Aboriginal Music?

Week 8: Australia and Aboriginal Music

l  1. Australian Aborigines arrived 40,000 years ago and developed a stable society with complex cultural traditions.

l  2. Aspects of culture have survived colonization but few still live in the traditional way.

l  3. Aboriginal culture has been greatly affected and has in many cases changed to conform to existence with whites.

Australia

Generalities l  Many small tribes or bands with specific languages and

cultural identities. Many of these differences have been water down by contact with whites.

l  Communities may be hunter gather and thus on the move or (now) settled in semi-agricultural communities.

l  No written culture. Minimal material culture. l  Music songs and dance are linked inextricably and central

to identity, enculturation, religion and language. Music (song) is the repository for tribal history. Without maintaining repertoire ancestor links will be lost and with it tribal identity.

Hunter-gather communities

Dreaming l  Cosmic order includes social order. Division of

labour by sex. Men hunters, women gatherers. Men aristocrats, women menials. Men could take time to make music, rituals and fighting.

l  Nature had to be stimulated by ritual . Elaborate plan of life formed by ritual centred on concept of Dreaming.

l  Events in Dream time are recorded in myth. At Dream time the earth was featureless. Life in structure-less flux until creative powers moved around creating the landscape, all living things, and structured society. Then the powers sank into the earth.

Song Lines l Dreaming tracks – paths across the land. l Route of the ‘creator beings’ . Are

recorded in the songs, stories, dance and painting.

l The initiate is able to navigate by repeating the song – and cover vast distances. The songs describe the topography. Can traverse different languages.

l Can normally only be done in one direction.

In his 1987 book The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin describes the songlines as

l  ...the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known to Europeans as 'Dreaming-tracks' or 'Songlines'; to the Aboriginals as the 'Footprints of the Ancestors' or the 'Way of the Law'.Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic being who wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path - birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes - and so singing the world into existence."''

Aboriginal Art

Serpents

Kangaroo

Art

l On bark, rock, stone, aerial desent landscapes.

l Present the dreamtime story. l  Imagery present in many sacred sites. l Using natural ochres or scratched into the

rock or ground.

…. More l Powers can have human or animal

forms. Dualism of then and now. Communication between powers and men takes place by signs. E.g.Rainbow serpent, and in paranormal experiences of trance in which new songs may emerge.

l Creativity comes from the powers and men `follow up the Dreaming’ by receiving and reproducing songs.

Totemism

l Elaborate system of kinship, to animals, places, insects, through clans. Fixed location of everything in a total order. Totemism.

l Rites and life (initiatory and fertility) and death (often brought about by singing a person in death). Rites to help reluctant spirits to leave a body and settle spirit or dispatch it to its spirit home.

Manhood

l From puberty a man learns his lineage songs - totemic plants and animals of his clan and history and mythology of his group.

l His maturation is measured in the esoteric knowledge acquired through song - and as a old man mastery of secret songs of the tribe.

l Mastery of the secret knowledge of the tribe by the elder is the goal of life

Aboriginal Music

l  Exchange of music has been a feature of groups that live in different environments. Songs and dances of one area are adopted by neighbors. Aboriginal music has significant regional variation but is more closely related to itself than any other kind of music.

l  Dissemination of didjeridu – originally a northern instrument -but now pan-Australian.

l  Country rock and pop mixed with elements of aboriginal music is also now popular. Fusion genres.

Poly-vocality

l A singer cultivates several voice qualities - essential for performing a particular song is to use the appropriate voice and vocal production for that song.

l Often inward singing (to throaty in take of breath) and the deliberate croaking of two pitches at once.

Dijeridoo

l  Hollow Eucalyptus branch. l  Blow using circular breathing . l  Two pitches oftne tenth apart constitute the drone

- which is broken up to provide rhythm . l  Melody line above drone - with much singing into

the melody. l  May accompany a ‘songman’ who plays rhythm

sticks. Initiation Song Example l  Other instruments used in Arnhem land are bull

roarers, log drums, clashing boomerangs.

Ritual and Religion

All music (dance, singing, designs and representations) are associated with religious rituals.

l  Time of Dreaming - ancestral beings created the world, then deposited their creative power at certain sites. This power accessed by correctly reproducing in ceremony the songs and dances the ancestors used to create the world.

l  Some rituals are dangerous and restricted to the few. l  Public songs also abound which may be given by ghosts or

ancestors in dreams. Performed at circumcision and death, or for entertainment.

