Country and island continent. It is located between the Indian and Pacific oceans south of South-east Asia and is the only continent to comprise a single nation-state. The Australian Aborigines arrived c40,000 years ago and developed a highly stable society with complex cultural traditions, aspects of which survived colonization by the British from the 18th century. Of a total population of 18·84 million (est. 2000), c355,000 people are Aborigine. Since World War II Australia has played an increasing role in Asia and the Pacific, and in the last decades of the 20th century the influence of Asian immigrants has become important.
ALLAN MARETT (I, 1), CATHERINE J. ELLIS (I, 2), MARGARET GUMMOW (I, 3), ROGER COVELL (II), GRAEME SMITH (III)
Aboriginal people in Australia live in a variety of environments, including communities with predominantly Aboriginal populations and small settlements (out stations) on traditional land, as well as in country towns and cities with mixed Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations. Exchange of songs and dances between groups has historically been a feature of Aboriginal culture, particularly at ceremonial occasions. Songs and dances indigenous to one area were frequently adopted by people in neighbouring areas. In recent decades access to modern transportation and the electronic media has increased the interchange of cultural property between geographically distant Aboriginal populations and has led to increased participation of Aboriginal musicians and dancers in national and global culture. Symptomatic of this trend is the dissemination of the didjeridu; traditionally a northern Australian instrument – to other areas of Australia, where it has been adopted as a pan-Australian symbol of Aboriginal identity, and the immense popularity of the didjeridu within world music and New Age markets (Neuenfeldt, 1997). Popular music genres such as country, rock and reggae have become popular among Aboriginal people and are frequently combined with elements of traditional music by the many Aboriginal bands (some of which now sustain international reputations) that have sprung up in the communities, towns and cities of northern Australia.
3. South-eastern Aboriginal music.
Northern Australia hosts a large variety of Aboriginal languages and musical cultures (fig.1). Research on northern Aboriginal music is uneven: the music and dance of some regions, for example Arnhem Land, have attracted a great deal of attention, while others, most notably the Bathurst and Melville Islands and Cape York Peninsula, have received less, particularly in recent years. The first major surveys of Northern Australian music were carried out by A.P. Elkin and Trevor A. Jones (1958) and by Alice Moyle (1964 and 1974). More recent studies have tended to focus on the musical life of particular communities or on particular public genres.
All traditional Aboriginal performances in northern Australia – singing, dancing, the execution of visual designs and representations – are (or were in the past) associated with religious ritual. Although some are now performed in contexts that are not primarily religious (at official functions or arts festivals, for civil ceremonies and for entertainment), traditional religious ceremonies remain the most potent and significant contexts.
It is generally believed that at the beginning of time, in the period known in English as the Dreaming or Dreamtime, ancestral beings created the world and then deposited their creative power at certain sites. The power they left can be accessed today by correctly reproducing in ceremony the songs and dances originally performed by the ancestors in order to bring the world into being. Such ceremonies are regarded as both powerful and dangerous, and restrictions often apply as to who may perform or witness them. Because of the sensitivity attached to ritual performances of this type, they will not be discussed in detail in this article.
Public songs and dances, performances to which no restrictions apply with regard to who may perform or witness them, occur widely throughout northern Australia. In many cases, these are given to singers by ghosts or ancestral beings in dreams, although some, such as Arnhem Land clan-songs, are said to have existed ‘from the beginning’. Public songs are in many cases performed at rituals associated with circumcision and death, in a variety of quasi- or non-ceremonial contexts and for entertainment.
Australia, §I, 1: Aboriginal music, Northern Aboriginal music.
Located in the north-west corner of Australia, the Kimberley region is bordered to the south by the Great Sandy Desert and to the east by the Victoria River (fig.1). It is linguistically and culturally distinct from the Western Desert cultures to the south (see §2 below) and the Daly and Arnhem Land cultures to the north-east, although there is ongoing cultural exchange with these areas.
As elsewhere in Australia, the most powerful songs and dances are those associated with the creative activities of the Dreaming ancestors, and there are often restrictions as to who may perform or witness them. Some of these ceremonies, such as the Walungarri initiation cycles of the Ngarinyin, are indigenous to the area, whereas others have come into the region through ritual exchange with groups to the south and north-east.
The most commonly encountered public performance genre in the Kimberley region is junba. There are a number of subgenres distinguished by the Ngarinyin people, which are principally determined by their dance paraphernalia: jadmi, performed with long paper bark caps and green leaves at the elbow and knee joints (fig.2); balga, performed with string crosses woven from coloured wool; and galinda, distinguished by the large painted boards carried on the shoulders of the dancers (fig.3).
While the terms junba and balga are used widely throughout the region, certain languages have their own names for songs of the junba type. These include nurlu in the southern Dampier region (Dyabirr Dyabirr, Dyugun, Ngumbarl, Nyigina and Yawuru languages); ilma in northern Dampier Land (Baardi and Nyul Nyul); maru in the southwest (Garadyarri); dyudyu in the south (Mangarla and Walmadyarri) and dhamba in the north-east (Murrinhpatha). Within each of these categories there may be a number of different song series, each usually associated with a particular composer. All these genres share important characteristics: they are normally sung by groups that comprise both males and females; their musical organization (which typically comprises isorhythmic texts set to a flexible melodic contour) conforms broadly to Central Australian principles (see §2(iv) below); they are accompanied by sticks or boomerangs and body percussion; they are composed by individuals with the assistance of spirit agents who appear to the singers in dreams and take them on spirit journeys; and they are accompanied by dance, the style and dance-paraphernalia of which varies from genre to genre.
Other commonly encountered public genres are the didjeridu-accompanied wangga and lirrga, which in terms of their musical organization, instrumental accompaniment, dance style and other features are stylistically distinct from junba and its related genres. Wangga and lirrga have been imported into the area from the Daly region, but their form and significance is changed in a number of ways in the Kimberley. First, the distinction between wangga and lirrga is not always recognized, and the meanings of song texts are often not understood; also, wangga and lirrga are imported to the Kimberley and are rarely, if at all, composed there. Furthermore, their function in ritual is different from that which they have in the Daly region (see §(ii) below). In general, wangga and lirrga are performed for entertainment and in the public sections of rituals that otherwise have restricted access.
Another public genre, about which less is known, is lilydyin (or ludin), comprising individually composed and owned songs from northern Dampier Land. These concern contemporary events and are sung by men without dancing. Further south, dyabi (or yabi) songs, also individually composed and owned, are performed with a rasp unique (within the Australian context) to that genre (Moyle, recordings, 1977, and von Brandenstein, 1969). Rain-making songs addressed to Wandjina, the principal creation Dreamings of the Ngarinyin, Wunambal and Worora people, were recorded by Alice Moyle in 1968 (Moyle, recordings, 1977); it is unclear whether they are still performed.
A performance from the northern Kimberley of the jadmi junba by the Ngarinyin singer-composer Nyalgodi (Scotty) Martin illustrates many musical and dance features typical of the most commonly encountered public genres. Jadmi was given to Nyalgodi by the ghost (agula) of his grandfather, who appeared to him in a dream in 1973 and took him on a journey to Dulugun, the land of the dead, off the north-western coast of the Kimberley. There he showed Nyalgodi a song series by his deceased relations, which he subsequently shaped into the jadmi junba (see also §2(i) below).
Jadmi junba contains some 27 distinct songs, each of which represents a different dream experience. A complete performance is made up of a number of these. Ex.1 shows part of one of these songs. The text ‘gurranda wayurlambi/ ngardarri wayurlambi’ refers to the ancestral Brogla (gurranda), a large estuarine bird with elaborate courting rituals who first taught people how to dance, and to the paper-bark caps (ngardarri) of the dancers. Ascertaining the conventions whereby the melody is expanded and contracted to fit texts of different length and structure performed at different tempos is one of the principal tasks of the musical analyst. These conventions have been explicated in detail for a nurlu series by Keogh (in Barwick, Marett and Tunstil, 1995) and by Treloyn for jadmi junba (recordings, 1999).
Of the many pop bands in the Kimberley, the most well known is the rock-calypso-reggae band Kuckles. Three members of this band (Jimmy Chi, Mick Manolis and Steve Pigram) went on to create the first Aboriginal stage musical, Bran Nue Dae in 1990.
Australia, §I, 1: Aboriginal music, Northern Aboriginal music.
The principal public song genres of the Daly region are the didjeridu-accompanied wangga (also walaka, yindiyindi and djungguriny) and lirrga (lirra). Wangga is indigenous to this region, where it is sung by speakers of Batjamalh, Emmi, Marri-tjevin, Marri-ammu, Marri-thiyel and Ngan’gi-tjemerri languages. The genre has been disseminated outside the Daly region to Barunga (where it is also known as walaka), to western Arnhem Land (djungguriny) and to the Kimberley. Lirrga was imported to the Daly region within living memory from Barunga, Beswick, Gunbalanya and Maningrida, where it is known as gunborrg. In the Daly region lirrga songs are now composed by speakers of Marri-ngarr and Ngan’gi-wumerri, with the help of local Dreaming ancestors. A number of other public genres are sung by Murrinhpatha speakers, including dhamba, which is stylistically related to the public genres of the Kimberley region; malkarriny, isorhythmically-organized songs that relate to a prophetic vision of the coming of the first missionaries to Port Keats; and wurltjerri, a didjeridu-accompanied genre (fig.4).
Both wangga and lirrga are performed by one, two or occasionally more singers who accompany themselves on wooden clapsticks and are accompanied by a single didjeridu player. These genres display a variety of formal structures, and it is difficult to distinguish them by musical criteria alone. Both feature spectacular male dancing, which involves a high degree of individual virtuosity, and group women’s dancing that emphasizes upper body movement; however, wangga dancers perform the stamping movements characteristic of these genres using two legs, whereas lirrga dancers stamp only one leg (Marett and Page, in Barwick, Marett and Tunstil, 1995; Page, GEWM). The dance movements for dhamba, malkarriny and wurltjerri exhibit the more restrained gestures typical of both Central Australian and Kimberley dance, which are combined with the more flamboyant movements characteristic of the Daly.
Wangga, lirrga and dhamba are received in dreams by individual songmen from a variety of spirit agents. In some cases, particularly at Port Keats, the song-giving spirits are humanoid Dreaming figures known variously as Walakandha, Ma-yawa and Ginwurri for wangga, as Kanybubi (mermaids) for lirrga and as Kunbinyi for dhamba. In other places, particularly at Belyuen and Barunga, wangga songs are given by the ghosts of deceased songmen. Song texts in some cases comprise the untranslated words sung by song-giving spirits in ghost language; these are heard as meaningless vocables. In other cases the words of the spirit are translated into human language by the singer and are heard as normal language. Meaningful song texts may refer to the song-giving process itself, to particular Dreamings or ghosts, to living people, to contemporary events or to significant places.
The two main ceremonial contexts for all five public genres of this region are ceremonies to make boys into men through circumcision (fig.5) and ‘rag-burning’ ceremonies performed to assist the spirit of a deceased person to leave the world of the living. In circumcision ceremonies in particular, it is not uncommon for genres from outside the region to be sung. These include Arnhem Land clan-songs (bunggurl or manikay) as well as ceremonial complexes imported from Central Australia (Stanner, 1966). All five local public genres are also regularly performed in quasi-ceremonial contexts such as building dedications, college graduations and civil ceremonies, as well as for entertainment.
A song about a man called Benmele, composed by the Belyuen songman Bobby Lambudju Lane, can serve as an illustration of wangga style (ex.2). In the first of the two main descents, the text ‘Benmele-maka kurraitj-kurraitj kabindje-noeng’ (‘Benmele, kookuburra, he sang for him’) is set isorhythmically. Isorhythm is not, however, the thoroughgoing principle of musical organization that it is in Central Australian song or genres such as junba in the Kimberley; it is adopted here as just one of a range of organizational principles that wangga composers draw on. Thus it is abandoned in the shorter second descent, which is made up of sustained notes set to the vocable text ‘i, a, n’. Before returning to the main descent at the beginning of a second rendition of the song verse, the singer sings a primarily rhythmic passage to the vocables ‘e ta’ in the lower octave. Even unpatterned, stick-beating is sustained throughout the song; however, many different patterns, implying a range of different metres, may be used in both wangga and lirrga. Throughout, the didjeridu plays a rhythmic drone on the pitch that is the final of the two main melodic descents. In the Daly region and western Arnhem Land (except in wurltjerri) there is seldom any use of the overblown tone of the didjeridu. Expert performers manipulate the upper partials of the didjeridu to produce complex ‘chords’ that are combined in rhythmic interactions with the vocal part (these are not shown in ex.2).
Australia, §I, 1: Aboriginal music, Northern Aboriginal music.
Here, song ownership is overwhelmingly group-based. Some repertories, most notably those associated with restricted or semi-restricted ceremonies, are owned by one or the other of two patrilineal exogamous moieties, Dhuwa or Yirritja. These include the clapstick- (bilma-) accompanied songs for the Madayin ceremony, different sets of which are owned by each of the moieties; the Dhuwa-owned Kunapipi, Ngulmarrk (Ubar) and Djungguwan ceremonies; and the Yirritja-owned Yabadurawa. The exact forms of these ceremonies, which focus on the activities of ancestral Dreaming figures, vary across Arnhem Land.
Ownership of the most commonly performed public songs (termed manikay in north-eastern areas of central and eastern Arnhem Land, bunggurl in the south-western Barunga/Beswick area and ‘clan-song’ in English) is invested in exogamous patrilineal clans. Each clan identifies with a set of Dreamings (wangarr), some of which reside on their land and some on the estates of related clans. Didjeridu-accompanied clan-songs, dances, paintings, designs and other ritual property, which are believed to have been handed down unchanged since the creation of the world, make manifest a clan’s Dreamings when they are presented in ceremony.
