Research Publications and Outputs

Songs and the Deep Present

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Songs and the Deep Present Barwick, Linda This chapter contributes to frameworks for understanding the deep human past by considering how expansion of attention to the present, through performance among other practices, can change one’s awareness of self in relation to the world in all its aspects. In particular, through close attention to repetition phenomena in one Warlpiri women’s ceremonial song, I explore how nonlinear temporal structures in music may contribute to time “collapse”—that is, how “Indigenous embodied practices for knowing, remembering and re-enacting the past in the present blur the distinctions between time, making all history ‘now.’” Even though past performances may have left few or no traces in the material record, I suggest that musical performance and cognition have operated and continue to operate as integral and deeply embedded components within an interplay of multiple interacting and socially negotiated responses to the world.

Mirrwana and wurrkama: applying an Indigenous knowledge framework to collaborative research on ceremonies

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Mirrwana and wurrkama: applying an Indigenous knowledge framework to collaborative research on ceremonies Ford, Payi Linda; Barwick, Linda; Marett, Allan This chapter outlines how Ford, Barwick and Marett have collaborated to develop, implement, and critically evaluate a research project that integrates and remains true to both Indigenous and western academic knowledge systems. The context is the ceremonies of the Tyikim people from remote, rural and urban areas in the Wagait-Daly region of the Top End of Northern Territory, and in particular, the series of ceremonies that followed the death of Ford’s mother in 2007. We outline the processes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaboration that underpinned the performance and documentation of the ceremonies and, more specifically, how this process can be seen through the Indigenous knowledge framework mirrwana-wurrkama, developed by Ford based on her family’s traditional cycad nut processing practices.

Sharing and storing digital cultural records in Central Australian Indigenous communities

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Sharing and storing digital cultural records in Central Australian Indigenous communities Vaarzon-Morel, Petronella; Barwick, Linda; Green, Jennifer This article considers how Indigenous peoples in Central Australia share and keep digital records of events and cultural knowledge in a period of rapid technological change. To date, research has focused upon the development of digital archives and platforms that reflect Indigenous epistemologies and incorporation of protocols governing access to information. Yet there is scant research on how individuals with little access to such media share and hold—or not, as the case may be—digital cultural information. After surveying current enabling infrastructures in Central Australia, we examine how materials are held and shared when people do not have easy access to databases and the Internet. We analyze examples of practices of sharing materials to draw out issues that arise in managing storage and circulation of cultural records via Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drives, mobile phones, and other devices. We consider how the affordances of various platforms support, extend, and/or challenge Indigenous socialities and ontologies.

Disciplining music: Too many Peter Sculthorpes?

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Disciplining music: Too many Peter Sculthorpes? Harris, Amanda Representing Australian Aboriginal Music and Dance 1930-1970 offers a rethinking of recent Australian music history. Amanda Harris presents accounts of Aboriginal music and dance by Aboriginal performers on public stages. Harris also historicizes the practices of non-Indigenous art music composers evoking Aboriginal music in their works, placing this in the context of emerging cultural institutions and policy frameworks. Centralizing auditory worlds and audio-visual evidence, Harris shows the direct relationship between the limits on Aboriginal people's mobility and non-Indigenous representations of Aboriginal culture. This book seeks to listen to Aboriginal accounts of disruption and continuation of Aboriginal cultural practices and features contributions from Aboriginal scholars Shannon Foster, Tiriki Onus and Nardi Simpson as personal interpretations of their family and community histories. Contextualizing recent music and dance practices in broader histories of policy, settler colonial structures, and postcolonizing efforts, the book offers a new lens on the development of Australian musical cultures. Contents: 1. Staging Assimilation: Too Many John Antills? Prelude, Mungari Buldyan – Song for my Grandfather by Shannon Foster 2. 1930s – Performing Cultures: Navigating Protection, Responding to Assimilation 3. 1940s – Reclaiming an Indigenous Identity 4. 1950s – Jubilee Celebrations, Protest and National Cultural Institutions Interlude by Tiriki Onus 5. 1960-67 – Aboriginal Performance Takes the Main Stage 6. 1967-1970 – The End of Assimilation? 7. Disciplining Music: Too Many Peter Sculthorpes? Coda by Nardi Simpson https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/representing-australian-aboriginal-music-and-dance-1930-1970-9781501362934/

Pan-Indigenous Encounter in the 1950s: ‘Ethnic Dancer’ Beth Dean

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Pan-Indigenous Encounter in the 1950s: ‘Ethnic Dancer’ Beth Dean Harris, Amanda From 1950, ‘ethnic dancer’ Beth Dean made her living on a lecture-demonstration touring circuit of the dance traditions of Australia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and North America. To assert her expertise, she claimed to have studied Māori and Australian Aboriginal cultures for a number of years. This article investigates how Dean’s didactic performances drew on American traditions of ethnic dance to present apparently authoritative representations of Indigenous cultures, supported by Adult Education Boards in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia and national arts organisations. I argue that Dean exploited the symbolic potential of ‘corroboree’ as a performance of intercultural communication to establish her authority to speak about and perform Australian Aboriginal dance.

