation with Daniel Wilfred (Ngukurr community) and/or include a video extract from his recent ‘Solo Series’ recording with the Australia Art Orchestra. This project highlights the different voices of family and elders that manikay singers imitate in performance, which contributes to the rich, interwoven textures of song. Over the past 5 years, Daniel has led the Australian Art Orchestra’s Creative Music Intensive, working with graduate level music students to explore creativity and voice within manikay.

Sam Curkpatrick | Monash University
Daniel Wilfred | Australian Art Orchestra and Wagilak ceremonial leader, Ngukurr Community

Georgia Curran and Calista Yeoh | “That is Why I am Telling this Story”: Some Insights from Musical Analysis of the Wapurtarli Song Set Sung by Warlpiri Women from Yuendumu

Custodians of Aboriginal songs face considerable threats to future transmission of the songs that are deeply valued components of their cultural heritage. For Warlpiri women from Yuendumu, Central Australia, there is no longer a big group of female singers who can sing their Wapurtarli song set, making it one of many traditional songs that are becoming increasingly at risk of endangerment. In this paper, we explore the importance of song performance and how its practices reflect the social context songs derive from. Using Grant’s (2014) ‘Music Vitality Endangerment Framework’ we assess the health of the Wapurtarli song set. A musical analysis of this song set aids in understanding how various musical features interlock together, and whether they assist in the cognitive processes taken to learn, sing and teach songs. Our findings show that complex components come together for a song set to be properly performed, yet the flexibility of the verse structure and permutations of the melodic contour will never be exact in two performances of the same song set. We consider how analysis of these complex mechanisms can inform revitalisation efforts and assist with some of the challenges faced by the senior singers leading these initiatives.

Georgia Curran | Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Calista Yeoh | Sydney Conservatorium of Music

Amanda Harris et al. | Music, Dance and the Archive: Reclaiming Indigenous Performance Histories

Panel

This panel emerges from a project excavating histories of music and dance performance in recent Australian history. During the period 1937-1967, government policies attempted to silence cultural practice in an era of enforced assimilation. But Aboriginal cultural entrepreneurs used public events as activism to continue culture in performances embodying serious and powerful expressions of enduring presence and social salience. This project aims to re-evaluate the artistic legacy of public performances by Aboriginal people (music, dance and associated cultural practices), and to reclaim these rich and hybrid histories for broad cultural benefit. In the first two years of the project, we have brought to light audio-visual recordings, images and sound records of performances by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dancers and musicians. In this panel, we will present scholarly and artistic perspectives on the process of reclaiming historic performances. Our panel will combine short presentations and demonstrations of this recuperative work, featuring Australian as well as international efforts to reclaim Indigenous performance. We will explore how embodied explorations of history can bring archival records to life.

Amanda Harris | The University of Sydney
Linda Barwick | The University of Sydney
Jakelin Troy | The University of Sydney
Matt Poll | The University of Sydney
Tiriki Onus | The University of Melbourne
Lyndon Ormond-Parker | The University of Melbourne
Sharon Huebner | The University of Melbourne
Jacqueline Shea Murphy | University of California (Riverside)
Jack Gray | Atamira Dance Company
Rosy Simas | Independent transdisciplinary artist
Shannon Foster | University of Technology Sydney
Jo Kinniburgh | University of Technology Sydney

James Henry: Traditional Song in Contemporary Contexts

Recently I was a recipient of the Hutchinson Fellowship in which I spent 18 months learning about traditional Aboriginal music and finding ways to incorporate it into contemporary contexts and genres. Initially I thought it would be much more of a study in the nuts and bolts of traditional music and finding ways to blend this music in to conventional Western tonal music. What I found is that it ended up being more of a study into the politics and protocols of using traditional Aboriginal music. In this presentation I will talk about verses I have written in a traditional style in the Yuwaalaraay/Gamilaraay language(s). With this I have been able to openly practice, arrange and perform these verses in different genres. The one in which I will speak about in depth is a verse I wrote about the Ibis ‘Murrgumurrgu’. With limited lyrical content I am able to extend it into a verse and then an arrangement utilising AA, BB, A, B, etc traditional structure and musical arrangement incorporating other instrumentation. What helps the sustainability of the repetition is the sophistication of the time signature variation which is dictated by the lyrical rhythmic structure. This song comfortably exists for a solo singer with clapsticks all the way up to its soon to be performance with a 100 voice choir and orchestra.


