AustLit

'Warlpiri songs hold together the ceremonies that structure and bind social relationships, and encode detailed information about Warlpiri country, cosmology and kinship. Today, only a small group of the oldest generations has full knowledge of ceremonial songs and their associated meanings, and there is widespread concern about the transmission of these songs to future generations.

'While musical and cultural change is normal, threats to attrition driven by large-scale external forces including sedentarisation and modernisation put strain on the systems of social relationships that have sustained Warlpiri cultures for millennia. Despite these concerns, songs remain key to Warlpiri identity and cultural heritage.

'Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs draws together insights from senior Warlpiri singers and custodians of these song traditions, profiling a number of senior singers and their views of the changes that they have witnessed over their lifetimes. The chapters in this book are written by Warlpiri custodians in collaboration with researchers who have worked in Warlpiri communities over the last five decades.

'Spanning interdisciplinary perspectives including musicology, linguistics, anthropology, cultural studies, dance ethnography and gender studies, chapters range from documentation of well-known and large-scale Warlpiri ceremonies, to detailed analysis of smaller-scale public rituals and the motivations behind newer innovative forms of ceremonial expression.

'Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs ultimately uncovers the complexity entailed in maintaining the vital components of classical Warlpiri singing practices and the deep desires that Warlpiri people have to maintain this important element of their cultural identity into the future.' (Publication summary)

'Warlpiri women, as with other groups across Indigenous Australia, sing to sustain and nurture their relationships with Country and jukurrpa (dreamings). For the custodians of these singing traditions, spiritual agency and power are consigned to songs and their singers, and performances are centred around nurturing relational links between people with Country and to other participants. Within contemporary contexts, in which Warlpiri singers are finding fewer opportunities to perform and pass on songs, new performance spaces are being created to continue to carry forward the significant cultural work of maintaining social and spiritual order through song. In this article we consider a number of performance instances of Warlpiri women's yawulyu (ceremonial songs) and discuss the inter—group dynamics and negotiations which are central to these events. We explore the ways in which Warlpiri women are continuing the cultural work of maintaining the relational aspects central to yawulyu through these performances despite shifting purposes and performance contexts. We illustrate through examples from contemporary events, how the dynamics of the particular performance instances involving ceremonial songs, dances, and other activities, direct the ways in which participants assert and reshape their intimate links to Country and to broader social networks of others.' (Publication abstract)

'As an ethnography of Central Australian singing traditions and ceremonial contexts, this book asks questions about the vitality of the cultural knowledge and practices highly valued by Warlpiri people and fundamental to their cultural heritage. Set against a discussion of the contemporary vitality of Aboriginal musical traditions in Australia and embedded in the historical background of this region, the book lays out the features of Warlpiri songs and ceremonies, and centers on a focal case study of the Warlpiri Kurdiji ceremony to illustrate the modes in which core cultural themes are being passed on through song to future generations.'  (Publication summary)

'This paper explores issues around the representation of Indigenous cultural property, voices and images in two books of Warlpiri women's yawulyu song traditions that form part of a series published by Batchelor Press (Gallagher, C.N., et al., 2014. Jardiwanpa Yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu. Batchelor: Batchelor Press and Warlpiri Women from Yuendumu. 2017. Yurntumu-wardingki juju-ngaliya-kurlangu yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu [with Accompanying DVD]. Batchelor: Batchelor Press). These publications stem from collaborations between Indigenous knowledge holders and non-Indigenous researchers and involve long-term relationships between the team members. We draw out discussion of the motivations for making these books, and the agency within these intercultural teams, considering the colonising impact of academic research, the intercultural dimensions to Indigenous identities and the role of publications such as these in repatriation and reparation efforts. We demonstrate how Warlpiri women have directed the production processes and surrounding events so that these books not only represent forms of Warlpiri cultural knowledge but also contribute to the dynamic forms of cultural reproduction that ensure continued engagement with these song traditions into the future.'  (Publication abstract)

'Luise Hercus has always had a keen interest in Australian Aboriginal songs and collaborated with musicologists both in the field and in her analysis. Her examination of lyrics and the relationship between songs and the people who sing them encompasses a vast area of Australia. Her work on songs from the ‘Corner Country’ reveal performance as a culmination of social exchange, and her examination of the lyrics reveal Aboriginal people’s detailed knowledge of country (Beckett & Hercus 2009). Her work in the Simpson Desert region documents songs with ancestral themes as well as contemporary events (Hercus & Koch 1996, 1999; Hercus 1994: 91–101; 1995). In many parts of Australia where knowledge of Aboriginal languages is scarce, Hercus’s work on songs provides vital clues to the history, language and culture of such regions (Hercus 1992, 1997). Her linguistic documentation of Wemba Wemba in Victoria (Hercus 1969) finds songs that relate to the gender based totems of this area. How songs reflect and reproduce the beliefs, cultural practices and experiences of the people who sing them is a theme of Luise Hercus’ work that is explored in this paper.' (Introduction)

Beckett & Hercus (2009) present several ‘versions’ of a mura track narrative as told by five different senior Aboriginal people from the ‘Corner Country’ area where New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland come together. Mura track narratives, as Beckett & Hercus (2009: 2) explain, detail: ‘the travelling of ancestral beings also called mura – occasionally human but more often anthropomorphic animal – who form the country and name it as they go’, a concept similar to the Central Australian concept of the Dreaming (tjukurrpa in the Western Desert language). They show that the storytellers present individualised but nonetheless connected versions of these narratives that together produce a broader understanding of the story and demonstrate clear interconnections between the different but associated groups of people and their country.'  (Introduction)

'“Yawulyu have been passed down through many generations of Walpiri women. In this book, the juju-ngaliya ‘ritual experts’ from Yuendumu, present four yawulyu song series which follow the journeys of a number of ancestral beings across Walpiri country. … The book provides rhythms, sung words, translations and accompanying stories of 64 songs, alongside audio-links and photographs of the women in performance. The accompanying DVD contains footage of women from Yuendumu painting their bodies with red and white ochres and performing the four yawulyu song series and their associated dances. The juju-ngaliya of Yuendumu intend this book to be a new way to pass on these yawulyu to future generations of Walpiri women.”' (Publication summary)

'Angenty is a sacred waterhole in Anmatyerr and Warlpiri country, to the north of Alice Springs in Central Australia. This book is about a family visit to this place. Men, women and children camped in the riverbed and the elders told stories about the ancestral spirits of this country. ' (Source: Publishers website)

'The book presents 38 songs from the Jardiwanpa song line, which traverses Warlpiri country from south to north. It passes through three major dreamings, Yarripiri ‘Snake’, Yankirri “Emu’ and Ngurlu ‘Seed’. Owners from each of these ritual groups spoke at the launch, about the importance and value of the Jardiwanpa songs.' (Source: Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education website)