Individually-owned, didjeridu-accompanied songs called gunborrg are also composed and performed in western Arnhem Land, particularly among the Maung, Gunwinggu and related language groups. Gunborrg are given to individual songmen in dreams and may refer either to topical events or Dreamings. They are widely performed in northern Australia, for example at Barunga and Beswick to the south, in the Daly region (where they are known as lirrga) and in the Gulf region (where they are known as malwa).
In eastern Arnhem Land yet another form of didjeridu-accompanied song, called djatpangarri, is performed by young unmarried men. Often described as ‘fun songs’, their texts comprise both meaningless vocables and references to everyday topics (Moyle, recordings, 1964, pp.31–2, and 1974). According to Waterman (1971) most djatpangarri follow the same melodic pattern. Recently, djatpangarri have been incorporated into Western popular music songs by the band Yothu Yindi of Arnhem Land. Other bands, such as Blekbala Mujik from Barunga and Sunrize Band from Maningrida, also mix elements of traditional music with rock, reggae and other popular genres.
Clan-songs (manikay, bunggurl) are grouped into series, which are usually owned by more than one clan. In central Arnhem Land these series are known by proper names such as Murlarra (Anderson, 1992, and Anderson, in Barwick, Marett and Tunstil, 1995), Djambidj (Clunies Ross and Wild, recordings, 1982, and 1984), Goyulan (Clunies Ross and Mundrugmundrug, recordings, 1988) or Baratjarr (Stanhope, 1991). In eastern Arnhem Land they are referred to by both the name of the owning clans and by the topographical subject matter of the series. While in central Arnhem Land each clan normally (though not exclusively) owns just one series, in eastern Arnhem Land clans own rights to more than one series. Men can sing the songs of their own clans and of their maternal grandmother’s clan, or of a clan with which they share song-series.
A song-series comprises a set of clan-songs, each celebrating the activities of one of a number of totemic Dreamings associated with the owning clans. Djambidj, for example, is owned by (and binds together) four Burarra-speaking clans as well as a number of clans from other language groups (Hiatt, 1965, p.59). It comprises some 21 song subjects that include various animal or plant species (for example, Crow, White Cockatoo, Green Turtle or Yam), culturally-produced items (Didjeridu and Hollow Log Coffin) and spirit beings (Marrawal).
Clan-songs are sung primarily in three public ritual contexts: mortuary rites, circumcision ceremonies and ceremonies of ritual diplomacy. They may also be performed in public parts of otherwise secret ceremonies, as well as for entertainment. All ceremonial contexts require singing and dancing with visual representation of Dreamings in several media.
Mortuary ceremonies can be divided into three main stages. The first of these involves the preparation of the body and its burial or exposure on a tree platform. In the second stage, which occurs some months later, after the body has partially decayed, relatives clean the bones and paint them with ochre before handing them to female relatives for safe-keeping. The third stage (which is traditionally the most elaborate) involves crushing the bones of the deceased and placing them in a hollow log-coffin, which is then placed upright and abandoned. In some areas, as a result of Christian influence, the first (burial) stage has become the principal element in the ceremonial complex (see, for example, Dunlop, film, 1979, and Morphy, 1984). In other areas of eastern and central Arnhem Land, the third stage remains the principal one. The film Waiting for Harry (McKenzie, film, 1980) documents such a ceremony during which the songs, dances and visual designs of the two song-series Djambidj and Goyulan are executed.
Mortuary practices in eastern Arnhem Land (including Groote Eylandt) appear to differ in an even more fundamental way from those in other parts of Arnhem Land in that the ceremony is concerned with the journey of the soul of the deceased from the place of death to its spiritual resting place in its clan lands. In a series of ritual episodes made up of a particular set of dances, ritual actions and songs, ancestral events associated with the particular tracts of country through which the soul is travelling are re-enacted in ceremony.
In circumcision ceremonies a boy’s connection to his totems, his country and his kin is emphasized by the performance of songs and dances and the painting on his body of emblems associated with his principal totems (Keen, 1994, pp.171–91).
The ceremonies of Marradjirri or Rom have been described as ‘rituals of diplomacy’ or ‘exchange ceremonies’. These involve the presentation of elaborately decorated poles to distant social groups, with attendant singing and dancing of clan-songs (Borsboom, 1978, and Keen, 1994). Rom ceremonies have also been performed to celebrate the relationship between the Anbarra people of central Arnhem Land and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra (fig.6) (For music of Torres Strait aborigines see Torres Strait Islands.
The three main musical elements in any performance of clan-songs are a vocal melody carried by one or more specialist male singers, clapstick patterns played by the singers, and a patterned drone played by a single didjeridu, although in eastern Arnhem Land some clan-songs are sung without didjeridu accompaniment. Whereas in central Arnhem Land the pitch of the didjeridu drone is often the same note as the final of the vocal melody, in eastern Arnhem Land there appears to be no attempt to make these two pitches agree (Knopoff, 1992). Women also perform songs (ngathi manikay) that follow the same texts, use the same images and carry the same meanings as men’s songs. These ‘crying-songs’ are performed in free rhythm both during mortuary rituals and in less formal grieving contexts (Magowan, 1994). Songs may or may not be accompanied by dance, with men and women performing independent styles of dancing. Dance forms and gestures may also be regarded as part of the property of clans.
In a typical performance, a particular song subject is sung a number of times followed by the singing of several song items of another song subject and so on (Stubington, 1978, and Anderson, 1992). Song subjects may be sung and danced in a number of styles. In central Arnhem Land, one major distinction is between performances in which there is no fixed metrical relationship between the voice, clapsticks and didjeridu and in which the music of each sound component is unmeasured (termed ngarkana in Rembarrnga language); and those in which voice, sticks and didjeridu all conform to the same metre and are aligned to produce complex formal patterning (termed djalkmi in Rembarrnga; see Anderson, 1992, and Anderson, in Barwick, Marett and Tunstil, 1995; Clunies Ross and Wild, 1984).
Throughout central and eastern Arnhem Land, ‘measured’ song items commonly comprise three parts: an introductory section in which the performers rehearse the main musical elements, the song proper and an unaccompanied vocal termination that is typically omitted when a song is danced to. The song proper consists of sung text accompanied by sticks and didjeridu (ex.3). Its beginning is usually marked by the singer or singers leaping to the highest note of the first of a number of vocal descents (marked A, B, C and D in ex.3) that form the principal melodic material of the song item. In the course of these descents, singers produce text describing the actions and attributes of the spirit being.
The opening lines of the song proper have the following meanings:
wang-gurnga guiya Cockatoo named Wang-gurnga
wnag-gurnga guiya Cockatoo named Wang-gurnga
gulob’ arraidja gorges himself on seeds and grasses and hiccups
ngwar-ngwar worria dances and leaps slowly in the sky calling ‘ngwair
ngwair’
maningala rarei lives at his waterhole in the upland forest
(Clunies Ross and Wild, 1982, p.48).
Song texts are performed within a metrical framework articulated by sticks and didjeridu. In ex.3 each of the text lines occupies four beats. Variations in the patterning of sticks and didjeridu also articulate formal subdivisions within the song (see, for example, descent C, in which the stick-beating is varied and the didjeridu introduces overblown ‘hoots’ about a 10th above the tonic, circled in ex.3). Variant stick-beating and didjeridu hoots also mark the end of this second section.
Australia, §I, 1: Aboriginal music, Northern Aboriginal music.
South of Arnhem Land lies the Roper River. Several different types of song are recognized in the western Roper, including lorrgon, manggarlagarl and gujida. Lorrgon are associated with mortuary rites, and the other two figure in the initiation of young men. Despite a study of texts of lorrgon songs (Merlan, in Clunies Ross, Donaldson and Wild, 1987), little musicological study has been made of songs from this region. Songs of the wangga and gunborrg genres have also been recorded in this region.
The south-west coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria supports four cultural groups, differentiated primarily by language: Garrawa, Gudanji, Mara and Yanyuwa. Mackinlay (1998, p.44) has suggested that whereas the textual and rhythmical structure of Yanyuwa songs resembles those of Central Australian music, the melodic structures resemble those in parts of north-central and north-eastern Arnhem Land. In Yanyuwa culture, songs are classified according to the origins of the songs. Songs composed by totemic ancestors in the Dreaming are referred to as kujika. When performed in ceremony they are often restricted by age or gender (or both). Other restricted repertories include ‘love-magic’ songs such as men’s djarrada and women’s yawalyu (Mackinlay, 1998). These latter two genres are widely encountered in Central Australia as well as in some other areas of northern Australia. Yalkawarra and Kulyukulyu are sacred public funeral rites which, while incorporating kujika songs, are generally not referred to as kujika.
Songs may also be composed by humans (walaba when composed by men or a-kurija when composed by women), in which case they are individually owned. Songs for which there is no generic form may also be received in dreams from spirit beings. West (recordings, 1962) reported that gunborrg songs from western Arnhem Land are performed at Borroloola, where they are known as malwa. ‘Malwa’, which was originally the proper name applied to a specific set of gunborrg songs, has become a generic term in this area.
A number of song genres are performed by the Lardil of Mornington Island. These include burdal, a public danced form given to singers by invisible beings in dream; kujika songs that belong to ceremonial complexes associated with Boraloola, yirrijirr women’s ceremonial song and dance, and djarrada love magic songs (Woomera, Aboriginal Corporation, 1999).
Australia, §I, 1: Aboriginal music, Northern Aboriginal music.
While there has been extensive recording and documentation of the indigenous music and dance of this region (for an account of audio recordings see Moyle, 1968–9, and Koch, in Clunies Ross, Donaldson and Wild, 1987), there have been few detailed musicological studies. Moreover, almost all available studies are based on fieldwork conducted in the 1960s and 70s. The dance styles of western Cape York Peninsula have, on the other hand, been comparatively well studied (von Sturmer, 1978, and von Surmer, in Clunies Ross, Donaldson and Wild, 1987; Arnold, 1991; and Williams, 1988).
Typical of the cultures of western Cape York Peninsula are the Kugu-ngancharra, a subgroup of the Wik people. In the 1970s they possessed a repertory of ceremonial-mythical complexes, songs and dances that comprised a number of different traditions, some restricted and others public: munka, wanam, kunalum or anytjalam (turtle), pucha, winychinam, nganycha mongkom, wungga a’e, wungga mangaya, panycha pinpanam (brolga), thahadjam, pidhalam, nydyi and mapla or malgarri. Of these, the public, boomerang clapstick-accompanied wanam is the most vibrant and is seen as both the symbol and the expression of Kugu-ngancharra identity. It is associated with a major initiation ceremony concerning the ancestral Kaha’ungken brothers. There are distinctive schools of wanam singing and dancing transmitted from particular individuals. As in north-eastern Arnhem Land, songs are also sung in order to conduct a deceased person’s spirit to its final resting site. In creating this journey, songs associated with sites along the route may be chosen from several different traditions.
The traditional country of the Dyirbal lies in the rainforests on eastern Cape York Peninsula, south of Cairns. According to Dixon and Koch (1996, pp.5–6) the last initiation ceremonies were performed in this area in the 1920s, and the last corroborees (public performances of song and dance) were performed in the 1960s. In the past, composition was attributed to spirit intervention. Many surviving songs have been handed down, though some are said to be recently composed without spirit intervention. The surviving body of recordings of Dyirbal song comprises examples of five different genres. The first two, gama and marrga, are associated with corroborees. They are sung by a man accompanying himself with paired boomerang clapsticks or sticks, and perhaps also accompanied by a woman beating a membrane stretched across her thighs (lap-drum). Most refer to everyday events, although some are concerned with the spirit world, and dances are largely mimetic. By far the most common genre is the boomerang clapstick-accompanied gama, songs of which typically have two lines, each of eleven syllables; three-line songs and lines with nine syllables are also found. Meaningless syllables are added in the course of singing. Marrga are the corroboree songs of speakers of the Mamu dialect. They are accompanied by sticks and lap-drum and typically consist of four lines, each of eight syllables. The other three song genres (jangala, burran and gaynyil) are all referred to as ‘gugulu’, from the name of the accompanying stick, which is held vertically and struck with a piece of cane (fig.7). These songs, which often convey personal feelings, are sung by both men and women in private or semi-public contexts. Sometimes a shake-a-leg dance (a dance movement almost ubiquitous in Cape York Peninsula, wherein the feet are spread wide apart and the knees oscillated to and fro) is improvised to the songs. ‘Shake-a-leg’ is also used as a synonym for corroboree (i.e. a public ceremony), although shake-a-leg movements are also used in initiatory (bora) ceremonies.
On Cape York Peninsula, traditional styles of song and dance may be contrasted with more recently introduced forms such as harmonic Pacific island hymn-singing and related dancing. Introduced via the Torres Strait by Christian missionaries, these are now widely performed in public contexts such as sports days and other public festivals or in ceremonies to ‘open’ houses previously closed by deaths (Black and Koch, 1983, p.159). Unlike traditional songs, which are received from the spirits of deceased relatives or totemic ancestors, such ‘island songs’ are composed by individuals. They may be sung by mixed groups of men and women and when danced are typically accompanied by drums and rattles of various sorts.
See also Torres Strait Islands.
This section covers performances of music and, where possible, aspects of the associated dance, design and ceremonies of Aboriginal people living in the area classified in the Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia (Horton, 1994) as the desert region, which includes over 40 tribal groups, only a few of which have been studied by ethnomusicologists. This vast area stretches from the desert around Alice Springs south almost to the Great Australian Bight and including the Woomera rocket range, west in places as far as the Western Australian coast, and further north than Tennant Creek. In it there are many common features and two major language groups, each with many dialects there are five Arandic and approximately 40 Pitjantjatjara-related dialects. These two language areas have the best-preserved traditions in the southern parts of the Australian continent.
(ii) Songs for ages and stages.
(iii) Ceremonies, ritual knowledge and responsibilities.
Australia, §I, 2: Aboriginal music, Central Aboriginal music.
There are a number of stages of acculturation among the central Aboriginal people, more so in the city areas than remote desert locations, although all the latter can now access mass media. In addition to those traditional performers in desert areas who maintain their old song forms, there are others who dream modern songs that can be considered Dreamtime songs that include reference to modern living; there are performers living in rural areas who introduce many non-traditional musical aspects into their performances; and there are others who, having moved to cities, create and perform majority musics (e.g. rock and Western art musics).