James Henry | Independent artist and scholar

Jesse Hodgetts | Ngiyangilanha Ngiyampaa Guthi Wirradhurray Guthi – Notating Traditional Ngiyampaa and Wiradjuri Songs

Traditional Ngiyampaa and Wiradjuri songs of Western NSW hold power from country and are connected to a line of ancestors that can be felt when listened to. However, Aboriginal songs of Australia are often analysed in academia through an outsider cultural lens. Songs are anaylsed through Western musicology and Western musical notation methods, which do not capture the power from county and ancestors. The performances of traditional Ngiyampaa and Wiradjuri singers are often not fixed to any specific key or meter when performed. The songs are not drawn from western musical systems such as scales, key, metre and tempo. To represent Ngiyampaa and Wiradjuri songs through written form, I as a Ngiyampaa and Wiradjuri singer have created my own form of notation and terminology to analyse these songs. This presentation explores why traditional Ngiyampaa and Wiradjuri songs are not accurately represented in western musical notation and suggests a more suitable form of notating the songs to represent them in their cultural context.


Jesse Hodgetts-Hope | The University of Newcastle, Australia

James Howard | Reclamations of Cultural Identity through Music Composition and Performance

Presentation and performance/demonstration

My research examines how I, as an Indigenous man disconnected from my culture, can redevelop that Indigenous identity through my music practice. That practice is rooted in forms of sonic expression through sound technology, particularly the technical manipulation of field recordings and other audio samples. In my practice, I often make field recordings of specific places, be they natural or urban spaces. Through the process of attentive listening to the soundscapes of Country, and the processing of those experiences through my musical expression, I aim to engage with what Indigenous epistemologies might call the ‘spirit’ voices of Country captured in the digital audio (Brown and Treloyn 2017). Alternatively, Benjamin might have called this the ‘aura’ of an artwork (Benjamin 2002), especially when considering the recording process as a means of framing soundscapes into works of art.


James Howard | The University of Melbourne

Gillian Howell and Natalie Davey | Flow and Other Stories: Songs as Place-Markers in the Fitzroy Valley

Taking as its starting point the idea of songs as markers of history, culture and place, this paper examines the creation, community embrace, and cultural congruence of the collection of original songs and pieces of sound art developed during the first three years of the Fitzroy Valley New Music Project [FVNMP], 2017-2019. Two of the FVNMP’s collaborators will share insights and reflections on the values, processes and challenges that guided collaborative songwriting and recording, the songs’ gradual absorption into community life including as a form of ‘softer’ activism around the rights of the Fitzroy River, and the characteristics that have rendered some songs to be particularly meaningful and resonant for the community. At what is an interim point in the FVNMP, this paper is also an opportunity to critically reflect on what has been learned during the first three years, and to imagine future directions that will further consolidate and strengthen the Fitzroy Valley community members’ connections to their history and place within the contemporary cultural context.

