Maintaining song traditions and languages together at Warruwi (western Arnhem Land (original) (raw)

2017, Recirculating songs: revitalising the singing practices of Indigenous Australia

As Indigenous musicians, language activists, scholars, educators, and others from around Australia undertake a variety of approaches in their efforts to revitalise song and language, in this chapter we provide a snapshot of the situation in Warruwi community, western Arnhem Land. Here, sustaining the local performance tradition of manyardi ceremonies and songs relies on maintaining diversity, and the task of documenting both linguistic and musical diversity has relied on intercultural collaboration and an interdisciplinary approach. Warruwi is a highly multilingual community where multiple small languages are still being spoken, and individually-owned song-sets (distinct repertories of songs) continue to be performed in public ceremony and passed on to children. In this chapter, we suggest that it is the maintenance of this diversity of languages and songs – rather than just maintaining individual languages or song-sets – which is highly valued by the community. For over a decade, a team of linguists, musicologists, Indigenous ceremony holders and educators has been working together on aspects of language and song at Warruwi. This collaboration has produced new insights into the social practices and ideologies that underpin the creation and maintenance of linguistic and musical diversity, and has led to the documentation of new expressions, particularly in the Mawng language. Interdisciplinary research on manyardi has expanded the documentation of lexical resources, such as patterns of polysemy and idiomatic expressions, and contributed to a more complex understanding of the meanings expressed through music and dance. From the perspective of David and Jenny Manmurulu – ceremony holders and educators for the Inyjalarrku (mermaid) song-set – this collaborative research has reinforced the ways in which performing manyardi not only expresses important aspects of their language, but also has the potential to unite the ancestral past with the future, as they draw on spirits of the country, while teaching the next generation to carry on singing and dancing.