Variation or contamination? Narrative instability in the Italian traditional song Donna lombarda

Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMT

Variation or contamination? Narrative instability in the Italian traditional song Donna lombarda Barwick, Linda This paper arises out of my doctoral research (Barwick 1985), which examined a large sample of documented versions of the Italian traditional narrative song (or 'ballad', to adopt the term by which such strophic narrative songs are generally known elsewhere in Europe), Donna lombarda (Nigra 1). In this sample of 479 , 120 of which were accompanied by musical information, no two versions were exactly alike . It became increasingly clear to me in the course of my research that neither melodic, musical, formulaic nor narrative analysis would yield a stable definition of the song; indeed, such detailed analysis forced me to confront the impossibility of reducing the song to a neat abstraction of any kind . Instead of talking of the 'song' Donna lombarda, I suggested we should rather discuss it as a 'song tradition'. The overall picture of narrative change given by the examination of narrative variation in the Italian versions of Donna lombarda supports a view of the song tradition as an inherently unstable process that can no more be defined in terms of a particular plot than in terms of a particular textual or melodic realisation; rather it is a temporal process, whose realisation is contingent upon the conditions of its performance. What are some of the implications of this perspective for consideration of the interaction of one song tradition with another, in other words, for the consideration of what has been in the past conceived as 'contamination' of two (presumably pure) essential songs? I will approach this point via a brief demonstration of the inherent instability of the narrative of the Donna lombarda song tradition as revealed in the documents analysed.

Women as performers and agents of change in the Italian ballad tradition

Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMT

Women as performers and agents of change in the Italian ballad tradition Barwick, Linda What is lost when performances of orally-transmitted traditional songs are transcribed and published as written documents? This question arose for me as a result of the lack of connection I found between my experiences as a performer of Italian traditional songs and the ways in which the subject was treated by academic folklorists, among others, whose analyses tended to be centred in the content of the written documents. In particular, the concern of the written academic tradition with the "problem" of variation seemed to presuppose that staticity was normal, and yet my experience as a performer was that the unfolding of each performance in a unique context led inevitably to differences in the details. And all those differences were explainable in experiential terms; for example, I might sing in a different key depending on the current state of my voice, or I might leave out part of a song because I felt uncomfortable with the performance situation, or because I was singing with other people who knew a different version of the song. I came to believe that the reason academics expected uniformity between performances was related to the normality of exact reproduction inthe print media, and that in order to understand variation in the documents of an orally transmitted performance tradition it was necessary to ground the analysis in an awareness of the actual conditions of performance of the songs: even though the particular experiences that would explain the form of each document are no longer accessible, an awareness of the types of experience affecting performance seemed to me to lead to very different ways of interpreting and approaching the documents as a body of data. In particular, the written documents could no longer be seen as self-sufficient items of information, but rather represented a series of incomplete records of random moments in the continuing process of performance within an otherwise unwritten oral tradition .

Transcription as deflowering: collection practices in Italy, pre-1939

Sat, 01 Sep 2153 00:00:00 GMT

Transcription as deflowering: collection practices in Italy, pre-1939 Barwick, Linda This paper focuses on the interaction between transcribers and performers of traditional songs before the ready availability of sound recording. What acts did the collectors perform to produce the written documents that are our only record of performance traditions of that time? How did they represent this activity to themselves and others? Although the purposes for which these documents were made may be no longer relevant, exploring how they were shaped by the historical context of their collection may enable contemporary researchers to revalidate an often rejected resource, as well as reminding us that our own work is shaped by similar forces.

Reconfiguring relational personhood among Lander Warlpiri

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Reconfiguring relational personhood among Lander Warlpiri Vaarzon-Morel, Petronella In recent years many Indigenous communities in central Australia have undergone multiple dramatic changes. Responses to the resulting tensions, conflicts and anxiety illuminate local understandings of personhood. Drawing on long term ethnographic fieldwork with Lander Warlpiri/Anmatyerr Willowra (Northern Territory), this paper discusses how relatedness (involving social obligations and reciprocity) among particular categories of persons was understood and maintained during the 1970s, comparing this with the contemporary period, in which considerable conflict between previously united families has occurred. It considers the implications of these differences for notions of personhood, taking into account the altered material conditions in which people live today, changes in practices such as marriage arrangements and ritual, shifting notions of “property”, and embodied relations to land. Local cultural understandings of relational being are explored through analysis of a myth that was publicly performed by a senior male and recorded by young media trainees, with the intent that the younger generation reflect upon what it is to be a person in Warlpiri/Anmatyerr society today.