Gillian Howell | The University of Melbourne and Tura New Music
Natalie Davey | Wangki Radio, Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre and Mangkaja Arts

Mary Ingraham, Bert Crowfoot and Tom Merklinger | Coming Full Circle: Digitizing the Ancestors and Re-Sounding Cultural Voices

Circles are significant in Indigenous lifeways, representing the unity, fullness, and richness of nature and all beings. Through the Digitizing the Ancestors Project, we bring full circle the sounds of long-silent archival radio and television recordings from the late 1960s and early 1980s, re-sounding the voices, stories, music, and dances of Indigenous Elders, culture bearers, and youth that speak of urgent cultural revitalization and resurgence. In this presentation, we share the collaborative practices, methods, and individual voices from the archive that resonate decades after they were first heard, through stories, interviews, and performances of music and dance that reflect on important social, political, and cultural issues of the time. The voices we hear are members of Cree Nations across the Canadian prairies; they sing, drum, dance, and speak of residential school restrictions on cultural expression and share stories of round dances, drumming circles, and singing the land. They talk of healing through music, rhythm, and words and of the need to educate Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike. In re-sounding their voices for new listeners, we return their messages to community and listen with them to their echoes within contemporary society.

Mary Ingraham | University of Lethbridge, Canada
Bert Crowfoot | CEO, Aboriginal Multi-media Society of Alberta (AMMSA), Canada
Tom Merklinger | University of Alberta, Canada

Tzutu Kan, Pedro Cruz and M.C.H.E. | Mayan Cosmovision and Hip Hop

Presentation and performance/demonstration

Tzutu Kan is an artist and member of the project Balam Ajpu (https://soundcloud.com/balam-ajpu), changing the notion of Mayan poetry in contemporary arts. His music includes native sounds and modern instruments, creating a unique sound. The Maya Hip Hop mission is a dual, artistic and spiritual project that represents the ancestral word, the fabric that gives origin to creation and formation in the Mayan cosmogony. Language revitalization and Hip Hop are both global movements with profound effects on local understandings of identity. In the Maya Hip Hop music, these two trends come together to produce a variety of challenges to the dominant understandings of ethnic identity in contemporary Guatemala (Barrett 2016). Tzutu Kan's music mixes Post-classic Mayan sound with Hip Hop and lyrics composed in Tz’utujil, K’iche and Kaqchiquel Mayan languages that advocate for cultural, ecology, peace and justice. Tzutu Kan's music promotes an ideology that they call Hip Hop Cosmovision that links the politics of Hip Hop with the term cosmovision, a common term in the Maya Movement to refer to Maya understandings of the world.

Pedro Cruz | Mayan Elder
Tzutu Kan | Mayan Rapper
M.C.H.E. | Mayan Rapper
Danilo Rodriguez | Chirimilla, Trombone
Ludwin Puac | Saxo
Joloma Juk | Marimbas, Flutes
Juan Chacom | Marimba
Santos Quiaqain | Electric Bass

Margaret Kartomi | Origin, Change and Revitalisation of the Indigenous Gamolan Pekhing and Adolescent Dances in Lampung, Indonesia

This paper examines the origin, recent changes, and revitalisation of a reputedly ancient bamboo xylophone (gamolan pekhing), its ensemble, and the ritual adolescents’ dances that it accompanies in the mountainous Sekala Brak area of Lampung Province. Sekala Brak is venerated by Lampung’s indigenous ethno-lingual groups as the homeland whence their ancestors departed down the rivers to settle throughout the province over the past millennium. Unusually in Southeast Asia, local associations of adolescent men and women play an important role in performing and organising performances of music and dance at domestic ceremonies marking the five stages in a person’s life: birth, adolescence, marriage, obtaining a title, and death. The traditional 20th century gamolan’s ergology, organology, tuning system, musical memory codes, and performance style were subjected to radical revitalisation following its elevation in status and official designation as Lampung’s provincial musical symbol from 2011. Thousands of gamolan were tuned to the diatonic major scale without the original pivot-note key, thus disabling the instrument’s modulatory function, but enabling the performance of national and popular songs by Lampung’s indigenous and transmigrant population. The artistic changes that we observed between 1980 and 2011 paralleled the radical social changes in Lampung over those three decades.