Regions l  Northern Region has a number of specific forms and

dances that include the: l  junba a dance performed with long bark caps and leaves at

elbows and knees. Songs sung by groups of males and females and are organised into texts, set to a flexible melodic contour. They are accompanied by sticks or boomerangs and body percussion. Composed by individuals with the aid of spirits who appear in dreams and take them on spirit journeys.

l  Wongga – accompanied by the didjeridu in the public part of ceremonies that are not restricted. Secret and private sections later.

Initiation Ceremony - top end l Brolga bird. Circumcision rites. l Two boys are painted in their "Djapi"

initiation ceremony that will culminate in their circumcision in Numbulwar, an Aboriginal community on the western Gulf of Carpentaria. They are hoisted onto the shoulders of men and are made to flap their arms, imitating the "brolga" a large water bird during the song involving brolga dreaming.

Wongaa

Daly Region

l  Wangga and lirrga – forms performed by one two or three singers who accompany themselves with wooden clapsticks. Spectacular male dancing and female dancing that emphasizes the upper body.

l  Received in dreams by individuals from spirit agents or ghosts of dead songmen. Translated from ghost language into human language by the singer.

l  Many occasional ceremonies to turn boys into men through circumcision. Also ‘rag-burning’ – to assist spirit of dead to leave the world.

Queensland

l Culture of Cape York Peninsula and Torres islands is linked musically to that of Papua New Guinea.

l Shark calling song.

Arnhem Land

l  Song ownership is group-based. Ceremonies focus on the activities of ancestral Dreaming figures.

l  Clan songs grouped into series – and owned by more than one clan. Sung in public rituals – mortuary, circumcision and ritual diplomacy.

l  In mortuary ritual three stages. Preparation and exposure; cleaning and painting of bones after a few months, crushing bones and placing in log coffins which is then placed upright and abandoned.

Central Areas l  Dessert regions – over 40 tribes. Of South Australia, Western

Australia, Northern Territory particularly l  Songs based around the travels of the ancestors through the region in

the beginning time. Songs have been passed down since the time of the ancestors.

l  Functions – education, history, law, preservation of land, and healing. l  Primarily syllabic vocal music based on cycles. Instruments are

percussive (boomerangs, paired sticks, foot stomping and thigh slapping).

l  Songs for ages and stages – lullabies, infants, young boys etc. l  Songlines – conserving ancestral history. Lots of smaller units each

representing one piece of information in relation to ancestor being celebrated.

South-Eastern Aboriginal Music

l  Long and harsh contact with whites. Colonisation starting in 1788.

l  Corroboree and related genres. Corroboree is a mode of dancing. Open performance or song and dance in which men, women and children perform together.

l  Songs of social control. ‘Sing-you-down’ – stores relate to unacceptable behavior such as drinking and gambling.

Didjeridu l  Is now made out anything. l  Both blown and sung into. l  Vocalised tones also included – blurts and squeaks. l  Great variety of rhythms and timbres while maintaining

basic tone. l  Has developed into a global world music presence. l  Taken up by fusion musicians worldwide - represented in

this country by Rolf Harris - obvious use of croaking vocal sound to get more than one pitch, also clap sticks and didjeridu

Revivals of Indigenous Culture

l  Terrible repression of past has turned round to some extent and there are programmes of cultural revival, including that of language and music/dance.

l  Fusion groups on country and pop scene. Songs dealing with alcohol, law and Aboriginal identity.

l  Aboriginal Music Stars - Jimmy Little (pop), Yothu Yindi (rock), Troy Cassar-Daley (country) and the Warumpi Band (world Music).

Books l  Elizabeth May, Music of Many Cultures, chapter

9. l  William P. Malm, Music Cultures of the Pacific.

The Near East and Asia. l  Fiona Magowan, Melodies of Mourning, Music

and Emotion in Northern Aistralia. l  Tony Mitchell, World Music and the Popular

Music Industry: An Australian View Ethnomusicology 1993, 37/3, pp.309-337

l  Margaret Clunies Rossw and Stephen A. Wild, Formal performance: The relationship of Music, Text, and Dance in the Arnhem Land Clan Songs, Ethnomusicology, 1984, 28/2 pp.209-227