Continuity and Change in Warlpiri Practices of Marking the Landscape

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Continuity and Change in Warlpiri Practices of Marking the Landscape Vaarzon-Morel, Petronella Warlpiri people of Central Australia have served on a number of occasions as exemplars of the Derridean premise that no society is without writing (Derrida 1976: 109) (e.g. Rothenberg and Rothenberg 1983: 139; Biddle 2002). The debate about the reasoning behind this proposition is outside the scope of my interests here. Nonetheless, it is certainly helpful to have a term, such as “writing”, that groups together the various kinds of practices that Warlpiri engage in to give visual form to their understanding of the world. Earlier work has focused on such aspects of Warlpiri visual communicative practices as sand drawings, body and ground designs, and sacred objects (e.g. Munn 1974); contemporary acrylic paintings (e.g. Dussart 1999); and gesture language (e.g. Kendon 1988). Building on the voluminous literature on marking of the Australian landscape by ancestral Dreaming beings (e.g. Meggitt 1986; Myers 1986; Munn 1974; Langton 2000), more recent work among Warlpiri and their neighbours has explored the issue of inscription of the landscape in relation to the domain of women’s ritual and artistic practice (Biddle 2002; Watson 2003). The purpose of the present contribution is to extend the discussion of the marking of landscape. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, this chapter explores how, when and why Warlpiri Aboriginal people in Central Australia mark the landscapes within which they live. Attending to continuities in people’s socio-cultural practices through time, I also consider the relationship between ancestral and contemporary practices of marking landscape, through which people imbue place with meaning and manage space.

Alien relations: Ecological and Ontological Dilemmas Posed for Indigenous Australians in the Management of “Feral” Camels on their Lands

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Alien relations: Ecological and Ontological Dilemmas Posed for Indigenous Australians in the Management of “Feral” Camels on their Lands Vaarzon-Morel, Petronella The colonization of indigenous people and their lands typically involved the introduction of domesticated species integral to the development of settler economies. These animals were bound up with European social and ontological understandings that were profoundly different to those of the peoples being colonized—in particular, notions of the human–animal divide. In central Australia, Indigenous people have responded to introduced animals variously with fear, resistance, openness, creativity and resilience. In doing so, they have had to negotiate incommensurable differences and disjunctions, involving the nature of the animals themselves and the “pastoral” relations Europeans have with these animals compared to Indigenous people’s totemically based relations with native animals.1 Now, irrevocably entangled, they have to re-negotiate their relations with domesticated animals such as camels, which have become free-ranging and are increasing in number on their land. The management of these animals creates tensions and dilemmas for people who want to maintain proper relationships with their country and the other-than- human constituents who inhabit it. This chapter addresses the situation in regard to camels in central Australia, focusing on Aboriginal people who adopted camels for use as transport. It considers the conflicts and challenges people face in reconciling their responsibilities toward beings to whom they are ancestrally related with their responsibilities toward camels, with whom they have a shared history and whose cosmological significance has shifted with the adoption of Christianity. I argue that the choices people make have implications not only for other entities in their environment, but also for the people themselves and for their relational ontologies.

“Bilingual time” at Willowra: The beginnings of a community-initiated program, 1976-1977

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

“Bilingual time” at Willowra: The beginnings of a community-initiated program, 1976-1977 Vaarzon-Morel, Petronella; Wafer, Jim Formal schooling began at the Warlpiri-speaking community of Willowra, in north-western Central Australia, in 1968. When the present authors arrived at the school in 1976, to take up positions as the new teachers, many adults spoke An- matyerr in addition to Warlpiri, and also “station English”, which they had learnt while working in the pastoral industry. Few younger children spoke English, but were expected to learn to read and write it at the school, which was still something of a foreign country for them and their families. The educational material provided was largely irrelevant to them, and little printed matter existed outside of the school, with only a few Warlpiri adults able to read it. People’s understandings of the meaning of school derived from visible, pedagogic practices characteristic of mainstream schools; for example, children were required to wear uniforms, sit at desks and learn to write using pencils. Yet, despite the alien nature of school, the community came to embrace it, transforming its relevance and role in their lives through the introduction of a Warlpiri-English bilingual program. In this chapter we review “bilingual time” (as it is remembered at Willowra) in the years we spent there in 1976-1977, when the bilingual program was introduced. We set our narrative in the context of policy conflicts that eventually led to the dismantling of the program in the early 2000s, and consider the advantages of the short-lived pol- icy environment in which we operated, which was school-based and community- oriented.

Central Australian Women’s Traditional Music: Yawulyu/Awelye. Indigenous Music Case Study Report for the Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures Project. Revised Version.

Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Central Australian Women’s Traditional Music: Yawulyu/Awelye. Indigenous Music Case Study Report for the Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures Project. Revised Version. Barwick, Linda; Turpin, Myfany This report concerns yawulyu/awelye, an important ceremonial genre of traditional songs performed by women in Central Australia. Drawing on extensive published literature, our fieldwork in the area over many years, and a series of interviews we conducted as part of the Sustainable Futures Project, we discuss various issues and ideas concerning the sustainability of the tradition. "Sustainable futures for music cultures: Towards an ecology of musical diversity" seeks to identify key factors in musical sustainability and to make this knowledge available to counteract the risk of decline and loss of music cultures. Centring on nine in-depth studies from both vibrant and endangered music cultures across the globe, Sustainable futures aims to deliver a model to empower communities to build musical futures on their own terms. A chapter drawing on this report was published as: Barwick, Linda, and Myfany Turpin. “Central Australian Women’s Traditional Songs: Keeping Yawulyu/Awelye Strong.” In Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures, edited by Huib Schippers and Catherine Grant, 111–44. Oxford University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190259075.003.0005. Supported by the Australian Research Council, the project was realised over five years by Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre at Griffith University, Southern Cross University, and the Universities of Sydney, Otago, Washington, Lund and London (SOAS), in partnership with the Music Council of Australia, the World Music and Dance Centre, and the International Music Council (founded by UNESCO).

Unison and "disagreement" in a mixed women's and men's performance from the Ellis collection, Oodnadatta, 1966

Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMT

Unison and "disagreement" in a mixed women's and men's performance from the Ellis collection, Oodnadatta, 1966 Barwick, Linda This chapter explores the nature of musical 'disagreements' in a performance of the Kungka Kutjara (Two Women) performed by Antikirinya women and men at Oodnadatta in 1966, recorded by Catherine Ellis. Although unisonic performance is preferred in most Central Australian singing, varying degrees of divergence can be heard, generally resulting from a lack of synchronicity in presenting the melodic contour. In the performance in question, it appears that the women and men singers apply different principles in setting the rhythmic text to the melody.

Sustaining women's yawulyu/awelye: some practitioners' and learners' perspectives

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Sustaining women's yawulyu/awelye: some practitioners' and learners' perspectives Barwick, Linda; Laughren, Mary; Turpin, Myfany In 2010 the authors visited various Central Australian communities including Willowra, Tennant Creek, Alekarenge, Barrow Creek and Ti Tree, to interview some of our research collaborators past and present about how they saw the present and future of their yawulyu/awelye traditions. Yawulyu (in Warlpiri and Warumungu) and Awelye (in Kaytetye and other Arandic languages) are cognate names for women’s country-based rituals, including songs, dancing, ritual objects and knowledge surrounding particular country and Dreaming stories. In the course of our research we spoke to women from different communities, different age groups, different language groups, and different clans, seeking to open discussion about past and contemporary practices of learning, performing and teaching this performance-based knowledge, to help us to understand what the practitioners saw as the most fruitful ways of sustaining the traditions, as well as what difficulties they saw in their way. In this article we present statements from many of the women interviewed, highlighting the key issues that emerged and discussing the role of recordings and other documentation of performances for the future sustainability of the various yawulyu/awelye traditions discussed.

Central Australian women’s traditional songs: keeping yawulyu/awelye strong

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Central Australian women’s traditional songs: keeping yawulyu/awelye strong Barwick, Linda; Turpin, Myfany Yawulyu (in Warlpiri and Warumungu) and awelye (in Arandic XE “Arandic” languages) are cognate names for Australian Aboriginal women’s country-based ceremonies in central Australia. Ceremonial performances constitute a collective expression of knowledge surrounding the particular country, lifestyles, and Dreaming stories to which the ceremonies relate. This knowledge is presented in different modalities including song text, rhythm, melody, movement (gesture, dance), ritual designs, ritual objects, and spatial organization and orientation. This chapter discusses various issues and ideas concerning the sustainability of the tradition. It draws on extensive published literature, the authors’ fieldwork in the area over many years, and a series of interviews conducted as part of the Sustainable Futures project.

Unlocking the archives

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Unlocking the archives Barwick, Linda; Thieberger, Nick The popular expression ‘locked in the archive’ suggests that items are impossible to find and access once they are archived. Benefiting from new technologies, digital language and music archives nowadays provide an increasing number of records online in and about the world’s small languages. Just six of these archives list between them over 31,000 items, representing something like 2,300 languages. We can certainly do better at making records more widely available—especially records from small, marginalised and sometimes isolated communities—but how do we build pathways for re-use? We discuss the practice of the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) through the rubric provided by the FAIR principles. Building resources for learning and teaching language, history and culture, revitalising local performance traditions or reinforcing social identity through broadcasting are all possible pathways for future re-use of archival material. Ultimately, it is up to community members to decide on what they will do with archival materials once they have access; and it is up to language archives to listen and do our best to keep the pathways open to enable that.