Margaret Kartomi | Monash University

Erin Matthews | Bora the Past, the Present, the Future. A Study of Indigenous Acculturation In Lockhart River

The Bora initiation ceremonies of Lockhart River, Cape York have been studied in detail by few anthropologists and ethnomusicologists in the past, namely Donald Thomson in the late 1920s, Wolfgang Laade in the 1960s and David Thompson in the 1970s. The argument has been made that Bora as a cultural institution is disappearing with the events of colonialisation, trade and globalisation; I argue that Bora is still alive and well, albeit in a different format, and that it is an object of acculturation that has been changing and adapting before the introduction of European and Chinese settlers. This presentation seeks to briefly relive the history of previous studies and to identify what research still needs to be done for the current generation of the Lockhart River community to help realise their identity and give them the ability to navigate our current and sometimes opposing social worlds through self determination.

Erin Matthews | The University of Adelaide

Philip Matthias, John Parsons, Marshal Meppe-Sailor and Toby Whaleboat | The Coming of the Light – Maintaining Traditions on the Mainland

Presentation and performance/demonstration

On July 1, 1871, defying tribal law, a Warrior Clan Elder on the Torres Strait Island of Erub, welcomed ashore London Missionary Society clergy and teachers. This date is now highly celebrated across the Torres Strait Islands, and 2021 sees the 150th anniversary of the occasion. Given the significance of the anniversary, within Torres Strait Islander community, there expectation that the event in 2021 will see a reinvigoration of the celebrations. Such celebrations include re-enactments of the landing at Kemus on Erub, hymn singing, feasting, music and dance. In 2015 Helen Fairweather documented in detail a Coming of the Light ceremony in Townsville. Whilst community there had traditionally used an order of service from the official booklet ‘Eucharist: The Coming of the Light Celebration July 1’, the celebration in 2015 departed from that liturgy, giving a window into diasporic alterations from within a local community perspective. This paper investigates, from the perspectives of Islanders from mainland Australia (Townsville, Newcastle and Melbourne) the rich traditions of the Coming of the Light, with specific emphasis on the 2015 documentation, and the will for celebrations to be grounded in traditional Torres Strait Islander culture within mainland Australia in 2021.

John Parsons | The University of Melbourne
Marshal Meppe-Sailor | Townsville City Council
Toby Whaleboat | University of Newcastle, Australia
Philip Matthias | University of Newcastle, Australia

David Manmurulu, Jenny Manmurulu, Rupert Manmurulu, Renfred Manmurulu, Solomon Nangamu, Reuben Brown and Isabel O’Keeffe | New Environments for Exchanging Manyardi

In July 2019 ceremony leaders from Warruwi, Northern Territory travelled to Mowanjum community festival in Western Australia to exchange manyardi, junba and wangga — indigenous song and dance from Arnhem Land, the Daly and Kimberley regions. After the festival, a cohort of Warruwi and Mowanjum singers along with research collaborators travelled on to Thailand to present and perform at the International Council for Traditional Music World conference, this time as part of a delegation representing Australia.

An emerging body of ethnomusicological literature highlights continuity between musical practices handed down and performances in festival settings, recognising public performances at Indigenous cultural festivals as contributing to the reinvigoration of Indigenous cultural expression and strengthening of community capacity (Corn & Gumbula 2004, Bendrups 2008, Doi 2015, Mackley-Crump 2016). In this presentation, David Manmurulu, Jenny Manmurulu, Rupert Manmurulu, Renfred Manmurulu and Solomon Nangamu reflect on their experience sharing their songs and dances at Mowanjum and Bangkok, and the local reception of the performances in community and on social media. The performances had historical precedent: in the 1980s wangga singers and dancers held a Mammurng (exchange) ceremony held for Renfred and in the 1970s George Winungudj (David Manmurulu’s father and Rupert and Renfred’s grandfather) performed at festivals and concerts with the Adelaide quintet (Brown et al. 2018, Harris 2020).