As eleswhere in Australia, the song tradition in this area is based around the travels of Ancestors through the region in the beginning of time. Performers say these songs have been passed from preceding generations since the time of the ancestral activities. Songs and singing have many functions in traditional life, including education, history, law, preservation of the land (for example rain charms and increase rites) and healing.
There are certain elements of desert region music that remain constant throughout the entire area. It is primarily syllabic vocal music based on cyclical structures within the three main structural fields of text, melody and rhythm. Musical instruments are only used for percussive accompaniment or for representation of spiritual beings. These general musical characteristics have also been noted among the nurlu of Western Australia, situated at the extreme westerly point of the desert region, although the stories and associated histories appear to have been influenced by styles from Northern Australia (see §1 above). The percussive accompaniment of desert music includes the use of paired sticks beaten together, a single stick or stone beaten on the ground, boomerangs beaten together, hand-clapping, foot-stamping (male) and thigh slapping (exclusively female). Of the instruments that are not percussive (exclusively used by males), both the bullroarer and the ulbura ilpirra ‘trumpet’ have supernatural functions; the former may be regarded as the voice of the sacred ancestor while the latter, a hollow log about 60 cm long and 5 cm in diameter whose sound is produced by singing through the instrument, replaces the bullroarer in some Aranda ceremonies. (The didjeridu is not traditional to this area but is now employed in some performances as an adopted symbol of Aboriginality.)
Song is understood to be a powerful agent in influencing non-musical events. There is a widespread belief that song enables performers to draw on supernatural powers left within the soil by the sacred ancestral people. It is only through the correct presentation, simultaneously, of all the technical features of the song that this power becomes accessible to the performers. Because the power can be used for either good or evil, strict control is maintained over the teaching of these potent songs; a system of exclusion operates, which results in only the oldest and wisest people knowing them.
The first thing children in the Pitjantjatjara (Yankuntjatjara) area learn during a performance is the correct accompaniment to the singing, which includes learning to select a suitable piece of wood for a beating-stick and how to prepare the mound of earth on which to beat the accompaniment; the initial song-instruction occurs through their involvement in the associated dance. There are traditional songs for children, which deliberately obscure the secret information that will be revealed when the same song is learnt later. Teenagers learn the names of special sites associated with the ancestral tracks by singing the songs in the geographical sequence of these Dreamtime journeys. Later, in the gender-segregated secret and sacred songs, the performers’ understanding of the principles of song construction, musical coding and geographical identification enables more mature musical activity. All this learning occurs through observation in a system which does not allow the student to ask questions of the knowledgeable person.
Documentation of the musics in this area often focusses on specific aspects rather than general characteristics; thus a comprehensive statement about the music is difficult. One argument raised in research is that this music lacks creativity, being an exclusively recreative form. General observation, insiders’ concepts and analytical research findings contradict this suggestion. In the Alyawarra tradition, the male musical repertory is of fixed size, while the women may dream new songs; among the Warlpiri the process of reorganizing ceremonial life has included the creation of new complexes of songs, designs and dances that are received from the Dreaming through the agency of a spirit (Clunies Ross, Donaldson and Wild, 1987, p.109). Similar processes of accession of songs and ceremonies have been noted by Keogh among the nurlu genre in the Kimberleys, in Western Australia. The dreamer’s spirit may leave the body during sleep to interact with the balangan (spirits of the dead) or ray (childlike) spirits, during which time a ceremony may be performed that the dreamer can then bring back to the everyday world. Subjects of these nurlu include experiences associated with white people; songs describing the death of soldiers in World War I have also been noted (see Palmer, 1989, p.3). The Pintubi produce songs that are anonymously-composed contemporary accounts of the mythological past, but no traditional explanation is given about how the boundary was crossed between the Dreamtime and historical time in order for mortals to be taught the series.
It has been demonstrated through research that the role of the song leader is crucial in establishing basic patterns from which the desired unison singing can be maintained. Barwick shows, for instance, how the melody can be expanded and contracted to fit the text with a considerable degree of variation. She gives a number of principles that indicate that each act of performance involves constant checking of all levels of rhythmic and melodic construction in the course of making decisions about fitting the text on the melody, and she concludes that this flexibility in the system paradoxically promotes the conservation of what may seem to be very inflexible rhythmic and melodic structures (see Ellis, Barwick and Morais, 1990, pp.69–75). Creativity can also be seen to operate in so far as the traditional concept is reinterpreted with fresh insight in each performance (this can occur only after long immersion in the conventional process). Structural parameters are identified through the systematic interlocking of different structural features, and particular ritual structures are incorporated by a system of cueing, which means that an almost infinite variability in performance detail goes hand in hand with very accurate conservation of the key musical elements of melody, text and rhythm at various hierarchical levels of the cyclical structures in the total performance, including dance.
Australia, §I, 2: Aboriginal music, Central Aboriginal music.
Songs for each age group within the community have their own structures and functions. Songs associated with birth are those used when the life of either mother or child is in danger, or to induce labour. These are not performed for researchers because of their inherent power. The texts of lullabies often stress fear but some simply reiterate, through a repeated rhythmic pattern, a simple phrase such as ‘do not cry’. Songs that children make themselves and pass on to one another have largely disappeared because of contact with European education. Only a few have been recorded, and they all have short rhythmic patterns with only two main accents, most consisting of two widely separated notes (an interval of approximately a 5th or an octave). Melodically they are different from children’s songs created by adults, which are diminutive forms of the non-secret sections of adult songs and are made for training boys and girls separately in the musical, textual and dancing techniques and in the expected behaviour and extra-musical effects of songs.
Songs of adults encompass almost the entire field of music-making. The more powerful the song, the more intricate is the overlay of patterning, to a point where error at one level is impossible without disruption of the interlocking process. In general, women’s songs have a narrower melodic range and less rhythmic complexity than men’s songs. Men’s secret songs sometimes deliberately superimpose selected sections of two separate songlines (song series): the ending of one may be performed simultaneously with the start of a related series, the men of each singing group sitting within their own circle with some of each circle sitting back-to-back.
Songs for death are directed to the soul of the departed; they concern totemic affiliation and seek to allow the soul to return to its rightful spiritual home and thus become available for future reincarnation. Other songs performed at the death of a close relative may include, as well as stylized wailing, songs intended to identify the ‘murderer’.
Australia, §I, 2: Aboriginal music, Central Aboriginal music.
Ancestral history is preserved within a totem-specific, geographically-mapped ‘songline’ (sometimes referred to by performers as ‘history song’ and by researchers as a song cycle or song series), which consists of a series of smaller units of composition (verse, text, couplet, item) known among Pitjantjatjara speakers as ‘small songs’. Songlines may include hundreds of small songs, each representing one piece of information in relation to the ancestor being commemorated. The small song has an identifying text and accompanying syllabic rhythm, repeated a given number of times to complete the melodic shape of the songline. Tunstill (see Crunies Ross, Donaldson and Wild, 1987, p.65) gives a practical example of the embedded geographical knowledge encoded in such a songline: a group of Pintupi, lost while travelling, sang part of a song series that mapped the way they had come, and by attending to the correct order of the song sequence found out that they had taken an incorrect turn.
The many types of small songs are identified with specific terminology by performers. Named categories of small songs include songs sung when the ground painting is being prepared; when the sacred objects are viewed during performance; to accompany body painting; at the start and at the close of the performance; to accompany specific dances; to represent the ‘sonic name’ of a sacred place. There are small songs, known as ‘carrying’ or ‘travelling’ songs, describing types of scenery (for example dry salt lakes) wherever these recur in ancestral travels. Individual charms may be extracted from songlines for various purposes, including rain-making, attracting a lover, causing injury to an enemy or healing. There are also small songs that link one line from each of two different texts to create a new small song. There are ‘true’ (sacred) small songs and ‘false’ ones that are taught to children in preparation for their main learning as adults. Highly secret and sacred small songs may be omitted in some presentations of the appropriate songline.
Each small song will have a section of melody that passes through the essential range of the song, displaying the characteristic melodic shape of its songline. Specific points in the rhythmic pattern fall in predetermined relationship to the melodic shape, and the text may be presented in either of two different positions on the melody. Pitjantjatjara ceremonial performances usually present a selection of songs from the complete set of related songs. Only rarely is the complete set presented by a group of performers or at an occasion: usually its performance is spread out over geographic and social space (according to the mapping and ownership of the song) and through time. Performers regard each of their songs celebrating totemic ancestors as a collection of individual couplets, which may be sung in various traditional sequences since each is a self-contained unit. Among central Australian performers the couplets containing the names of totemic ancestors are the most carefully guarded couplets in all their songs. Among the Pintubi the underlying myth is only sometimes expanded in speech between the singing of small songs, but the explanation or recounting refers directly to the events described in the small songs being performed, not to the whole myth. For them, accurate performance is the essential concept, because without it efficacy is impeded.
Although these accounts of the attitude towards the small song and its aggregation into a songline are from different tribal groups, to a large extent the concepts are common throughout the desert region. There is also a general distinction between aural and visual exposure to performances. The visual aspects of ceremony are vitally important and represent the presence of the ancestor, the design being his identification mark, while the aural aspects contain those words that the ancestor may have been expected to say. Many non-segregated presentations allow women and children to participate in the singing but without seeing the ceremonial acts.
A performance is organized by a manager, whose social and totemic affiliations oblige her or him to control ceremonial activities. The owner of the song and associated ceremony, on the other hand, is the person who leads the singing and without whose consent the performance cannot take place. Not only do owners and managers have different responsibilities dependant on totemic affiliation, but these responsibilities are further graded according to seniority and degree of traditional knowledge. Special duties are fulfilled by the song leader, the group of singers, those in charge of body painting and preparation of ceremonial objects and sites, and the dancers. The knowledgeable singer must be able to carry out all actions, since in different ceremonies the various roles will be the responsibility of different groups and individuals. Many researchers note that ownership of song includes ownership of the country through which that song travels: this has recently been the source of widespread land claims by Aboriginal people. But the relationship between ceremonies and land is not simply that of ownership. Ownership and management of songs entails responsibilities for the economic and healthy survival of the associated land, and ownership rights are transferred at death (or permanent incapacity) from the select group of descendants who know and understand the full significance of their ancestor’s song to new owners, previously selected and well-trained.
Australia, §I, 2: Aboriginal music, Central Aboriginal music.
Terminology for musical techniques often comes from everyday language, with words taking on specific musical meanings. Although there are differences in terminology between tribal and language groups, the musical-cultural concepts expressed through these terms are widely applicable.
The word for melody in Pitjantjatjara means ‘taste’ or ‘flavour’ and in Aranda, ‘scent’, defining not only melody and rhythm, but also the identity of the totemic ancestor whose life essence is aroused through the performance. McCardell (1976), working in Cundalee, Western Australia, gives further terms for melody: ‘tasting the melody’, ‘one song taste’ (a single melody throughout the series), ‘another taste’ (change of melody within a series). There are other examples of everyday language applied to music: the Pitjantjatjara use the same word for laughter and playing as well as singing; crying is the same word as ritual wailing; ‘sighing’ also means humming the melody as a reminder prior to singing.
The Pitjantjatjara term tjunguringanyi, literally meaning ‘coming together as one’ or ‘meeting’, can also refer to singing in unison. Accidental use of harmony is classified as ‘noise’. Singers consider their performances to be the product of either the desirable ‘big throat’ or the unacceptable ‘bad throat’. The Pintubi at Balgo define unison as ‘singing parallel’, ‘singing level’, ‘straight’ or ‘together’, whereas departures from unison are called ‘tangled’, ‘obscured’ or ‘lacking any melody’. The terms for the beating accompaniment can all be covered by the word ‘stick’, which may refer to any method of beating and the musical pattern of the beating.
‘Singing’ also describes the effect of powerful songs on another person during love magic, healing or sorcery. When the power of the song is placed into an object, for example fat used in some healing ceremonies, it is described as ‘singing fat’ (or other object). The same word may apply to some (but not necessarily all) associated ceremonial objects, each individual song in the series, the singing as a whole and the entire ceremony. The closing song of a series is described in terms of the metamorphosis of the ancestor who may be ‘cooled off and metamorphosed to stone’. Strehlow, working with the Aranda people, explains that myths must conclude by relating how the original ancestors passed to their last rest; the Aranda term for this closing small song means ‘to push into the ground’ (Strehlow, 1971).
Richard Moyle (1979, pp.10–12) argues that the Pintubi have no concept of song composition: they believe that their song series have always existed in the spirit realm. Through activities of human spirits the series are ‘found’ and ‘grabbed’ in an act of discovery. A song without words is not a song: music is singing produced by the human voice. The primary verbal mode of explanation is song, because song is the language of the ancestors. ‘To name’, ‘to call by name’ and ‘to call out one’s own name’ are Aranda terms for composing the texts for small songs. In ceremonies Walbiri believe they are behaving like the ancestors re-enacting ancestral events.
Of the three main elements in the small song (melody, rhythm and text) it is the text that conveys the sometimes obscured information about the ancestral events being recreated. The syllabic rhythm associated with each text may be the same length, or it may be half or a quarter (and rarely one third) of the length of the text. There is an inextricable connection between text and rhythm, either standing for the other. The text setting in Pintubi song centres around the division of the word group of each small song into repeated rhythmic units, usually three or four. In Pitjantjatjara small songs this division internal to the text occurs only on particular types of songs and is common in children’s singing. The melodic contour is apportioned to these units so that movement may not proceed from one unit to the next until all of the text required to be performed therein has been sung. Errors in performance of texts are inexcusable: a process of returning to previous small songs and approaching the incorrect one is used until the text is presented perfectly.