Quantifying the Ineffable? The University of Sydney's 2014 Guidelines for Non-Traditional Research Outputs

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Quantifying the Ineffable? The University of Sydney's 2014 Guidelines for Non-Traditional Research Outputs Barwick, Linda; Toltz, Joseph Ever since the Australian Research Council (ARC) recognised “non-traditional research outputs” (NTROs) as valid expressions of research, developing benchmarks to measure the quality of artistic research has been of increasing interest to the Australian higher education sector. Because research quality (as measured through the triennial Excellence in Research Australia exercise) is a driver for block funding to higher education institutions, decisions about the quality of “artistic research” need to be transparent, based on peer review and justifiable to government auditors. With these requirements in mind, in 2014 the University of Sydney adopted University Guidelines for Non- Traditional Research Outputs. Following the framework and terminology developed by the ARC, the Guidelines recognise that: [r]esearch output may consist of any form of publicly available, assessable materials embodying research, whether produced by writing, making, composing, designing, performing, or curating. (The University of Sydney, 2014) Artistic research (“creative work as research”) is placed within a conceptual framework embracing not only standard print research outputs and but also other “non-traditional” outputs of traditional research (scholarly translations, critical editions, technical standards, exhibitions of archaeological or scientific objects, and research reports for external bodies). Complementing the general criteria and principles, the University Guidelines also include specific criteria and output weightings for each type of NTRO. Recognising the inherently unsatisfactory nature of any system of quality metrics, the presentation will discuss issues arising from the development and implementation of the guidelines within the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Engaging with archived Warlpiri song

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Engaging with archived Warlpiri song Curran, Georgia; Fisher, Simon Japangardi; Barwick, Linda In the Central Australian Warlpiri community of Yuendumu, efforts to document and revitalise Warlpiri songs take place in an era where there are fewer contexts for the performance of associated ceremonies, consequently increasing the endangerment of this unique intellectual tradition. This paper outlines recent initiatives providing contexts for Warlpiri people to engage with archived recordings through repatriation based on-country at the Warlpiri Media Archive. We examine the community’s perspectives and responses to legacy recordings made in the 1950s and 1960s, which captured a particular way of singing that has undergone significant change over the last few decades, even though some of the people who were recorded are still alive today. The individuals who have so far engaged with these archived recordings have drawn out unique perspectives on their contents, including insights into language change, shifting musical structures and the markedly different performance contexts in which these songs were once performed. These examples illustrate that repatriation efforts are much more than a simple process of ‘return’ of cultural materials to their communities of origin—re-engagement with legacy recordings influences performance traditions in their contemporary contexts.

Absolute tempo in multiple performances of Aboriginal songs: analyzing recordings of djanba 12 and djanba 14

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Absolute tempo in multiple performances of Aboriginal songs: analyzing recordings of djanba 12 and djanba 14 Bailes, Freya; Barwick, Linda Songs that are not notated but transmitted through live performance are of particular interest for the psychological study of the stability of tempo across multiple performances. While experimental research points to highly accurate memory for the tempi of well- known recorded music, this study asks whether there is any evidence of absolute tempo in a performance tradition that does not draw on such reference recordings. Fifty-four field recordings of performances of one Aboriginal dance-song, Djanba 14, were analyzed. Results showed that over a span of 34 years, performance tempi deviated positively or negatively, on average, by 2%. Such small tempo variation is similar to JND thresholds to discriminate the tempi of isochronous sequences. Thirty- five field recordings of another song from the same repertory, Djanba 12, deviated in tempi by an average of 3%. We discuss the musical, psychological, physical, and cultural factors likely to shape such temporal stability.

Keepsakes and surrogates: hijacking music technology at Wadeye (northwest Australia)

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Keepsakes and surrogates: hijacking music technology at Wadeye (northwest Australia) Barwick, Linda This paper focuses on some uses of recording technology in the township of Wadeye in Australia’s Northern Territory, resulting from a project focusing on djanba, a genre of public ceremonial song created and performed by Murriny Patha people. Murriny Patha is one of the healthiest Australian languages, with about 2500 speakers, most living in Wadeye and nearby. In recent years, with substantial social change in the community and the deaths of key composers and performers of the traditional ceremonial genres djanba, wangga and lirrga, performances of ceremonial song have markedly declined. In collaboration with the Wadeye Aboriginal Languages Centre (WALC), the Kanamkek Yile Ngala Museum and the Wadeye Library and Knowledge Centre (WLKC), our research team (Allan Marett, Michael Walsh, Joe Blythe, Nick Reid and Lysbeth Ford) recently completed a project to digitise and document all the song recordings held by WALC, and to make them available through an iTunes database in the WLKC. Port Keats (the early name for Wadeye) was originally established in 1932 as a Catholic mission, and the Catholic church and the Catholic school are the two most visible institutions in the community. In the past, live performances of traditional ceremonial music were used as part of church liturgy, but in recent years recorded music has taken over this function, and indeed one of the main uses for the iTunes database has been to provide music for playing at funerals in the church. Family members of the deceased often ask for CD copies of this music as a keepsake. This paper addresses the modalities of production of these recordings, and how the adoption of these new technologies supports various aspects of traditional social organisation while creating new channels for social interaction and displacing old ones. I am particularly interested in the extent to which localised diversity of place and family affiliation is played out in the composition, performance, content and circulation of the songs.