Research collaborators Reuben Brown and Isabel O’Keeffe discuss considerations for doing performance-led collaborative research as Balanda in settler-state contexts, including issues relating to representation and sustainability (Treloyn and Charles 2014). The group reflect on the principles of manyardi that the Manmurulu family and Nangamu practice and teach—including the responsibility to participate in performance and to help with intergenerational and cross-cultural knowledge transmission—which help navigate new environments for manyardi.


David Manmurulu | Inyjalarrku (mermaid) ceremony
Jenny Manmurulu | Inyjalarrku (mermaid) ceremony
Rupert Manmurulu | Inyjalarrku (mermaid) ceremony
Renfred Manmurulu | Inyjalarrku (mermaid) ceremony
Solomon Nangamu | Mirrijpu (seagull) ceremony
Reuben Brown | University of Melbourne
Isabel O’Keeffe | University of Sydney


Sylvia Antonia Nannyonga-Tamusuza | Double-edged Sword of Colonial Archives: The Dilemma of Defining “Indigenous” Music in Uganda

Since 2015 students have had a series of protests, calling for the indigenization of the education curriculum and systems in South Africa, which has resulted in renewed calls to decolonize the education in many universities in Africa. The Department of Performing Arts and Film at Makerere University is in the process of reviewing the Bachelor of Arts in Music program, which must have balanced content and methodologies on both “indigenous” and foreign music cultures. However, there is a dilemma in defining what is “indigenous” music in Uganda. What is indigenous music: 1) in the context of colonial and post-colonial influences; 2) in a culture where information is mostly being shared and stored orally; and 3) in the era of commercializing culture? In grappling with these questions, I find some solace in the music archives, some of which are housed at Makerere University Klaus Wachmann Audio-visual Archive (MAKWAA). However, having their foundation as a colonial project, institutional archives are a double-edged sword. In this presentation, I interrogate, on the one hand how colonial archives participated in colonizing the “indigenous” music and on the other, how they can be used in addressing the dilemma of defining “indigenous” music in Uganda.

Sylvia Antonia Nannyonga-Tamusuza | Makerere University, Uganda

Jaas Newen and Chilkatufe | Pangui Lef: Hip-Hop Mapuche

El Hip-Hop le abrió hasta entonces un mundo desconocido a Jaas Newen. Un mundo callado en los libros escolares y que parecía estar condenado al olvido para siempre. Ella comenzó a cantar en 1994 con su grupo Tormenta Verbal para luego seguir como solista en el 2000. Participo activamebte de las Escuela de Hip-Hop del legendario grupo chileno Panteras Negras el cual le ayudó a Jaas crecer musicalmente. "Mi sentir hacia la naturaleza venía conmigo desde siempre sólo me faltaba un guía para encaminar al rap. Cuando tuve la oportunidad de escribir una canción al respecto junto al aprendizaje del mapuzungun mi vida cambió junto a mi visión política y social. Me fortalecí y he mantenido la misma fuerza desde entonces. Y levanté mi voz para apoyar a mi gente" nos comenta Jaas y agrega: "Sena la justicia social en carne propia y no paré de cantarlas. Ha sido un camino de reconocimiento de identidad, de pararme en frente de todos y decir con orgullo que soy una mujer mapuche y que el silencio de mis apellidos no bastó para silenciar mi sangre". Como muchos mapuche, destinados a vivir una vida en las periferias de la capital después de haber sido despojado de sus tierras, sus abuelos se habían cambiado de apellido para nos ser blanco de la discriminación imperante en la sociedad chilena, principalmente contra los pueblos originarios. El rap no sólo ayudó a Jaas Newen para reencontrarse con sus raices mapuche lo que le abrió la puerta a su mundo ancestral.

Desde el año 2019 creó junto a Chilkatufe su nuevo proyecto musical llamado Pangui Lef, Chilkatufe Rapero del puerto de Valparaíso, desde la década de los 90, destaca en sus letras un fuerte mensaje contra el racismo, la justicia social y el reconocimiento de sí mismo en sus propias raíces mestizas fuertemente arraigadas a su pueblo. Nuestra presentación será un fuerte abrazo a nuestra gente, con mensajes claros y rítmicos a través del Hip-Hop acompañados del Selecta Mirkore, creando un ambiente ancestral con sonidos del ghetto.