In Aranda songs each couplet generally falls into two halves: the second half either reiterates or restates, in slightly different words, a subject already expressed by the first half, or it introduces a new thought or statement, thereby advancing or completing the subject that has been expressed by the first half. Frequently two or more couplets share a common line. Both quantitative and accentual rhythms and repetitive and antithetical expression are used, with many couplets intended to summon forth the ancestors and their magical powers for the benefit of the men who are the guardians of the ceremonial site.
Barwick’s work (Ellis and Barwick, 1989), based around Pitjantjatjara songs, examines the interlocking of moveable text structures with fixed melodic structures. She identifies what she terms a ‘point of fit’ in every small song: it is always marked by a melodic section boundary and by the beginning of the rhythmic-textual cycle or a text line pair, and usually but not always by a breath taken by all performers. A common practice is to place the opposite text line at the start of a small song when it is repeated immediately. This process of text line reversal shifts the interlocking of melody and text.
There are three separate, closely related aspects of melody: melodic shape, particular melodies and intervallic structure. Melodic shape is normally one of descent followed, after a breath, by a significant rise to further descent. Within this broad framework are the many different melodies used, each repeating different pivotal notes for different lengths of time (fig.8). Usually occurring in pairs, the pivotal tones can be separated by intervals from about a tone to an octave. Each melodic contour can be divided into sections marked by the coincidence of ascents in pitch with significant rhythmic and textual boundaries. There are differing systems for determining the length of time singers spend in any section of the melody: some are governed by the rhythmic unit, some by the duration of the text. It is likely that these systems are used in specific areas and/or for particular functions. The precise shape of the melodic contour depends on a number of factors, including the text type and the duration of the rhythmic pattern. It is the melodic movement towards firmly established pitch frequencies that constitutes the ‘flavour’ of the ancestor. Any melody can cross tribal and language barriers in tracing the ancestor’s travels.
As the basis of all melodic movement there are accepted generative intervals forming the series from which the various melodic choices are made. The system being uncovered in the songs is very different from anything reported from other musics throughout the world. Will and Ellis (1994) confirm that the complete tonal space of Pitjantjatjara songs is constituted by a set of consistently recurring frequencies, with some intervals as small as 2–6 Hz. Even common melodic elements such as glides and inflections are well-defined and consistent movements. Interval size does not change with shifts in absolute frequency, the same difference being found in different frequency ranges, while intonational variation in linear terms appears to be constant throughout the range of vocal activity. Small integer ratio intervals (3:4, 4:5 etc.) are only chance occurrences.
There is strong evidence to show that linear construction of melodies operates. For instance, in melodies with a range greater than an octave, the intervals above the octave of the final tone are linear transpositions of the corresponding intervals above this final tone. Again, in transpositions within songlines, groups of intervals around the main frequencies are transposed linearly (maintaining their frequency differences) as far as the non-equidistant tonal space allows. Furthermore, for six different songlines the differences between the final tone and the two adjacent frequencies were about 6 and 9 Hz for all songlines, although the frequency of the final tone changed from 95 to 155 Hz.
Musical practice indicates the existence of a general concept of octave identity: it is a well known and culturally accepted practice that under certain conditions, singers sing the same song or parts of it in octaves, indicating that performers are able to organize frequency production according to the ‘octave ratio’ of (about) 1:2. However, interval analysis shows that an octave equivalent in a melodic line exists only for the finalis (Will, 1995). All intervals in the upper ‘octave’ are linear shifts and not octave transpositions of their counterparts in the lower octave. With an average size of 1225·23 cents, however, the octave stretch is considerably larger than in Northern Australian songs accompanied by the didjeridu, or in Western music.
This different interval construction is the single most decisive factor preventing any easy adaptation of traditional desert region music in the face of mass media exposure to various European forms.
The most conspicuous feature of rhythm (and the one first performed by learners) is the beating song accompaniment. In Pitjantjatjara and Aranda song, regularly spaced beats are separated by three units of the basic pulse; e.g. if the shortest syllable length is notated as a quaver, the beating is in dotted crotchets. There are several variants (ex.4). Also found are beats separated by two, four or five units of the basic pulse. Beating form belongs with a particular text and is not varied in repeat performances of that text. Among the Pitjantjatjara, rapid beating produced by rattling a pair of boomerangs is intended to accompany the quivering of the dancers, but among the Pintubi it is used to show the leader’s dissatisfaction with the unison singing or accompaniment; occurring during the last few seconds of singing, it indicates the last item in one section of the ceremony. Performers report that they choose tempos by listening to their heartbeats, and stability of speed of beating suggests use of an external measuring device: Morais notes that there is a correlation between dance movements and beating accompaniment patterns (see Ellis, Barwick and Morais, 1990, p.130).
The Pintubi distinguish between beating accompaniment produced directly by the hands (i.e. hand-clapping, chest- and crotch-slapping), and that involving use of hand-held objects (i.e. pairs of boomerangs or sticks, or beating the ground with a single stick). They are considered integral to most song performance and are not found in non-musical situations. Beating also occurs in ‘songless sacred performances’ that feature occasionally in men’s secret rituals, the singers participating by beating a stone or shield on the ground. This beating is understood to be acoustic masking. Another form of acoustic masking results from the accentuation of the sung rhythm, which does not necessarily coincide with the placement of the beat. There is evidence that the two can be deliberately opposed to one another and that only at key points in the rhythmic cycle will the two coincide.
There may be different syllabic rhythmic settings of the one text, for instance, a slow setting using long terminal notes and a fast setting using the same length shorter notes as the slow version, but halving the duration of the longer notes. The text of a small song is given a rhythmic shape different from spoken stresses, which always place the accent on the first syllable of a word in Pitjantjatjara. An example of the spoken form of a children’s song text is shown underneath the sung form, which has the main stress on the first note of the bar, in ex.5. The masking of verbal information in this way is more deliberate in secret songs.
Text and rhythm are repeated until the melodic shape has been fully presented. Successive small songs in a long songline are interrelated through reference to several primary rhythmic patterns, and sections of the songline may be determined through their relationship to one rhythmic pattern that usually presents important textual information. Indeed, information from some performers indicates that where a language boundary has been crossed in the songline, the performers can decode the information content of the text by its rhythm. This is important considering that texts are often ambiguous or in languages other than that of the performer, and their interpretation is subject to various levels of meaning depending on the knowledge, age, sex and social standing of the recipient. Rhythm therefore serves a fundamental role in the songline, affecting its form, encoding information and assisting in appropriate unison performance.
Australia, §I, 2: Aboriginal music, Central Aboriginal music.
The larger scene of a performance encompasses song and ritual and includes an important role for the visual arts. The bodies and faces of actors are painted, and they may wear headdresses and other decorations. Ritual objects are also employed as symbolic expressions of the myth that is being re-enacted. Special songs must be sung during the preparation of the designs, and the power of the ancestor is only fully accessible when all elements of the music, dance and design are correctly and simultaneously presented. It can take many hours to prepare these visual representations, and singing takes place sporadically throughout the process. After the ceremony, any marks left on the ground, whether actual paintings or the tracks of the dancers, are destroyed. This is done both to preserve the secrecy of closed ceremonies and to protect individuals from the power inherent in the designs. Ellis (1985, p.73) supplies terminology related to the various aspects of design.
There are separate types of dance steps for men and women, and it is common for dance calls to occur during performances. Moyle (1979) notes that the pitch of women’s dance calls remains constant throughout each woman’s individual performance and is directly related to the tonic of the singing, which, for the women, is an octave above the men’s. These calls are considered ‘speaking’ rather than ‘singing’ and have specific placements within the performance.
Items that include dance in a ceremonial setting may be sung without the dance. When there are dancers present the singing must last for a longer period of time, and the repetition of the entire melody must take place without pause for as long as the dance lasts. In long dances, the singers may pause after three or more repeats of the melody to allow the dancers to rest briefly. At such times the dancers turn their painted designs away from the group of singers until the small song is recommenced.
Morais has done the most extensive work on desert region dance, and in some Andagarinja women’s secret ceremonies she identifies dance phrases consisting of repeated leg and arm movements, torso and head movements (or positions) and a locomotive pattern along the ceremonial ground. Dance motives are identified as an unrepeated total body movement and locomotive pattern; a smaller unit is basically a single movement pattern (or position) of the legs, arms or body, synchronized with the beating accompaniment. The smallest units of movement involve bodily extremities (e.g. fingers), and these too are linked with the smallest musical units. Ellis, Barwick and Morais (1990, pp.111–13) show how locomotion creates given types of tracks on the ceremonial ground and represent diagrammatically (pp.121–89) how the structural features of text, rhythm, melody and dance interlock. They indicate that the dances that occur informally (with the dancers undecorated) and painted closing dances are simpler in structure than the main painted dances. These use fewer body-part and locomotive patterns, few dance phrases, simpler choreographic patterns of sequences and simpler ground patterns.
In the complete performance there is an immense overlap of musical, textual and visual information, which is at times incomprehensible to the outsider. In one performance of a women’s secret ceremony (Ellis, 1970, pp.119–200) the dances with designs (each representing specific meanings) occurred in conjunction with rhythmic patterns and song texts that referred to quite different incidents in the myth. Small songs used for accompanying the painting of body designs contained rhythmic references to events in the story other than the events to be presented in the dance for which the design was being prepared, whereas the song text itself merely referred to women dancing. There was constant simultaneous cross-reference: at any one point the rhythmic construction might refer to one segment of the myth, design to another, portrayal of the dance to another and text content to yet another. Multi-dimensional description of a performance shows the intricacy of overlay of design, song text, melodic/intervallic structures and rhythmic pattern, which can only be suggested in fig.9.
Australia, §I, 2: Aboriginal music, Central Aboriginal music.
There has been comparatively little research done on innovative Central Aboriginal musical styles. These styles broadly occur in two different ways: the first involves retaining small songs within a larger songline but with the thematic content changed, for example to convey the Christian message; the second is where traditional concepts are maintained, but the songs are in English and use European musical forms, particularly rock music and country and western styles.
Recent events can be encompassed in newly-composed songs of a traditional nature, and in such songs can be found the aurally transmitted history of the past century. Subjects such as cars and aeroplanes are frequent in these songs, and objects such as shoes and tobacco tins have been utilized as beating implements. Intervallic structure of such songs is often recognizably more European, as is melodic movement and rhythm; however, melodic shape and ornamentation preserve some traditional characteristics.
The establishment of the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM) within the University of Adelaide in 1975 occurred at a time when Aboriginal peoples were seeking to get their message across to the Australian public; since then, rock music has been a particularly important vehicle of their protest. CASM students study both Pitjantjatjara music from senior song people and instrumental music and composition. Bands that have emerged through this centre include Coloured Stones, Us Mob and Kuckles, all with connections to the desert region.
The granting of the Northern Territory broadcasting licence to the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) enhanced the dissemination of Aboriginal performances, both traditional and contemporary, through radio, video and television. Other media groups have also contributed to this dissemination.
In 1988 Aboriginal rock musicians established a national Festival of Aboriginal Rock Music. Bands from the desert region who have become well known for their performances include the Warumpi Band, Isaac Yama and the Pitjantjatjara Band, Ayeronga Desert Tigers and Blakbela Mujic.
The south-eastern region of Australia comprises the southern parts of Queensland, the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, parts of south-eastern South Australia, and the island state of Tasmania. As this is the area where the most intensive settlement occurred, Aboriginal groups throughout this region have had a long, harsh history of European contact. Of all the Aboriginal peoples of Australia it is those of the south-eastern regions whose culture has been most devastated by that contact.
Throughout this region there are several natural features that traditionally acted as frontiers between Aboriginal groups. The mountains of the Great Dividing Range along the east coast made contact between the coastal and inland groups difficult. Further west, the Darling river can be seen as a boundary between the south-eastern and central regions of the continent. The area west of the Great Dividing Range and east of the Darling river comprises speakers of the related languages Kamilaroi (Gamilaraay) and Wiradjuri. In the south, the Murray river also defines a distinct cultural region comprising speakers of Yorta yorta, Wemba wemba, Yita yita and similar languages.
(i) Historical background and collections.
(ii) Corroboree and related genres.
(iii) Musical structure in performance.
Australia, §I, 3: Aboriginal music, South-eastern Aboriginal music.
In 1788 British colonization began in the Sydney area. European contact had a destructive impact on traditional culture, and as early as 1905 ceremonial activity throughout New South Wales was drawing to an end. As a result, by the time recording equipment became available, a large number of songs, rituals and even languages were no longer being regularly practised. Research relies on historical descriptions in conjunction with recordings that were made as part of a salvage operation involving collecting and contextualizing the remaining knowledge of a small number of older Aboriginal people.
There are many descriptions of Aboriginal ceremonies and rituals written by early travellers and explorers. The most notable of these are by A.W. Howitt and R.H. Mathews, who between them documented Aboriginal culture over almost 30 years in the late 19th century. Howitt includes musical notations of three songs from the Melbourne area in Victoria (Howitt, 1904, pp.419–21), whereas Mathews includes six songs associated with the Bunan initiation ceremony on the south coast of New South Wales (Mathews, 1907, pp.33–5). In assessing the reliability of these notations it should be borne in mind that they were made from live performance. There are also many drawings of dances and ceremonies that help piece together details concerning body design, headdress, musical instruments and dance in this earlier period (fig.10).
The sound archive of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), situated in Canberra, contains over 1000 traditional songs from south-eastern Australia. (The term ‘traditional’ is used here to describe songs that are modelled on pre-European forms albeit sometimes with European influences.) In 1899 the Royal Society of Tasmania recorded wax cylinders of songs sung by Fanny Cochrane Smith, who was born on Flinders Island. These have been discussed in detail by Alice Moyle (1960 and 1968) and are probably the earliest sound recordings from Australia, together with the Haddon recordings from the Torres Strait Islands. Both Elkin and Tindale made wax cylinder recordings in the 1930s, Elkin at Port Stephens on the central coast, and Tindale at Brewarrina (northern NSW) and Wallaga Lake (south coast of NSW). The remaining recordings were made from the 1950s onwards. Until the 1980s all recording was carried out by non-Aboriginal people, with the exception of Jimmie Barker of Brewarrina, a member of the Murawari group in northern New South Wales, who in the late 1960s and early 70s recorded his own knowledge of language, history-songs and other aspects of his culture. Most of the singers recorded represent one of the very few people in their respective communities who at the time of recording could still recover old songs, dances and other details from their fading memories of the past. Less than 10% of the recordings involve group singing or dancers. Early films of dance in this region are rare: one newsreel in the National Sound and Film Archive collection dates from 1931 (Queensland Abos Put on Their War Paint) and shows performers from Woodenbong singing and dancing; it is only five minutes in length and has been highly edited.