Multiple uses for old and new recordings: perspectives from the multilingual community of Warruwi

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Multiple uses for old and new recordings: perspectives from the multilingual community of Warruwi O'Keeffe, Isabel; Barwick, Linda; Coleman, Carolyn; Manmurulu, David; Manmurulu, Jenny; Mardbinda, Janet; Naragoidj, Paul; Singer, Ruth This paper reports on collaborative research by a team of linguists, musicologists, elders, educators and young people from the multilingual Indigenous community of Warruwi (South Goulburn Island, Northern Territory, Australia). A key aim of the various projects has been to make recordings available to the community and to equip and empower community members to be involved in the documentation and to control how old and new recordings are used. In this paper, we report on the repatriation of archival recordings of language and song at Warruwi and discuss how the Warruwi community uses these recordings—and more recent recordings by the research team—for maintenance or revitalisation purposes. Different perspectives will be provided by various members of the community. We demonstrate the need for researchers to have ongoing discussions with community members to inform collaborative research and to ensure communities are empowered to have control over recorded materials and determine priorities for ongoing documentation and revitalisation projects.

Marri Ngarr lirrga songs: a musicological analysis of song pairs in performance

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Marri Ngarr lirrga songs: a musicological analysis of song pairs in performance Barwick, Linda This article discusses a set of lirrga songs performed for Allan Marett on 1 October 1998 at Wadeye in Australia's Northern Territory by a group of senior Marri Ngarr men comprising the singers and composers Pius Luckan and Clement Tchinburur, the ritual specialist John Nummar (who acted as backup singer), and the karnbi (didjeridu) player Benedict Tchinburur (younger brother of Pius Luckan and Clement Tchinburur). The texts of these songs and information about Marri Ngarr language are presented in the companion article by Ford in this volume. The song session was performed for Marett to teach him about Marri Ngarr songs, and to document lirrga songs for future generations. The article shows how the ordering of songs in the session demonstrates the Marri Ngarr system of rhythmic modes. This is a postprint version (author’s accepted manuscript) with page numbers adjusted to match the published version.

Communities of interest: issues in establishing a digital resource on Murrinh-patha song at Wadeye (Port Keats), NT

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Communities of interest: issues in establishing a digital resource on Murrinh-patha song at Wadeye (Port Keats), NT Barwick, Linda; Marett, Allan; Walsh, Michael; Reid, Nicholas; Ford, Lysbeth Linguistics and musicology, along with other fieldwork-based disciplines, have obligations to facilitate access to research results by the communities whose cultural heritage is recorded and analysed, especially when the languages and musics in question are otherwise little documented, have few speakers or performers, and are threatened by the global dominance of English. This paper presents early results of our planning for establishment of a digital resource to preserve and make accessible recordings and other documentation of Murrinh-patha public dance-songs at Wadeye, a remote Indigenous community in Australia’s Northern Territory. With the recent establishment of the Wadeye Knowledge Centre, copies of recordings previously left in the community by researchers have been digitized and made available through computer workstations. Many of these digitized recordings, however, have poor or no documentation and thus are difficult to locate and access. The most urgent task is to work with elderly performers and composers to assemble metadata about the oldest recordings of songs and who composed and performed them. In order to maximise local accessibility and use, both elders and young people will be involved in planning and creation of a bilingual search interface to the collection. Planning must also consider sustainability issues through integration with other local initiatives, appropriate use of open standards and formats, locally sustainable technical platforms, and regular backup and maintenance. This is a postprint version, with page numbers adjusted to match the published version.

Turning it all upside down . . . Imagining a distributed digital audiovisual archive

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMT

Turning it all upside down . . . Imagining a distributed digital audiovisual archive Barwick, Linda What could and should be the relationship between research archives of endangered cultural heritage materials and the originating community? This paper argues that recent developments in distributed computing in a networked environment have allowed us to re-imagine this relationship in a way that profoundly changes the role of the archive and reinforces the desirability of establishing ongoing reciprocal relationships with cultural heritage communities. Some possibilities are suggested drawing from experience with PARADISEC (the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures, established in 2003 as a collaborative venture between the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University) and with local community-based digital archives in the remote Australian communities of Belyuen and Wadeye. Repatriation and rights, planning principles for establishment and sustainability of local digital archives in community cultural centres, and models for a staged approach in setting up ongoing relationships with rights holders are discussed. The paper argues that digital archives, as distributed virtual institutions, need to engage with a number of different communities of interest: not only the individuals, communities, and institutions that own the cultural heritage objects we preserve, but also the wider academic community and international standards-setting bodies. Planning for our archives’ digital future means imagining ourselves as actors and creators within that virtual society. This is a postprint version, with page numbers adjusted to match the published version.