Hip-Hop opened an unknown world to Jaas Newen. A silent world in school books that seemed doomed to be forgotten forever. She began singing in 1994 with her group Tormenta Verbal and then continued as a soloist in 2000. She actively participated in the Hip-Hop School of the legendary Chilean group Panteras Negras which helped Jaas grow musically. "My feeling towards nature has always been with me, I only needed a guide to guide rap. When I had the opportunity to write a song about it along with learning the mapuzungun my life changed along with my political and social vision, and has maintained the same strength since then. And I raised my voice to support my people ", says Jaas and adds, " I saw social justice in my own flesh and I did not stop singing. It has been a path of identity recognition, of standing in front of of all and saying with pride that I am a Mapuche woman and that the silence of my surname was not enough to silence my blood. " Like many Mapuche, destined to live a life on the outskirts of the capital after being dispossessed of their lands, Newen's grandparents had changed their surname to avoid being the target of the prevailing discrimination in Chilean society, mainly against native peoples. Rap not only helped Jaas Newen to reconnect with her Mapuche roots, which opened the door to her ancestral world.

Since 2019, Chilkatufe, a rapper from the port of Valparaíso, has created a new musical project called Pangui Lef. This project sends a strong message against racism. Social justice and self-recognition stand out in his lyrics, drawing from his people's strong mestizo roots. Our presentation will be a big hug to our people, with clear and rhythmic messages through Hip-Hop accompanied by Selecta Mirkore, creating an ancestral environment with sounds of the ghetto.


Jaas Newen | Independent artist and scholar
Chilkatufe | Independent artist and scholar

Lorraine Nungarrayi Granites, Alice Napanangka Granites, Audrey Napanangka Williams, Ida Nangala Granites and Pamela Nangala Sampson | Yawulyu Puturlu-wardingki – Women’s Songs from Mt Theo

Performance

Warlpiri women sing Puturlu yawulyu, from the country around Mt Theo, in the Tanami desert. Memories of loved ones, important sites and ancestral stories merge in this performance.

Lorraine Nungarrayi Granites | Yuendumu community
Alice Napanangka Granites | Yuendumu community
Audrey Napanangka Williams | Yuendumu community
Ida Nangala Granites | Yuendumu community
Pamela Nangala Sampson | Yuendumu community

Tiriki Onus, Sally Treloyn and Megan McPherson | Biganga Bayiya (Singing the Possum): Three Years of the Research Unit for Indigenous Arts and Cultures

Since 2017 the Research Unit for Indigenous Arts and Cultures has sought to build research capacity in its communities through attention to philosophies, diplomacies and reclamations of practice that guide Indigenous creative expression and knowledge creation. The primary modes of this action have been practice-orientated symposia and creative outputs, guided by pre-existing and new relationships with families, community groups, practitioners and researchers from regional and remote Victoria and other regions of Australia. Our action has been guided by a long-term agenda of improving the capacity of the academy to acknowledge and embrace Indigenous knowledges, voice and leadership in research and research training. Our action has also been guided by our individual and shared insights into research in and with Indigenous communities of practice as deeply relational and long-term, and an interest in the role that these processes and qualities might play in transforming our disciplines. In this presentation we reflect on the research activity and impact of the research unit in its first three years alongside the ceremonies and diplomacies that were activated in the making and singing of our foundational research statement - our biganga (possum skin cloak).