The AIATSIS collection contains few songs whose performance depend on associated ritual contexts, such as initiation songs, healing songs, increase songs and hunting songs. This is not surprising given that such songs have not been performed regularly for their original purpose since the early 1900s. Songs were performed for the specific purpose of recording, and often the singers were understandably diffident about singing. There are ten songs associated with initiation rites in the collection, of which half of these were recorded by Beckett at Wilcannia in 1957 and performed by George Dutton. Dutton, born in the 1880s, was initiated at 16 years of age; when ceremonial activity ceased in New South Wales he began to travel to Queensland and South Australia to attend the big ceremonies. By the 1930s Dutton was the only surviving ritual leader in New South Wales (Beckett, 1978, p.6). His performances recorded in the 1950s are exceptional, and it is a small number of such performances that represent ritual life in New South Wales in the recording collection.
Australia, §I, 3: Aboriginal music, South-eastern Aboriginal music.
The majority of recorded songs have been described by their performers as ‘corroboree songs’. The word ‘corroboree’ originally comes from the Dharuk language area, which became part of Sydney. It appeared in early word lists as ‘ca-rab-ba-ra’ (‘to dance’) and ‘car-rib-ber-re’ (a mode of dancing), as opposed to ‘gnar-ra-mang’, the name of a dance in William Dawe’s vocabulary list of 1788–91. One of the earliest accounts of a corroboree was written in 1793, when John Hunter described an Aboriginal performance he attended at Port Jackson in 1791, organized by two local Aborigines, Bennelong and Coalby (1793, p.213). Hunter states: They very frequently, at the conclusion of the dance, would apply to us for our opinions, or rather for marks of our approbation of their performance; which we never failed to give by often repeating the word boojery, which signifies good, or boojery caribberie, a good dance. These signs of pleasure in us seemed to give them great satisfaction, and generally produced more than ordinary exertions from the whole company of performers in the next dance. Although the word ‘corroboree’ appears originally to have referred to one specific type of dance, it is often used by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people throughout Australia to describe any Aboriginal performance involving song and dance. In the context of the AIATSIS collection the term usually refers to secular, occasional and informal performances.
It is clear that the term corroboree subsumes a number of different genres of song, many of which had specific names. In the Bundjalung area of northern New South Wales one of the generic terms it has replaced is yawahr, which originally referred to a specific type of open performance of song and dance in which men, women and children were able to participate. Other Bundjalung performance genres include burun, a song performed by men with a dance that involved shaking the chest, and djangar, a song and dance often called the ‘Leg corroboree’ or ‘Shake-a-leg’. This dance is also widespread in northern Queensland and the Cape York region (see §1(v) above). One popular genre of song among the Bundjalung is referred to as ‘Sing-You-Down’. These songs were used to control social behaviour in communities, and their stories are concerned with some type of unacceptable behaviour such as drinking and gambling. Two-Up is the best-known ‘Sing-You-Down’ song and was composed by the Bundjalung songman Jack Barron of Woodenbong. The song describes the gambling game ‘two-up’, in which two pennies are spun in the air and bets are laid on whether they fall heads or tails. This song has been recorded and is still remembered today throughout the Bundjalung area. It has also been recorded on the south coast of New South Wales.
Australia, §I, 3: Aboriginal music, South-eastern Aboriginal music.
The first detailed musicological research in south-eastern Australia was done by the linguist Tamsin Donaldson, who made a comparative study of a single song, the Lost Boy song, from the Ngiyampaa (Wangaaypuwan) area of western New South Wales. This song concerns the winter rescue of a lost boy by Aborigines and Europeans in the early 1930s.
Through analysis of several performances of the song, Donaldson concluded that a performance involves repeating sections of the song and hypothesized that the length of a performance might vary depending on the context of the performance. This type of expandable form depends on performers being able to signal their intentions: in the case of the Lost Boy song the signal is a melodic cueing pattern. The key word ‘thirramakaanhthi’ is sung with a descending melodic line if the performer is going to proceed directly from section 1 to section 2. If, however, the singer is going to repeat section 1, the word ‘thirramakaanhthi’, which appears at the end of the first line, will be sung with an upward leap in pitch (Donaldson, 1987, p.35).
Cueing devices similar to those found in the Ngiyampaa Lost Boy song also seem to exist to the north-east, in the Bundjalung area. One song, Mundala, a yawahr or corroboree song, was sung by men and women and included dance. Mundala was originally brought into the Bundjalung area from the Gungari area (near the New England area) by Bessie Comet, a Bundjalung woman who lived at Tabulam in the 1940s and 50s.
In the AIATSIS collection there are ten complete performances of Mundala sung by the prolific Bundjalung singer Dick Donnelly. On several occasions Donnelly stated that this was his favourite song and in 1977 actually taught this song to Willoughby and Oakes, who recorded the session. Analysis of these ten performances show melodic and textual devices that allow expansion and contraction of the song and that are similar to those discovered by Donaldson. Mundala comprises two sections of text, called mundala and gahmula. The first section, without the last line, may be repeated any number of times, while the second section is never repeated. The last line of each section begins with a rise in pitch, usually approximately a 7th, and is used by the singer to signal to the dancers that a change in the text is about to occur. Ex.6 is a transcription of a recording made by Malcolm Calley in 1955 in Woodenbong (AIATSIS LA 1178A (9)).
By comparing this recording with others it becomes evident that it is possible to change the way the text is articulated and therefore change the length of the performance. For example, in several recordings of this song the first section is repeated. When the singer is going to repeat this section, the last textual and melodic line is not sung, but once this line has been sung the singer must proceed to the next section. Section 2 is then sung one time only, and every performance returns and ends with section 1. The singing of the last line of each section thus appears to act as a musical cue; this device seems to correspond to the principle of altering the melodic contour of the word ‘thirramakaanhthi’ in the Ngiyampaa Lost Boy song to inform the dancers of the singer’s intentions.
From Donnelly’s descriptions it is apparent that Mundala comprises two different dance steps, which correspond to the two sections of text called mundala and gahmula. The dance was performed by men, women and children, and in any performance there could be as many as 24 dancers. In several performances, Donnelly stated ‘change step now’ after the first occurrence of the melodic cue and ‘change step again’ after its second occurrence, possibly indicating a change of direction.
Australia, §I, 3: Aboriginal music, South-eastern Aboriginal music.
Although singing is the predominant form of music in the region, clapsticks and boomerang clapsticks are often used by men (and occasionally by women) as an accompaniment. Throughout this region each language group had a different name for these instruments. In the Bundjalung area the clapsticks were called murunu or mundang and the boomerang clapsticks, bargan. It is not clear whether, as in other parts of Australia, there were specific occasions during which only boomerangs or clapsticks were used, or if they were interchangeable. It is clear, however, that other objects could be used in place of specific instruments. For example, in 1970 the Bundjalung singer Dick Donnelly left his clapsticks at home and so used a pair of hammer handles during a lecture tour around the New England area. These were so successful that they were used later when Donnelly was recorded; in another recording Donnelly substituted a tin can. This sort of substitution occurs frequently throughout Australia. Body percussion such as foot-stamping and hand-clapping is also commonly used.
The possum skin bundle, drum or pillow was played by women throughout south-eastern Australia, as well as north along the Queensland coast and as far west as Adelaide in South Australia. This was called bulbing in the Bundjalung area and comprised an opossum skin turned inside out, stuffed with feathers or rags and struck with the hand or a stick. It was held on the lap and beaten constantly throughout a song. In some regions, such as the Murawari area of western New South Wales, the pillow was made of kangaroo skin and stuffed with possum fur, and several people beat it simultaneously with their hands. The skin pillow was still being used in the early 1990s; later, as it became difficult to obtain possum skins, substitutions such as a rolled up blanket were made. In the Ngarrindjeri area near Adelaide, the pillow was still being used by women in 1951 on Hindmarsh Island during a re-enactment of the journeys of the explorer Charles Stuart (Bell, 1998, p.146). (In 1970 Jimmie Barker, a Murawari elder from northern New South Wales, recorded a performance of the skin drum; it is the only such recording in the AIATSIS archives.) Throughout this region clapsticks were played mainly by men. There were also instruments used specifically in initiation ceremonies and other ritual contexts, described in detail by Mathews (1907).
From the early 20th century onwards it was not uncommon for traditional Aboriginal performers to perform both Aboriginal and European songs and dances. In the early 20th century European dance music such as reels and barn dances were very popular among Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal musicians performed this music on Western instruments such as violins, piano accordions, mandolins and mouth organs. The gumleaf was also played at these dances as well as at corroborees.
Australia, §I, 3: Aboriginal music, South-eastern Aboriginal music.
Despite the long history of European assaults on traditional cultures throughout this region, there has recently been strong cultural revival activity. There are many cultural revival programmes, including Aboriginal language courses, Aboriginal traditional history, visual and performing arts courses. One such example concerns Bonalbo in the Bundjalung area, where in 1985 a non-Aboriginal teacher organized and arranged for a senior Bundjalung songman both to teach the schoolboys dances and to sing traditional songs while they danced. After some time, due to disagreements, the elder ceased teaching; the boys, however, decided to continue performing without a teacher, creating their own dances while two members of the group learnt the didjeridu, which was used instead of singing. The didjeridu was not traditionally found in this area of Australia, but it is now performed in a variety of contexts and is acknowledged as a symbol of Aboriginal culture and identity. It is in this spirit of revival and identity that many Aboriginal people have begun to document their own culture. For example, the film Eelemarni (1988) shows the northern New South Wales elder Millie Boyd discussing traditional stories and singing songs.
In addition to community initiatives focusing on cultural revival, there has also been intense activity in the popular music scene. Recordings of contemporary Aboriginal performers have increased dramatically. Aboriginal performers are active in country and western, rock music and Christian gospel groups. One prolific country and western singer, Dougie Young, composed songs in Wilcannia in the 1950s and is known for his reflections of the country town lives of Aborigines; the songs involved alcohol, encounters with the law and issues concerning Aboriginal identity. Since the 1950s there has been an increase in the popularity of country and western music, and the Tamworth Country Music Festival (the largest music festival of any kind in Australia) is attended by many Aboriginal performers, including Col Hardy, Troy Caser-Daley, Roger Knox and Euraba.
Another prominent singer-songwriter, Essie Coffey, was active in Brewarrina, northern New South Wales, from the 1970s until her death in 1998. She sang blues and rock but is most remembered as a film maker. Her first film, My Survival as an Aborigine (1978), featured the people of Dodge City, the Aboriginal community at Brewarrina, and won first prize in the documentary section of the 1979 Sydney Film Festival.
Recently, singers have emerged who perform songs with political themes. Kev Carmody, originally from southern Queensland, is a Sydney-based singer-songwriter who won the 1994 Australian Country Music Golden Awards ‘Heritage Song of the Year’ for From Little Things Big Things Grow, written with non-Aboriginal songwriter Paul Kelly about a protest in the pastoral industry. Another Melbourne-based singer-songwriter, Archie Roach, won the Australian Recording Industry Award (ARIA) for best indigenous album in 1991 for Charcoal Lane, which includes one of his best-known autobiographical songs, Took the Children Away, concerning the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents by government welfare officials in the 1960s. Many singers feature themes of cultural identity and reconciliation in their songs. The contemporary music scene in Melbourne has been researched extensively by Robin Ryan (1992 and 1994); for a comprehensive list of recordings by contemporary artists, see Dunbar-Hall (1996).
Within this urban context there are many dance groups, individuals and theatre companies that have developed successful international careers. Some offer training courses to indigenous people. In Sydney the Bangarra Dance Theatre comprises artists from all over Australia and performs unique modern songs and dances that draw on many contemporary Aboriginal traditions. Also in Sydney, the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA) performs works influenced by indigenous Australian cultures. There are also two major entrepreneurial agencies in Sydney that support and promote Aboriginal music and dance. The Aboriginal Artists Agency was founded in 1976 by the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council and acts as mediator and negotiator for Aboriginal artists in industries. The National Indigenous Arts Advocacy Association (NIAAA) advocates the recognition and protection of the rights of indigenous artists.
and other resources
Australia, §I: Art music: Bibliography
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C.R. Cox: Mumurrng Exchange Ceremony of the Kunwinjku (Gunwinggu) of North-Central Arnhem Land (Mmus thesis, U. of New South Wales, 1993)
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E. Mackinlay: For our Mother's Song we Sing: Yanyuwa Women Performers and Composers of A-nguyulnguyul (diss., U. of Adelaide, 1998)
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D. Mowaljarlai and T. Redmond: ‘David Mowaldjarlai Talks with Tony Redmond about the Origins of Dance and Song in the Ngarinyin World’, Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, ed. M. Neale and S. Kleinert (Melbourne, forthcoming)
Arnhem Land: Authentic Australian Aboriginal Songs and Dances, coll. A.P. Elkin, i-ii, OALP 7504–5; iii, OALP 7516 (1957); reissued as Larrikin CD LRH 288 (1993)
Arnhem Land Popular Classics: Aboriginal Dance Songs with Didjeridu Accompaniment, coll. L.M. West, Wattle Ethnic Series 3 (1962) [incl. disc notes by L.M. West]
Songs from the Northern Territory, coll. A. Moyle, i–v, IASM 001–005 (1964); reissued as Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies AIAS 1–5 CD
The Bora of the Pascoe River, Cape York Peninsula, Northeast Australia, coll. W. Laade, Ethnic Folkways LP FE-4211 (1975)
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Djambidj: An aboriginal Song Series from Northern Australia, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies AIAS 16 (1982) [incl. notes by M. Clunies Ross and S.A. Wild]
Song of Aboriginal Australia, coll. S.A. Wild, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies AIAS 17 (1987)
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Bushfire, coll. A. Cummins, Larrikin CDLRF247 (1991)
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Jadmi junba, Festival Australia (1999) [incl. notes by L.M. Barwick]
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Madarrpa Funeral at Gurka'wuy, videotape, dir. I. Dunlop, Film Australia (Sydney, 1979)
Waiting for Harry, videotape, dir. K. McKenzie, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (Canberra, 1980)
In Memory of Mawalan, videotape, dir. I. Dunlop, Film Australia (Sydney, 1983)
Bran NueDae, videotape, dir. T. Zubrycki with the Bran Nue Dae Corporation, Ronin Films (Sydney, 1991).