Iwaidja Jurtbirrk songs: bringing language and music together

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Iwaidja Jurtbirrk songs: bringing language and music together Barwick, Linda; Birch, Bruce; Evans, Nicholas Song brings language and music together. Great singers are at once musi- cians and wordsmiths, who toss rhythm, melody and word against one another in complex cross-play. In this paper we outline some initial findings that are emerg- ing from our interdisciplinary study of the musical traditions of the Cobourg region of western Arnhem Land, a coastal area situated in the far north of the Australian continent 350 kilometres northeast of Darwin. We focus on a set of songs called Jurtbirrk, sung in Iwaidja, a highly endangered language, whose core speaker base is now located in the community of Minjilang on Croker Island. We bring to bear analytical methodologies from both musicology and linguistics to illuminate this hitherto undocumented genre of love songs. This is a postprint version (author’s accepted manuscript), with page numbers in the article adjusted to match the published version (references and notes appear in the opposite order).

Musical and linguistic perspectives on Aboriginal song

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Musical and linguistic perspectives on Aboriginal song Marett, Allan; Barwick, Linda This article serves as an introduction to the special issue 'Studies in Aboriginal Song' edited by Marett and Barwick. Since 1984, numerous collections of essays dedicated entirely or partly to Aboriginal song and dance appeared. Each of these represented a response to particular stimuli. Much of the work presented in the present volume, Studies in Aboriginal Song: A Special Issue of Australian Aboriginal Studies, resulted from research projects that focus on endangered language and music and involved either collaborative work between linguists and musicologist, or work by scholars with training in both disciplines. Faced as we are with the ongoing and escalating loss of so many of Australia’s Indigenous languages and performance traditions, there is some evidence that studies of Aboriginal song are increasing. And yet too little is being done too late by too few. In musicology in particular, the discipline has failed adequately to respond to the cultural tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes as manifold traditions of Australia’s Indigenous heritage are lost to future generations of Aboriginal peoples and to the national heritage. Major initiatives, such as the various endangered language programs mentioned in our essay, and the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia, are attempting to find solutions that will empower Indigenous peoples in their struggle to maintain their threatened languages and traditions in the face of the enormous forces arrayed against them. But so much remains to be done, not least in training young persons, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, with the disciplinary and practical skills to meet this challenge. This is a post-print version (authors' accepted manuscript) with page numbers edited to match the published version.

Musical form and style in Murriny Patha djanba songs at Wadeye (Northwest Australia)

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Musical form and style in Murriny Patha djanba songs at Wadeye (Northwest Australia) Barwick, Linda This chapter concerns the musical form and social history of djanba songs—public dance-songs in Murriny Patha language from Wadeye, in Australia's northwest Northern Territory—and how they fit within the musical landscape of traditional Australian Indigenous song styles. One djanba song composed by Lawrence Kolumboort is compared with exemplars of other relevant public dance-song genres, namely junba (from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, composed by Ngarinyin-Miwa composer Scotty Nyalgodi Martin) and lirrga (a didjeridu-accompanied dance-song in Marri Ngarr language, composed by Pius Luckan and often performed alongside djanba in the community of Wadeye). Analysis shows how encounters and exchanges with other musical styles have been of profound importance in the genesis and development of djanba song style. This is a postprint of the author's accepted manuscript with page numbers edited to match the published version.

Tempo bands, metre and rhythmic mode in Marri Ngarr 'Church Lirrga' songs

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Tempo bands, metre and rhythmic mode in Marri Ngarr 'Church Lirrga' songs Barwick, Linda During the 1970s, the Marri Ngarr composer Pius Luckan and his brother Clement Tchinburur created a set of liturgical songs ('churcb lirrga') based on the didjeridu-accompanied dance-song genre Lirrga, one of several public ceremonial genres in Wadeye, NT. Musical analysis and discussion witb composers sbows that the songs fall into named distinct tempo ranges ('tempo bands’), that tempo bands correlate witb different metres in the vocal part (tbis combination is termed 'rhythmic mode'), and that singers highlight rhythmic mode by systematic juxtaposition of contrasting songs. Accounts of similar compositional practices in other Australian song repertoires are noted. This is a postprint version (author's accepted manuscript) with page numbering adjusted to match the published version. Due to format obsolescence of the original graphics files, some of the figures are poor quality screenshots.