Tiriki Onus | The University of Melbourne
Sally Treloyn | The University of Melbourne
Megan McPherson | The University of Melbourne

Robin Ryan Cruse and Chelsy Atkins | 'Mother Earth is Hurting': Adapting an Indigenous Lament through a Time of Ecological Grief

Presentation and performance/demonstration

Environmentalist songs that de-settle the colonial mindset are barely acknowledged for lack of commercial relevance. Informed by a study of real-time environmental upheaval on music’s conception and performance (e.g. Cooley, 2019), our narrative traces the evolution of the hip-hop infused lament, Mother Earth is Hurting (2010). Yamatji-Widi singer-songwriter Chelsy Atkins (b. 1986) expresses her birthright in a personal vocal technique that bends and flicks like the renowned didjeridu playing of her father, Mark Atkins. Currently based in Far South East NSW, Chelsy Atkins partners with Discover Your Voice founder Corinne Gibbons to advocate for social change, environmental care, and Indigenous recognition. The pair conducted the cross-cultural children’s choir, One Mob Dreaming, in a part-South Coast language version of Mother Earth at Eden’s inaugural Giiyong Festival (2018). Another trajectory saw Atkins rework this part-language version for inclusion in their online school musical, Search for the Sparkle (2020). In the wake of Black Summer, Atkins revitalised a part-Yamatji language version in close-harmony with leading South Coast musicians, Ricky Bloomfield and Corinne Gibbons. Four videoed performances situate Mother Earth as a flagstone for cultural care of the land and Indigenous ways of knowing. Healthy community and healthy country must go hand in hand.


Reference: Cooley, Timothy J. 2019. “Sustainability, Resilience, Advocacy, and Activism: Introduction.” In Cultural Sustainabilities: Music, Media, Language, Advocacy, ed. Timothy J. Cooley, pp. xxiii-xxxiv. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

Robin Ryan | Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts
Chelsy Atkins | Indigenous Arts Cultural Educator

Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg and Aaron Corn | Singing and Dancing DORA: The San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment and its Implications for Indigenous Australian Participation in Academia

In July 2020, the University of Melbourne signed the San Francisco Declaration for Research Assessment (DORA). In the Times Higher Education Supplement Melbourne’s DVC-Research, Jim McClusky, writes that the traditional use of research and citation metrics does not: “…capture the more subtle aspects of research quality, can trivialise deep scholarship, vary enormously by discipline and are so far removed from expressing public value they are very limited in usefulness.” This paper explores how DORA, if implemented and evaluated robustly, brings new opportunities for broader participation in the academy alongside a reconceptualisation of what it means to produce ‘valuable’ research. We suggest that the implementation of DORA should not only focus on making responsible use of research metrics alongside the abandonment of citation metrics as the single indicator of research excellence. Here we argue that, to implement DORA well, universities must also take seriously research outputs that are not written, building on epistemological frameworks that are not rooted in European thinking. This in turn will furnish ethnomusicologists with the opportunity to forcefully renew the argument that non-traditional research outputs, which include significant Indigenous contributions to the academy, are capable of fundamentally changing and enhancing the ways in which the academy assesses research quality.

Muriel E Swijghuisen Reigersberg | The Open University, UK
Aaron Corn | The University of Melbourne, Australia

Gemma Turner | Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Sung Voice Qualities: Potential Methods For Description, Communication And Analysis

Song is an important aspect of Australian indigenous language and cultural revitalisation. Voice quality describes the distinctive timbre of a voice and is central to singing with the appropriate style and feeling. Languages are associated with particular voice qualities and linguists have taken preliminary steps to describe those associated with Aboriginal and Torres Strait languages with limited success, perhaps in the absence of an adequate system for doing so. Written song notation does not indicate sung voice quality information, making it of limited usefulness to singers unless recordings are also available. In this presentation two methods of analysing and communicating voice qualities are put forward: the first empirical and the second practice-oriented. In speech, voice qualities can be transient and idiosyncratic which makes analysis difficult and potentially inaccurate. However, songs can provide high quality, stable and reproducible information because of the set patterns of pitch, register and vowel and these can be analysed with software such as PRAAT. Estill Voice training is an evidence-based hearing and doing-based method used worldwide by voice professionals which identifies voice quality through a system of physiological figures. The relative merits of these two systems will be discussed in light of their usefulness in relation to song revitalisation and creation.

