Artfully hidden: Text and rhythm in a central Australian aboriginal song series’

Musicology Australia

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 93-108

  Turpin, Myfany ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85011128842     PISSN: 08145857     EISSN: 1949453X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2007.10416590     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. Peter Austin, ‘A Grammar of the Diyan Language of North-east South Australia’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, 1978);
2. R. M. W. Dixon and Grace Koch, DyirbalSong Poetry. The Oral Literature of an Australian Rainforest People (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996);
3. Tamsin Donaldson ‘Translating Oral Literature: Aboriginal Song Texts’, Aboriginal History 3 (1979), 62-8;
4. Ken Hale, ‘Remarks on Creativity in Aboriginal Verse’, in Jamie C. Kassler and Jill Stubington (eds), Problems and Solutions. Occasional Essays in Musicology Presented to Alice M Moyle (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1984), 254-62
5. Luise Hercus and Grace Koch '"Wire Yard": A Song from near Lake Eyre’, Aboriginal History 23 (1999), 72-82
6. Guy Tunstill ‘Learning Pitjantjatjara Songs’, in Linda Barwick, Allan Marett and Guy 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: University of Sydney [Oceania Monograph 46] 1995), 59-74;
7. T. G. H. Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia (Sydney. Angus and Robertson, 1971).
8. These are Lysbeth Ford, ‘Marri Ngarr Lirrga Songs: A Linguistic Analysis’, Musicology Australia 28 (2005-6), 26-58
9. Murray Garde, ‘The Language of Kun-borrk in Western Arnhem Land’, Musicology Australia 28 (2005-6), 59-89.
10. Previous researchers have also noted the existence of metrical requirements in Aboriginal songs. For example R. M. W. Dixon, ‘Dyirbal Song Types: A Preliminary Report’, in Kassler and Stubington (eds), Problems and Solutions, 219-23;
11. Allan Marett, Songs, Dreamings and Ghosts The Enactment ofAncestral Precedent in the Wangga of North Australia (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2005)
12. for example, Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1983)
13. Nigel Fabb, Language and Literary Structure-The Linguistic Analysis of Form in Verse and Narrative (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 2002).
14. Nigel Fabb, Literary Umversals Project. Poetics. 24 July 2004 http://htup.unipa.it/docs/poetics.htm. Last accessed 21 February 2006
15. Liberman: Language Log. An internet pilgrim’s guide to accentual-syllabic verse. 6 July 2004. http://itre.cis.upennedu/-myl/languagelog/archives/001172.html. Last accessed 21 February 2006. When there are no rules for setting words to the poetic or musical genre then the genre is said to be non-metrical
16. See, for example, Richard Moyle, Songs of the Pintupi: Musical Life in a Central Australian Community (Canberra. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1979), 95
17. Linda Barwick, ‘Central Australian Women’s Ritual Music: Knowing through Analysis versus Knowing through Performance’, Yearbook for Traditional Music 22 (1990), 173-81;
18. R. M. W. Dixon, ‘Dyirbal Song Types’, Allan Marett, Songs, Dreamings and Ghosts
19. For a discussion of what constitutes a word in the closely related language Arrernte, see John Henderson ‘The Word in Eastern/Central Arrernte’, in R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds), Word A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 100-24.
20. This family includes the currently spoken languages Arrernte, Alyawarr, Anmatyerr and Kaytetye, and various dialects of these languages. These, and other Arandic languages no longer spoken, are discussed by Gavan Breen in ‘The Wonders of Arandic phonology’, in Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin and Barry Alpher (eds), Forty Years On. Ken Hale and Australian Languages (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics Series, 2001), 45-69.
21. For a discussion of Alyawarr awelye ceremonies see Richard Moyle, Alyawarra Music Songs and Society in a Central Australian Community (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1986)
22. Various yawulyu ceremonies are described by Diane Bell, Daughters of the Dreaming 3rd ed. (North Melbourne: Spimfex Press, 2002)
23. Francoise Dussart, The Politics of Ritual in an Aboriginal Settlement Kinship, Gender, and the Currency of Knowledge (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000).
24. A ‘song series’ is what Strehlow refers to as a ‘song’ in Songs of Central Australia and what Ellis and Barwick refer to as a ‘songlme’ in ‘Musical syntax and the Problem of Meaning in a Central Australian Songlme’, Musicology Australia 10 (1987), 41-57. This is similar to what Garde (in volume 28 of this journal) calls a ‘song set’, however songs in a song set do not have a set order. I retain the term ‘song series’ for Akwelye songs as some songs tend to be performed together.
25. I use the term ‘small song’ to refer to a sequence of song items with the same text, following Ellis, Barwick and Morais in ‘Overlapping Time Structures in a Central Australian Women’s Ceremony’ in R. M W. Dixon, Peter Austin, Tom Dutton and Isobel White (eds), Language and History: Essays in Honour of Luise A Hercus (Canberra: Australian National University: Pacific Linguistics, 1990), 101-36.
26. See John Henderson, ‘Topics in Eastern and Central Arrernte Grammar’ (PhD diss, University of Western Australia, 1998), 201ff, 268ff, 102.
27. Gavan Breen and Rob Pensalfini, ‘Arrernte. A Language with No Syllable Onsets’, Linguistic Inquiry 30 (1999), 1-25
28. Harold Koch, ‘Pama-Nyungan Reflexes in the Arandic languages’, in Darrell Tryon and Michael Walsh (eds), Boundary Rider Studies in Honour of Geoffrey N O’Grady (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1997), 271-302.
29. The pervasiveness of this structure across Central Australia is noted by Linda Barwick, Allan Marett, Margaret Gummow and Helen Payne, ‘Aboriginal Traditions’, in John Whiteoak and Aline Scott-Maxwell (eds), Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia (Sydney: Currency House, 2003), 26.
30. Catherine Ellis, A. M. Ellis, Mon Tur and Anthony McCardell, ‘Classification of Sounds in Pitjantjatjara-Speaking Area,' in L.A. Hiatt (ed.), Australian Aboriginal Concepts (Canberra and New Jersey: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and Humanities Press, 1978), 68-80
31. Linda Barwick, ‘Creative (ir)regularities-The intermeshing of Text and Melody in Performance of Central Australian Song’, Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (1989), 12-28.
32. Here I follow Cath Ellis’s use of the term ‘rhythmic cell’ to refer to the smallest recurring rhythmic unit in Pitjantjatjara songs in Aboriginal Music Education for Living. Cross-Cultural Experiences from South Australia (St Lucia-University of Queensland Press, 1985), 93.
33. see Myfany Turpin ‘Form and Meaning of Akwelye’ (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2005), 146.
34. There are various treatments of vowel initial words to form consonant initial text lines in song. See T. G. H. Strehlow ‘Ankotarinja, An Aranda Myth’, Oceania 4 (1933), 197
35. Hale, ‘Remarks on Creativity in Aboriginal Verse’.
36. See, for example, Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia, 89;
37. Peter Sutton ‘Mystery and Change’, in Margaret Clumes Ross, Tamsin Donaldson and Stephen Wild (eds), Songs of Aboriginal Australia (Sydney: University of Sydney [Oceania Publications], 1987), 77-96.
38. Myfany Turpin and Alison Ross, Kaytetye Picture Dictionary (Alice Springs, NT: IAD Press, 2004), 174.
39. For a discussion of rounding in Arandic languages see Gavan Breen, ‘The Wonders of Arandic phonology’, 49.
40. Linda Barwick ‘Creative (ir)regularities’, 13.