Australia, §I: Art music: Bibliography
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R. Ryan: ‘Tracing the Urban Songlines: Contemporary Koori Music in Melbourne’, Perfect Beat, ii/1 (1994), 20–37
K. Bradley: ‘Leaf Music in Australia’, Australian Aboriginal Studies (1995), no.2, pp.2–14
L. Barwick, A.Marett and G. Tunstill, eds.: The Essence of Singing and the Substance of Song: Recent Responses to the Aboriginal Performing Arts and other Essays in Honour of Catherine Ellis (Sydney, 1995) [incl. M. Gummow: ‘Songs and Sites/ Moving Mountains: a Study of One Song from Northern NSW’, 121–31; T. Donaldson: ‘Mixes of English and Ancestral Language Words in Southeastern Australia’, 143–58]
P. Dunbar-Hall: Discography of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Performers (Sydney, 1996)
National Indigenous Arts Advocacy Association Annual Report 1996 (Sydney, 1997)
K. Neuenfeldt, ed.: The Didjeridu: from Arnhem Land to Internet (Sydney, 1997) [incl. K. Carmody: ‘Ancient Voice, Contemporary Expression: the Didjeridu (Yidaki) and the Promotion of Aboriginal Rights’, 11–19]
D. Bell: Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: a World that is, Was and Will Be (Melbourne, 1998)
C. Gibson: ‘“We Sing Our Home, We Dance Our Land”: Indigenous Self-Determination and Contemporary Geopolitics in Australian Popular Music’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, xvi (1998), 163–84
My Survival as an Aboriginal, Australian Film Institute videotape, dir. E. Coffey (Sydney, 1978)
Eelemarni: the Story of Leo and Leva, prod. L. Mafi-Williams, Australian Film Institute videotape (Sydney, 1988)
Songs of Aboriginal Australia, coll. S. Wild, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies AIAS/17 (1988)
Pillars of Society, perf. K. Carmody, Larrikin CDLRF237 (1990)
Charcoal Lane, perf. A. Roach, Hightone Records HCD8037 (1992)
The Songs of Dougie Young, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and the National Library of Australia AIAS/19 (1994)
Australia, §II: Traditional Music
Aboriginal peoples, with many diverse languages, had, at the arrival of the first European settlers, developed text-driven musical traditions of much complexity and variety. Despite sympathy for Aboriginal identity on the part of the first British colonial governor, Arthur Phillip, and some other officials and earlier European settlers, in the tradition of the ‘noble savage’ concepts of the later 18th century, the richness of rhythmic and melodic elements in Aboriginal musics inevitably meant little or nothing to Europeans whose own music had tended, during the 17th and 18th centuries, to lose rhythmic and melodic subtlety in its development as a language governed by actual or implied harmonic progressions. Although well-wishing amateur and professional writers, naturalists and musicians showed a sporadic interest in notating (and sometimes harmonizing) Aboriginal songs during the first 50 years of European settlement, among them Barron Field, John Lhotsky and Isaac Nathan (1790–1864), gold rushes from 1851 onwards decisively ended any ideas that Australia might become either a moated domain for British convicts and their emancipated descendants or, in the view of a small number of idealists, a pastoral community in which indigenous and newly immigrant peoples might live together idyllically.
Anthropologists started using mechanical equipment from early in the 20th century to record and file examples of Aboriginal tribal musics. Ethnomusicologists began to study these examples after World War II and joined the anthropologists in using wire and tape recorders in more systematic attempts at stylistic definition and classification. Corroboree, an orchestral ballet score of major ambition and dimensions by John Antill (1904–86), first performed in 1946 in the format of an abbreviated suite, was the most notable attempt in the earlier 20th century to evoke the spirit of Aboriginal ceremonies in Western orchestral terms. Although it used to be said, plausibly, that Australian composers deriving from European and North American traditions had no more in common with Aboriginal music than they had with the music of any other non-European indigenous people, attempts to evoke the mood or memory of Aboriginal music or even to quote it to some degree have been a persistent element in the music of Peter Sculthorpe (b 1929), becoming stronger as his career extended, and have engaged the attention of other composers, including such diverse figures as George Dreyfus (b 1928) and Colin Bright (b 1949), as the movement towards some sort of reconciliation with Aboriginal Australia has gathered strength among non-Aboriginal Australians since the 1970s.
The first European music heard in Australia would have been whatever songs or dance tunes were performed by crews landed temporarily from Dutch ships from the earlier 17th century, from the visit of the British privateer William Dampier in the late 17th century, and from the ships of French and British explorers of the later 18th and early 19th centuries. Most of this music is unnamed, but it is on record that the French song Malbrouk was heard frequently at various landfalls in the Pacific at or near the time that the crews of the French explorer La Pérouse and of the First Fleet of Governor Phillip met and fraternized amiably at Botany Bay in January 1788. This tune was apparently learnt quickly by members of an Aboriginal tribe in what is now the Sydney region, showing – something that probably needed to be established at the time – that the musical sensibilities of Aboriginals and Europeans were not incompatible. The element in European music-making found to be inimical and frightening by Aboriginal Australians of that district was, it appears, the noisy beating of drums by naval and military bandsmen to mark the timing of daily routine in the infant colony.
The establishment of a first European settlement at Sydney Cove from 26 January 1788 coincided with the full flowering of the Viennese Classical style, a circumstance which inevitably meant that a settlement struggling to survive inappropriate farming methods and forms of stock mustering unsuited to a vast, unfenced frontier would not discover this music until much later in its history. Mozart’s composition of his final trio of symphonies in the summer of 1788 coincided with major concerns in the Sydney community for the straying of the colony’s precious cattle well beyond the confines of the existing settlement. It is, however, a matter of record that the surgeon of the flagship of the First Fleet, George Bouchir Worgan, a member of a prominent London musical family, took a fortepiano and a creditably antiquarian enthusiasm for the music of Domenico Scarlatti to the new colony.
A prevalence of fife and drum tunes and other, similar regimental music set a pattern of prominence in Australian colonial history for military ensembles and their bandmasters. Naval and regimental bandsmen, sometimes doubling on string instruments, later played for church services and Sydney’s first theatres as well as for all kinds of public ceremonies. Bandmasters wrote patriotic songs (The Trumpet Sounds Australia’s Fame dates, incongruously, from 1826), arranged popular tunes from opera and ballet as sets of quadrilles and composed waltzes, polkas and other dance music for wider public use until well into the second half of the 19th century. Convicts, forming a majority of the population of the first years of Sydney-based settlement, were sometimes encouraged to sing by humane surgeons and shipmasters during the long, dangerous voyages from Britain on the grounds that it improved their chances of survival. They were involved in 1796 in the first known performance of a late 18th-century English-type opera with spoken dialogue, William Shields’s The Poor Soldier. But much convict music-making would have consisted of whatever songs they brought in their memories, sometimes taking the form of disrespectful or vengeful parody. Moreton Bay, a song commemorating the savagery of life at the penal station of that name (now Brisbane), was set, for example, by an Irish convict to a traditional tune associated with the Irish song Youghal Harbour.
Australia, §II: Traditional Music
Formal music-making, apart from performances provided by bands and the important activity involved in the accompaniment of dances, consisted in early colonial times either of private soirées sponsored by military, governmental or wealthy private sources or of occasional public series of recitals given by non-professional musicians (sometimes described in accounts of the time as Gentlemen and Lady Amateurs) or by ad hoc groupings of professionals, such as the quartet concerts given in Sydney in the mid-1830s by Vincent Wallace (1812–65), the future composer of Maritana, and the recitals presented with other members of his family and that of John Phillip Deane (1796–1849).
Concert-giving organizations tended, inevitably, to replicate a structure that formed the backbone of British concert life, that of the choral society. This allowed associations of amateur choristers to keep musical enterprise firmly in their own hands and to assemble or hire orchestral groupings at will. They performed major works by Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart and others, as well as many lesser oratorios and cantatas, and seemed as fond as their counterparts in Britain of championing spuriously attributed works such as the ‘Twelfth Mass’ printed under Mozart’s name or ‘Locke’s Celebrated Music for Macbeth’. Each of the major centres – Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide – founded choral societies of this type. Their ethical self-belief existed in symbiosis with the establishment of Mechanics’ Institutes and Schools of Arts on the British model from the late 1830s (in Sydney) and with the influx of shiploads of young free settlers in the same decade, many of them zealous for education and self-improvement, under the aegis of a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. John Dunmore Lang. In the colony centred on Adelaide (now South Australia), which drew only on free settlers from its inception, groups of German immigrants, escaping from religious persecution, contributed a disposition to forming male choral groups modelled on the Liedertafel. The Liedertafel model spread to other colonies and took its place for many years alongside the British-type choral society. A member of the German immigrant community in South Australia, Carl Linger (1810–62), was one of the earliest European composers of professional competence to be active in Australia and won a prize in 1859 for setting words by Caroline Carleton, Song of Australia. This setting became a treasured part of South Australian traditions and was a candidate at one time for choice as Australia’s national song.
When Isaac Nathan, an ancestor of the Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, arrived in Sydney in 1841 with a reputation preceding him as the musician for whom Byron had written his Hebrew Melodies and who had set these verses for the first time, he apparently found more opportunities for professional musical activity in Sydney than in Melbourne. He became choirmaster of St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Sydney, a busy and expert teacher of singing with, to his credit, a treatise written and published in London on the subject that is increasingly cited as a source of early 19th-century practice and theory. He composed operas on the British model of short airs and spoken dialogue and produced in an opportunistic manner songs and scenas taking note of colonial events, one of them commemorating the presumed loss in the outback of the German-born explorer Ludwig Leichhardt during his first expedition and another Leichhardt’s subsequent and unexpected safe arrival after that expedition. Soon after, however, sustainable discoveries of gold in what is now the state of Victoria strongly outweighed those of the original colony of New South Wales. From the 1860s until at least the end of the first third of the 20th century, Melbourne outdistanced Sydney in musical cohesion and organization, financial and political strength and in appetite for concerts, opera and other forms of musical theatre.
It was historically appropriate that the singer known internationally as Melba (Helen Porter Mitchell, 1861–1931) was the daughter of a man who became wealthy through Melbourne’s late 19th-century building boom. She received her first instruction in the higher flights of singing from Pietro Cecchi (?1831–1897), a singer whose settlement in Melbourne as a performer and teacher followed his arrival in Melbourne in 1871 as part of a touring quartet of singers and his appearances with the extraordinary Lyster opera company. Melba was the most famous representative of several generations of young Australian musicians whose skills in musical performance were a means of winning international renown in a way directly comparable with the skills exhibited by young Australian sportsmen and women. In each case demonstrable skill and eagerness to succeed allowed these talented performers to bypass the idea that outstanding achievement at an international level rested on the maturation of a long, well-cultivated tradition.
After a vogue for productions of English-style operas or operatic adaptations in Sydney from the 1830s onwards, including the first original short work of ballad opera type (Edward Geoghegan’s The Currency Lass, Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney, 1844), the staging of operas now regarded as being in the standard repertory received an enormous boost with the start of the Australian gold rushes. Small touring companies or ensembles of soloists arrived from London or via touring schedules in North and South America. The most significant touring company of the mid-19th century was that formed and subsequently re-formed by an Irish entrepreneur, William Saurin Lyster (1827–80). His productions toured Australian cities for the best part of 20 years between 1861 and 1880, and played impressively extended seasons in Melbourne and to a lesser extent in Sydney. He introduced colonial audiences to a large repertory of new or relatively recent operas, among which Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots was one of the two most frequently performed works. In the late 1870s an American-born actor, James Cassius Williamson (1844–1913), began to tour the newest Gilbert and Sullivan operas and eventually became the principal agent of European touring opera companies within a regime (later taken over by the Tait brothers) that lasted under his name until the Sutherland-Williamson company of 1965. Many other entrepreneurs of opera competed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The rapid growth in population and economic activity prompted by the gold rushes coincided with the era of large-scale exhibitions modelled on the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851. Melbourne and Sydney, in particular, advertised their financial and cultural ambitions at a series of intercolonial and international exhibitions. This development reached its peak in the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition of 1888, which celebrated the first centenary of European settlement in Australia and included among its attractions a major series of large-scale concerts directed by the English composer and conductor Frederick Hymen Cowen (1852–1935). German and Italian musicians, such as Cesare Cutolo, Paolo Giorza and August W. Juncker, who arrived in Australia to direct touring operas and other musical theatre pieces, contributed cantatas, anthems, marches and other music to the programme of large-scale colonial exhibitions or to local recital and concert programmes. New pieces of patriotic music were produced for anniversaries of settlement, for developments in Australian city and country life and to mark Australia’s involvement in foreign wars. The French music critic and writer Oscar Comettant (1819–98), a musical juror for the 1888 Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne, recorded his belief in his book Au pays des kangourous et des mines d’or (Paris, 1890) that Australia had taken the cult of the parlour piano to lengths beyond those evident even in 19th-century Europe, estimating – perhaps wildly – that this newly colonized country contained 700,000 pianos at the time. He found it irksome as a Frenchman that so many of the pianos lodged in modest city and country houses and in isolated cabins and huts were of German manufacture.