Gemma Turner | Independent researcher

Marisol Vargas | "Iñ che Kay Che" (Here am I the Woman and the Man that Still Lies in Me): Study–Research that Explores the Performance that Would Change to an Art Installation

Presentation and performance/demonstration

During the past few years we have been making contemporary work from our emerging study studio that explores performance that mutates into an art installation. A research-creation process that addresses the theme of the body, Unstable and changing, from a symbolic political point of view, presenting how different and dissonant the original cultures are to the dominant cultures. An emergence between experimental practices in dance research, the specific site, the concern of working with the kinesthetic sense between: body, earth, water, recognition of the other, original peoples, the mystical-the ancestral. Conceived by this art studio, as "an emerging experience to explore" between dance, visual arts, sound, using mixed media, objects and installation, technology, images, creative- text writing-poetry, video-art, body- movement-choreography. Conceived within a visual unit given by the interrelation-interculturality that the object of study and the proposal can describe in more precise terms to clarify the characteristics of the Works carried out. This emerging experience to explore possible performances that would mutate into an art installation that we titled: SOUTH SOUTH, to unite the views of countries in the southern hemisphere of the world, regarding instability, climate change, colonization, decolonization and neo-colonization processes


Marisol Vargas | Independent artist and scholar

Jorge Poveda Yánez | From Cannibalising Regimes to Indigenous Futurism: The Role of New Technologies to Prevent Misappropriation of Indigenous Dances

After multiple cases of misappropriation of indigenous dances, knowledge and cultures, indigenous communities still have to rely on the public outcry to stop third parties from illegitimately exploiting their traditions. Beyond raising awareness of the pervasiveness of these practices, pragmatic tools have to be developed to strengthen the conservation and transmission of traditional cultural expressions in action, such as dances, rituals, and performances with special attention to the digital environments wherein they circulate. To defy the apparent contradiction between technology and indigenous culture, this interdisciplinary research project underscores the insufficiency of the several layers of the legal frameworks wherein indigenous dances are embedded. Simultaneously, theoretical and empirical explorations of new technology within the RITMO centre of the University of Oslo enabled the realisation of how similarity algorithms, motion capture repositories, computer-assisted transmission of dances, interoperable documentation and multimodal archiving could filled the shortcomings on the normative front. These interconnections are suggested to protect the interests and livelihoods of indigenous peoples in relation to their intangible cultural heritage, until new parameters to prevent their misappropriation arise on a global scale.


Jorge Poveda Yánez | MULT.LOGOS and EMBODYING RECONCILIATION

Calista Yeoh | "We Sing it this Way, they Sing it that Way": Analysing Wanji-wanji

In this paper, I present a musical analysis of Wanji-wanji, an Aboriginal entertainment ceremony regarded as being of great antiquity by many different Aboriginal people who sing it across Australia. This paper attempts to understand what musical features singers are tapping into when they say “we sing it this way, they sing it that way”. The rhythmic texts of the verses sung by people of vastly different language groups are identical, thus the point of difference may be in relation to pitch, tempo, scale, ornamentation and vocal timbre. In this paper I present my analysis and comparison of performances of Wanji-wanji by two diverse Aboriginal language groups: the Pintupi of the Western Desert and the Gurindji of the Victoria River district. I show that that there are significant differences in melody, particularly in pitch, number of melodic descents and the tonal centre of the two groups, yet the rhythmic text remains broadly the same. It is hoped that this research builds a framework for comparing music from the same or neighbouring regions to understand musical style, and that the results of this study could be of interest to Indigenous composers and performers seeking inspiration and knowledge of Aboriginal musical style.

Calista Yeoh | University of Sydney

Rona Charles and Sally Treloyn – Repatriated Recordings and Music Vitality in the Kimberley