The idea that excellence in public music-making belonged exclusively to the traditions of the choral society or the opera company began to change in Australia in the later 19th century, under the influence of the renown enjoyed in Europe and North America by orchestral and chamber music of the Viennese Classical and Austro-German Romantic schools. The decision of a number of young Australian musicians, including Percy Grainger (1882–1961), to study in Germany in the later years of the century was a symptom of this shift of emphasis. Its potency is memorably recorded in a novel of student life and ambition in Germany, Maurice Guest, written by a young Australian musician who studied in Leipzig in the late 1880s and published the novel under the pen name of Henry Handel Richardson. A Melbourne-born composer, Alfred Hill (1870–1960), was among the other Leipzig students, playing in the Gewandhaus orchestra under the baton of such musicians as Brahms and Bruch. A talented and impressionable musician, Hill responded to these experiences by composing with the vocabulary of his Leipzig years until halfway through the 20th century, writing (for example) a gypsy finale in a viola concerto that postdated Brahms and Bruch by half a century or more. Grainger, who once shocked his German mentors by proposing to study Chinese music, was one of the most interesting contributors to discussion on what might constitute a distinctively Australian music, suggesting at various times that it might exhibit a deliberate monotony (reflecting the long spans of Australian landscape, in contrast to the segmented nature of European topography and much of its music); become a clearing-house of Pacific, Asian and Aboriginal styles; engage by natural inclination in wistful sentimentality on the model of music in other pioneering countries (cf Stephen Foster in the USA); be democratically equal in its part-writing and happy-go-lucky in its assignment of voices and instruments; or show an affinity, because of its origins in a predominantly warm climate, for broad Italianate dynamic shading and Italianate vocal and instrumental timbres. Henry Tate (1873–1926), a Melbourne musician and writer, suggested in nationalistic pamphlets published in 1917 and 1924 that recognizably Australian music might grow partly from instruction in Aboriginal music in schools, but more instinctively from sensitivity to the riches of melodic inflection and rhythm in Australian birdsong (in which he claimed to distinguish a ‘liberty-loving’ preference for the major third) and the breeze-induced sighing of the bush.
A local result of the unprecedented prestige of Austro-German orchestral music was a new emphasis on the need to establish symphonic ensembles independent of the orchestral elements in oratorio and opera. Melbourne, typically at this time, took the lead in this movement. Melbourne University’s first Ormond professor of music, an English musician named G.W.L. Marshall-Hall (1862–1915), directed a newly assembled orchestra with enormous flair in the 1890s at the same time as he scandalized Melbourne society with the Nietzschean sentiments of his published verses. Sir James Barrett, an enthusiastic associate of Marshall-Hall’s orchestral activities, was able to assume with breath-taking narrowness of outlook, in recalling that period from the vantage point of 1940, that the ‘history of music in Melbourne really resolves itself into the history of orchestral music, as no great work can be performed satisfactorily without the assistance of a competent orchestra’.
Australia, §II: Traditional Music
Similar beliefs were to animate the benevolently despotic centralism of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (now Corporation) in the 1930s when it set about establishing, as part of a policy that might be described as orchestral imperialism, core instrumental ensembles of symphonic ambitions in each of the Australian state capitals on a permanent basis. The choice facing the ABC at the time was whether to bring together, as many competent musicians advised, a national orchestra of unusual merit or to risk the dilution of quality that would probably follow the establishment of permanent orchestras or orchestral nuclei in each of the six State capitals. There is little doubt that the decision to recognize State loyalties and to establish orchestras in all capital cities, however inadequate the musical result in some centres, was the right one. Each capital city developed its own subscription series of professional orchestral concerts and came to see this activity as a continuing part of its musical life rather than an occasional touring treat.
A profusion of choral societies and a marked sense of enterprise in some of them were characteristics of Australian music-making in the first third of the 20th century. Their independent enterprise tended to diminish as soon as the ABC began to take a lead in the programming of choral-orchestral concerts in the mid-1930s and to choose one major choral group in each capital city as the continuing associate of its local orchestra for public and broadcast performances. This was also a period when the ABC followed the example of Reith’s BBC in establishing other, supplementary performing groups, including a number of small professional vocal ensembles, a dance band and a military band. The ABC’s charter allowed it to go beyond broadcasting music where it felt that creative musical enterprise of its own was required to fill gaps in the nation’s musical regime. An ABC triumvirate that took vigorous advantage of this provision consisted of Sir Charles Moses, as ABC general manager, Professor (later Sir) Bernard Heinze (1894–1982) as its initial musical director-general, later musical adviser and principal resident conductor, and W.G. James (1895–1977), a pianist and composer who became the organization’s first federal director of music. Heinze successfully proposed and promoted youth concerts, schools concerts and a concerto competition that served as a model for an annual national contest. When the ABC’s orchestral network was re-formed after World War II with improved funding from state and municipal sources as well as from the ABC, the identification of public music-making on a large scale with the ABC’s subscription concerts was almost complete. Most solo instrumentalists and singers who toured Australia, particularly in the years following World War II, fulfilled an elaborate schedule of ABC appearances and broadcasts, to the point at which singers and instrumentalists who toured for any other organization (unless they were very famous indeed) had some difficulty in not being regarded in the public mind as second-raters. The ABC’s subscription concerts rapidly grew multiple series in the larger capitals, particularly in Sydney. Sydney benefited from its position as the headquarters of the ABC and as a capital city now growing faster than Melbourne. Its continuing position as the biggest market for the sale of tickets for orchestral, chamber and solo concerts and (a little later) for opera dates from this period.
Melba took part in several tours of her homeland, including in her enterprises major operatic seasons (1911, 1924, 1928) under the combined banner of the J.C. Williamson organization and the singer herself. The remarkable 1912–13 tours of the company assembled by the Irish promoter Thomas Quinlan (solo singers, chorus of up to 70 members, permanent orchestra of up to 65 players with a reported augmentation to 100 for Die Meistersinger, stage and music staff, 365 tons of scenery and costumes) presented, in English, the first Australian stagings of Wagner’s later masterpieces, including (in 1913) three cycles of the Ring; this initiative was not followed up until a further three complete cycles were presented in Adelaide in 1998, 85 years later. Opera in Australia, with its dependence on sporadic tours, was to take far longer than orchestral concert-giving to find sustainable resident bases. Gertrude Johnson’s National Theatre Movement in Melbourne (beginning its work in 1935) and Clarice Lorenz’s National Opera of Australia in Sydney (from 1951) were gallant organizations that became important in the years immediately after World War II, incidentally demonstrating that touring opera of any adequacy in Australia was particularly unlikely to survive without subsidy because of the country’s vast distances and the related costs of touring. Opera became one of the charges of an inadequately funded Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT). The Sydney-based opera company established by the AETT, usually known as the Elizabethan Trust Opera, began annual touring seasons in 1956, occasionally losing continuity during financial crises and dwindling into near-inaudibility during the year (1965) of the Sutherland-Williamson tour, but gradually evolving a viable schedule and drawing back to regular Australian appearances some of the many Australian and New Zealand singers who had made operatic careers abroad, particularly in London. It became independent of the Elizabethan Trust in 1970, retitling itself as the Australian Opera and, more recently, after its absorption of the former Melbourne-based Victorian State Opera, as Opera Australia. Regional opera organizations, usually consisting of administrative and artistic staff who plan seasons and recruit singers on an ad hoc basis, operated with varying degrees of vigour and regularity in all States and increasingly shared production costs through an opera conference.
Jazz achieved considerable popularity in Australia from the 1920s, leading to the formation of large numbers of local groups and, in due course, to sustained and (briefly) international careers for Graeme Bell (1935–75) and his colleagues in traditionally orientated ensembles; to local versions of bop; and to syntheses of several styles by Don Burrows and others. Country (‘hillbilly’) music, complete in many instances with imitation US accents copied from recorded and broadcast sources, established from the 1930s its own continuing circuit of widely admired performers (among them Tex Morton, Buddy Williams, Smoky Dawson and Slim Dusty) and was accepted by many Australians in rural areas and by many Aboriginal Australians as a completely naturalized form of music. The influence of the British-American blackface minstrel tradition, which had become popular from at least the 1840s onwards and had influenced a number of well-known traditional songs of pastoral life, reasserted its popularity in the years during and after World War I and led to the composition of a large number of songs imitating the conventional nostalgia of wanderers returning to their hometown surroundings with a backdrop suggestive of a southern US milieu and US-style expressions of endearment. Some songs born of this deliberately borrowed idiom, notably Jack O’Hagan’s The Road to Gundagai, became for a couple of generations more widely accepted as truly Australian than any other music, including the song Waltzing Matilda. Post-World War II rock found its first noted exponent in Johnny O’Keefe and, as in many countries, developed in the course of time local variants which enjoyed international renown in the hands of such groups as AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Dire Straits and INXS (see also §III, 2 below).
One of the many active jazz players in Australia before World War II was a Melbourne musician named Banks, whose jazz-playing son, Don Banks (1923–80), became an accomplished concert-hall and film composer, basing himself in London for much of his career before returning to Australia in the 1970s to take on onerous offical positions, in which he was able to help raise professional standards in composition among a newer generation of young practitioners. Other Australian composers who made careers abroad at a time when Australian society was very inhospitable to any creative ambition in music (beyond the composition of patriotic songs and teaching pieces) included Arthur Benjamin (1893–1960, in London) and Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912–90, in New York). Composers of notable talent who attempted to pursue their métier in their own country had a difficult path to follow, as the career of Margaret Sutherland (1897–1984) illustrates. John Antill, submerged for much of his career in ABC staff duties, might have been thought likely to become the Australian Copland on the strength of his Corroboree, but in much of his other music he sank into a conventionality that had something in common with the practice of his teacher, Alfred Hill.
Dorian Le Gallienne (1915–63), a teacher at Melbourne University Conservatorium and a music critic, was the most convincing symphonist of the years immediately after World War II, despite a long and taxing struggle with ill health. A new generation of Australian composers began to make itself felt in the late 1950s and early 60s, led by Peter Sculthorpe, Richard Meale (b 1932), Nigel Butterley (b 1935), George Dreyfus, Felix Werder (b 1922), Larry Sitsky (b 1934) and others, with some temporarily or permanently expatriate figures such as David Lumsdaine (b 1931), Keith Humble (1927–95) and Malcolm Williamson (b 1931) being added retrospectively to their number. Their activities helped to secure purposeful official funding for composition and an esteem that meant that ambitious and adventurous creativeness in music would be tallied along with comparable activities in writing and visual art among the creditable achievements of Australian society. Women composers, among them Alison Bauld (b 1944), Anne Boyd (b 1946), the New Zealand-born Gillian Whitehead (b 1941), Moya Henderson (b 1941), Jennifer Fowler (b 1939), Sarah Hopkins (b 1958), Elena Kats-Chernin (b 1957) and Liza Lim (b 1966), have figured prominently among younger generations of Australian musical creators, alongside such colleagues as Brenton Broadstock (b 1952), Gerard Brophy (b 1953), Barry Conyngham (b 1944), Ross Edwards (b 1943), Riccardo Formosa (b 1954), Elliott Gyger (b 1968), Graham Hair (b 1943), Brian Howard (b 1951), Gordon Kerry (b 1961), Graham John Koehne (b 1956), Bozidar Kos (b 1934 in Slovenia but beginning his formal training and compositional career after his arrival in Australia in 1965), Richard Mills (b 1949), Andrew Schultz (b 1960), Michael Smetanin (b 1958), Carl Vine (b 1954), Martin Wesley-Smith (b 1945) and Nigel Westlake (b 1958). Julian Jing-Jun Yu (b 1957, Chinese by birth and earlier musical education), Roger Smalley and Andrew Ford (b 1943 and 1957 respectively, both of them English by birth and training) are among the relatively recent arrivals within a long list of fully equipped creative musicians who have become Australian by choice, enriching their adopted country in the process.
See also Adelaide; Brisbane; Canberra; Melbourne; Perth; and Sydney.
H. Tate: Australian Music Resources: some Suggestions (Melbourne, 1917)
H. Tate: Australian Musical Possibilities (Melbourne, 1924)
I. Moresby: Australia Makes Music (Sydney, 1948)
W.A. Orchard: Music in Australia: More than 150 Years of Development (Melbourne, 1952)
W.A. Carne: A Century of Harmony: the Official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society (Melbourne, 1954)
R. Covell: Australia’s Music: Themes of a New Society (Melbourne, 1967)
A. McCredie: Catalogue of 46 Australian Composers (Canberra, 1969)
A. McCredie: Musical Composition in Australia (Canberra, 1969)
J. Murdoch: Australia’s Contemporary Composers (Melbourne, 1972)
R. Covell, ed.: E. Geoghegan: the Currency Lass (Sydney, 1976)
F. Callaway and D.Tunley, eds.: Australian Composition in the Twentieth Century (Melbourne, 1978)
H. Love: The Golden Age of Australian Opera: W.S. Lyster and his Companies, 1861–1880 (Sydney, 1981)
G.A. Baker, ed.: Australian Made: Gonna Have a Good Time Tonight (Sydney, 1987)
B. Johnson: The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz (Melbourne, 1987)
C. Spencer and Z.Nowara: Who’s Who of Australian Rock (Knoxfield, Victoria, 1987, 4/1996)
J. Jenkins: 22 Contemporary Australian Composers (Melbourne, 1988)
M. Atherton: Australian Made, Australian Played: Handcrafted Musical Instruments from Didjeridu to Synthesiser (Sydney, 1990)
A. Gyger: Opera for the Antipodes … 1881–1939 (Sydney, 1990)
B. Broadstock, ed.: Sound Ideas: Australian Composers Born since 1950 (Sydney, 1995)
N. Brown and others: One Hand on the Manuscript: Music in Australian Cultural History 1930–1960 (Canberra, 1995)
N. Saintilan, A.Schultz and P. Stanhope: Biographical Directory of Australian Composers (Sydney, 1996)
W. Bebbington, ed.: The Oxford Companion to Australian Music (Melbourne, 1997)
1. 19th and early 20th centuries.
Australia, §III: Popular immigrant musics
The first European settlement group of convicts and their overseers brought with them the rural and urban music cultures of late 18th-century England and Ireland, including ballads and popular theatrical songs. Vernacular performance of this transplanted music continued in informal and domestic settings, along with songs with localized texts in similar styles. Composition and performance of topical ballads by convicts, often on anti-authority themes, was noted from the first decades of settlement. Several songs of the Irish convict Frank Macnamara, written between 1830 and 1850 in Irish prosodic forms with long lines, achieved wide currency and were orally circulated into the mid-20th century, the best known being his convict’s lament Moreton Bay. Other locally composed songs of colonial experience were printed in early newspapers as verse with a nominated air, which was frequently a popular theatrical air, a traditional melody or songs composed in the style of Irish or Scottish melodies.
Such songs were most often performed as unaccompanied narrative singing and retained their popularity as part of domestic and small-scale community performance into the 20th century, particularly in rural areas with little access to commercial public entertainment. The few contemporary descriptions of early performance practice indicate relatively slow delivery and mannerisms such as the spoken delivery of the last half-line; such features show little variation from parallel British and Irish traditional singing styles. Diatonic and gapped scales and occasional modal pitch ambiguities are sometimes found in melodies collected in the early 20th century. The four-line, 14-syllable ‘come-all-ye’ song form with its family of ABBA tunes (often truncated to a two-line AB) was frequently used, particularly for outlaw ballads that continued the convict tradition and were often based on Irish song styles and models.
The population boom of the goldrushes that began from 1853 was accompanied by the opening of many theatres and other entertainment venues on the goldfield settlements and in metropolitan centres. The theatrical entertainer Charles Thatcher wrote and performed many topical goldfield songs to enthusiastic audiences. Minstrel shows toured frequently and provided influential models of popular performance and repertory. In urban centres, music-hall and vaudeville circuits developed. Amateur performance also included the urban middle-class parlour ballad and performance on the upright piano; in a society where rapid social and class transitions were common, these public symbols of musical respectability and competence were broadly spread.
Professional entertainment styles influenced vernacular performance and composition, though older ballad styles continued. The rural, pastoral labour force grew in size and self-confidence in the late 19th century, its shearers and other workers creating many songs that documented and celebrated their life. A selection of these were published by the literary ballad collector A.B. Paterson in Old Bush Songs in 1905; other items continued in fairly marginal oral performance, and some were collected in the 1950s. These became the central canon of the Australian folksong revival of the 1950s, including such songs as The Old Bark Hut, The Wild Colonial Boy, The Banks of the Condamine and Waltzing Matilda.
Music for social dance has been one of the most important types of vernacular music-making in Australia. The great expansion of public dancing in the 19th century, especially of closed couple dances such as waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and varsoviennes, along with quadrilles, influenced rural and traditional musicians. Solo hornpipe-style step-dancing, often competitive, was also popular. Musicians, particularly in rural regions, usually did not read music and tended to play traditional tunes or modified versions of published music that were learnt orally; the modulation and thematic development found in notated dance music was modified to the simpler alternating binary structures of traditional dance music. Tunes to accompany these dances can still be found among older Australian rural players.
The most popular instruments during this period were the single-action free-reed aerophones: the button accordion, the mouth organ and the Anglo-German concertina. Fiddle players were also common, playing the instrument in styles similar to those of British and American traditional fiddlers, using the first position and open strings. Tone was often thin and light, and ornamentation limited to a few upper grace notes and pitch slides, both up and down. Pianos were also incorporated when available.
Most musical forms were integrated into patterns of community entertainment. For more marginal immigrant groups, the construction of community required entertainment to be linked to more explicitly emblematic music. Cantonese opera troupes (with both overseas and local performers) toured the goldfields from 1858 to 1870, performing exclusively to their compatriots and often meeting with racist opposition from European miners. German emigrants, who constituted about 2% of the population, tended to be concentrated in several regions. In some areas of Southern Queensland their distinctive local dance-music culture survived into the 20th century. The German band, a small brass and reed ensemble favoured by street performers and a common feature of British musical life of the mid-19th century, also had a strong presence in public instrumental music in Australia. In the second half of the 19th century, urban middle-class Germans often formed Liedertafel groups, dedicated to organized amateur solo and group singing of German song and later, other music. These were generally suppressed in the anti-German feeling during World War I.
Irish immigrants made up about 25% of settler Australia. They were mainly Catholic, and because of sectarian and cultural prejudices maintained a certain distinctiveness, using music as a means of marking and expressing their identity. Irish language and its songs did not survive in Australia; public performances emphasized bourgeois song forms such as those of Thomas Moore and sentimental songs of exile, some of which were composed and published locally. Step-dancing and its associated music was practised, and with the growth of cultural nationalism in Ireland in the late 19th century, it rose in emblematic status.
By contrast, Scottish immigrants in many cases occupied a dominant place in the economy and had less reason to maintain group cohesion. Nonetheless, pipe bands and Scottish dancing have been widely followed in Australia, supported by the Victorian fashion for tartanry and by the Presbyterian establishment. Pipe bands were frequently associated with public and quasi-military organizations, and a strong branch of the dominion piping movement developed in Australia in the 20th century.
The introduction of sound recording from the beginning of the 20th century, followed by radio in the 1920s, gave Australians greater access to new musical styles and diminished the need for domestic entertainment. It also led to new, commercially disseminated styles influenced by aural and untutored musical practices.
In the 1930s the recordings of American hillbilly performers such as the Carter family, Jimmie Rodgers and singing cowboys such as Wilf Carter seized the imagination of many Australians. Local performers Tex Morton, Buddy Williams and later many others started to perform in this style and to compose local songs with rural and sentimental themes. Based mainly on American styles, these songs also incorporated features of the vernacular ballad, comic song and especially the lyrical themes of the ‘bush ballad’ poets of the late 19th century such as A.B. Paterson and Henry Lawson. Morton, Williams and others established an indigenous form of country music, emphasizing solo, guitar-accompanied performance, yodelling and localized lyrics. Through radio, recording and vigorous touring with travelling circuses, rodeos and agricultural shows, such performers established a strong relationship with sections of the Australian rural population.
Australia, §III: Popular immigrant musics
The period since 1945 has brought major changes to Australian society and to musical behaviour. American-produced popular culture genres extended their dominance; television was introduced in 1956 and increased its social reach over the next decade; and a vigorous programme of immigration was instituted in the late 1940s, involving Britain, Ireland, other European countries and, in the 1970s, Asian countries, bringing new cultural and musical forms to Australia.
Recordings of popular dance bands and vocalists were popular from the 1930s, and in the 1940s intellectual fans focused on jazz as an alliance of art music and folk music. After the war, performers such as Graham Bell led the popular movement for traditional New Orleans-style jazz involving younger radical fans. This movement and its interpretation was the first manifestation of a distanced, intellectualized engagement with popular culture, which later influenced the reception of traditional music forms in the folk movement. In contrast, country music also grew vigorously in the first decade after the war and developed a rural and urban working-class fan base. Venues for urban performance opened in the outer suburbs of Sydney, and new recording companies formed. Singers such as Slim Dusty toured continuously through rural Australia and gathered a large and durable following for the music.
Popular music was utterly changed by the arrival of rock and roll, television and 45 r.p.m. recording in the mid-1950s. As the new youth popular music market was created, Australian performers in the new rock and popular styles emerged, such as Johnny O’Keefe and Col Joye. Overseas musical models dominated; some styles, such as ‘surf music’, had a particular attraction for local performers and audiences in the early 1960s.
The Beatles and their immense popularity stimulated a second generation of young popular musicians. Many of the most enthusiastic and successful of these were British post-war migrants who were able to utilize their cultural connections to the new sounds. However, although a group like the Easybeats had short-lived international success, Australian performers in a Euro-American centred music industry could achieve only provincial and marginal status.
In the early 1970s, supported by the new counter-cultural audiences of a young intelligentsia, rock groups with a more specific local focus rose to prominence alongside independent recording companies (such as Mushroom records). Brash local themes and social styles of performance emerged, often emphasizing youthful bohemian hedonism. As this localized style (comparable with many national rock musics emergent in the 1970s) used an international musical idiom, the existence of a distinctive ‘Australian sound’ was frequently called into question. Some commentators have signalled the importance of venues and institutions rather than musical techniques in the creation of this music. In 1978 the growing number of new performance venues in large suburban pubs led to the ‘pub-rock’ or ‘oz-rock’ movement, predominantly hard rock presented to a male working-class audience, sometimes with localized lyrics, typified by the group Cold Chisel. Experience within this scene was often pointed to as part of the international success of such bands as Men at Work, Australian Crawl and INXS in the 1980s.
Dance music based in recording production rather than on performance became more prominent in the 1980s, and the increased significance of dance-based musical consumption, both collective and individual, devalued the image of pub-rock. Guitar bands, identified as alternative and anti-establishment, typically amateur and performing in smaller pub venues, also reacted against the hyper-masculine, aggressive and aging image of pub-rock.
An Australian folk music movement formed in the 1950s, paralleling similar movements in Britain and America. Radical intellectuals turned to the cultural forms associated with the 1890s to stress the centrality of the 19th-century, male, rural working class in the formation of the national type and ideal. A folk movement formed, collecting and performing the songs identified with this group, recovered from oral tradition and published by collectors such as John Meredith and John Streeter Manifold. By the early 1960s this movement was incorporated in the international boom in popular folk music, and a circuit of clubs formed that attracted a young, tentatively bohemian but largely middle-class following. Coffee-lounge folk venues opened, and semi-professional and full-time folksingers performed self-composed, traditional British, American and black American songs alongside songs collected from old Australian rural singers, usually with guitar accompaniment. This movement was strongly tied to the anti-war movement and espoused a liberal cosmopolitanism that supplanted the nationalism of the early part of the revival.
Much of the folk movement’s following was eroded by the massive impact of the Beatles-led revolution in popular music, but a core of fans and performers remained. Many folk performers and organizers were British migrants of the 1960s and early 70s, and the model of the British pub-based folk club became dominant. Partly as a reaction to the purist attitude to performance and style in this scene, groups with a less intellectualized style of performing Australian traditional songs developed. These ‘bush bands’ used a Folk-rock approach, with strongly rhythmic arrangements of Australian vernacular ballads mixed with Irish dance music and its characteristic instrumentation.
From the 1960s the country music movement had included performers espousing images of ‘cultural authenticity’ popularized by the radical, nationalist folk movement (but emphasizing nostalgia), as well as performers seeking an audience drawn to the styles of American country music. In the 1980s and 90s, perhaps as a reaction to social change and new public and media interests in national identity, performers such as John Williamson and Lee Kernaghan gave explicitly Australian material new popularity. Bush bands, by then less favoured in the folk movement, were welcomed at country music festivals, such as that held annually at Tamworth, New South Wales.
The post-war Australian migration programme brought migrants from northern, then southern and eastern Europe and the Middle East. From the late 1970s South-east Asian refugees began to arrive, followed by other Asian migrants. This has led to the establishment of immigrant communities in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and a few other cities. Such groups (which in the first stages of southern-European migration included a large proportion of rural migrants) often form social and religious organizations and small entertainment businesses that are culture specific. Music plays a part in many of these community organizations, which often engage immigrant musicians skilled in traditional styles. Genres as diverse as Greek regional dance music, Serbian epic singing and South American harp music have been performed in contexts ranging from individual homes to metropolitan concert halls. Family-based celebrations such as weddings, baptisms and circumcisions, as well as religious calendric events celebrated by regional associations, often provide opportunities for music ensembles, particularly dance bands. Cultural maintenance organizations were formed by communities from the 1960s, promoting nationally sanctioned folkloric styles; regional popular music and especially collective folkdance to second-generation groups. Song composition in some traditional styles also takes place: Parkhill (1983) documents and analyses such items as a Cretan rizitika on the subject of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis and an Arabic zajal epic on an Australian football final.
In the mid-1970s Australian national cultural policies shifted from migrant assimilation to cultural pluralism under the rubric of multiculturalism. Under this policy some traditional immigrant musicians and their musical style gained occasional public prominence and access to government assistance. A small network of publicly funded and community-based media outlets for ethnic minorities was developed. Local government-funded community events, as well as larger, nationally orientated cultural showcases promoted representatives of ‘multicultural Australia’. Significant numbers of Anglo-Australian musicians were inspired by the existence of these forms in their midst, and some began exploring other styles. In the 1970s and 80s these musicians often collaborated with second-generation minority musicians, many of whom were inspired by overseas developments such as the Latin American nuevo canción and Greek retro-rebetika (see Rebetika) movements.
Styles such as Texas swing or Cajun music also became popular in the 1970s, expanding in the 1990s to forms of African pop and Latin American and Balkan styles. The musicians involved and their networks sometimes developed from the folk movement and sometimes from the more intellectual fringes of the rock music scene. The growing numbers of young students from Asian countries in the 1990s often favour their own regional popular musics, forming bands playing Thai pop, bhangra or Malay heavy metal, sometimes with deliberate local inflections. These styles are, however, marginal. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation presents many immigrant musics in a number of radio programmes as part of its charter to represent national cultural diversity. It has also strongly fostered Australian country music through its subsidiary, ABC recordings.
and other resources
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J.S. Manifold: Who Wrote the Ballads? (Sydney, 1964)
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H.M. Anderson: The Story of Australian Folk Song (Melbourne, 1970 [3rd edn of Colonial Ballads])
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P. Parkhill: ‘Two Folk Epics from Melbourne’, Meanjin, xlii (1983), 120–39
G. Smith: ‘Making Folk Music’, Meanjin, xliv (1985), 477–90
L. Barwick: ‘Italian Traditional Music in Australia’, Australian Folklore, i (1987), 44–67
M. Breen, ed.: Missing in Action: Australian Popular Music in Perspective, i (Melbourne, 1987)
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