Including music and the temporal arts in language documentation

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Including music and the temporal arts in language documentation Barwick, Linda This chapter is intended for linguistic researchers preparing to undertake fieldwork, probably documenting one of the world’s many small or endangered languages. Recognising that linguists have their own priorities and methodologies in language documentation and description, I will advance reasons for including in your corpus the song and/or instrumental music that you are almost certain to encounter in the course of your fieldwork. I start by providing an overview of current thinking about the nature and significance of human musical capacities and the commonly encountered types, context and significance of music, especially in relation to language. Since research funding usually precludes having a musicologist tag along in the original fieldwork, I will suggest some topics for discussion that would be of interest to musicologists, and make some suggestions for what is needed on a practical level to make your recordings useful to musicologists at a later date. I comment on the technical and practical requirements for a good musical documentation and how these might differ from language documentation, and also provide some suggestions on a workflow for field production of musical recordings for community use. Examples taken from my own fieldwork are intended to provide food for thought, and not to imply that music and dance traditions in other societies are necessarily structured in comparable ways. This is a postprint with page numbers edited to match the printed version. The section numbering is different from the printed version.

Performance, aesthetics, experience: thoughts on Yawulyu mungamunga songs

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Performance, aesthetics, experience: thoughts on Yawulyu mungamunga songs Barwick, Linda In 2000 a CD of Warumungu women’s Yawulyu Mungamunga songs was published by Festival records (Papulu Apparr-kari Aboriginal Language and Culture Centre & Barwick, 2000, 479), and launched in Tennant Creek and in Sydney at the National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia. In Sydney a large audience of musicologists and academics witnessed the launch of these songs into the national and international arena, an event marked by speeches and ceremonial exchanges of gifts as well as a performance of the songs with dancing by a group of women who had travelled to Sydney for the occasion. The Sydney CD launch was just one in a long line of performances that Warumungu people have presented for outsiders. In a canvas painted by E.G. Nakkamarra to celebrate the launch of the CD, cultural precedent was invoked to situate the publication of the CD as ngijinkirri, a Warumungu tradition of ceremonial sharing of food and performances with outsiders. For centuries, Warumungu people have performed their ceremonies in exchange with neighbouring Aboriginal groups, and ever since the Overland Telegraph Line was established north of present-day Tennant Creek in the 1870s, performances have also been mounted for papulanji (the Warumungu language word for non-Aboriginal people). These instances demonstrate that Warumungu people expect their performances to have social and aesthetic power for outsiders as well as for cultural insiders. This article reflects my own aesthetic engagement with these Yawulyu Mungamunga songs, which I first recorded near Tennant Creek in 1996. This is a postprint version edited to match the page numbers of the published version. Some errors in figure numbering in the published version have been corrected here.

Re-presenting Italy in Australia through Theatre and Music, 1972-2002

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Re-presenting Italy in Australia through Theatre and Music, 1972-2002 Comin, Antonio; Barwick, Linda This chapter is based on a conversation with Antonio Comin at his home in Norwood, South Australia, on 2 March 2009, edited and annotated by Linda Barwick. Antonio Comin (born Cornuda, Italy, in 1933) migrated with his family to Australia in 1936. A graduate of the University of Sydney and the Università degli Studi di Firenze, he taught at the universities of Sydney, Melbourne and British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) before joining Flinders University in 1970 as foundation Professor of Italian. Until his retirement in 1996, his main teaching and research areas were Italian language, dialectology and traditional culture. Comin’s mission to establish and promote in South Australia the understanding of Italian language and culture was undertaken in large part through various theatrical productions he devised and mounted from 1976–2007, which increasingly incorporated his own writing as well as musical components including Italian traditional song. The Italian Folk Ensemble, a musical group formed as a result of Comin’s activities, has been active in community music performances as well as theatre productions since 1978, and after a hiatus of some years various members including Comin reformed in 2003 under the name “Gruppo La Questua”. Linda Barwick studied under Comin in the Italian Discipline in the 1970s and 1980s, and participated in the Italian Folk Ensemble and some of the theatrical productions mentioned here. After covering background about Comin’s early life and cultural formation in Australia and Italy, the chapter presents Comin’s commentary on the various theatrical productions he conceived and directed. Unless otherwise indicated, the speaker is Comin. Commentary in footnotes is by Barwick, who also compiled the figures and appendices.

'Oltre l'Australia c'è la luna': Maggio garfagnino and the Emigrant Experience

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

'Oltre l'Australia c'è la luna': Maggio garfagnino and the Emigrant Experience Barwick, Linda When I first visited the Garfagnana region of north-western Tuscany in 1991, I was assured by functionaries from the provincial government that the Maggio tradition of sung popular theatre would be finished within five years. The singers were too old, the tourists weren’t interested, there were no young people to carry it on. Yet over the next five years of my increasing involvement in the tradition, I saw a growth in the numbers of performances, active performers and companies, and audience numbers. This chapter advances some thoughts as to why Maggio continued so strongly against the odds in its home region of the Garfagnana, while attempts to mount performances in Australia have (to my knowledge) so far failed, despite the considerable numbers of Garfagnini who emigrated there. I will argue that the strength of the nexus between paese (home town) and performance practice in the Garfagnino Maggio stems from the Garfagnana’s long history of emigration, and that indeed various features of the Maggio genre appear to result from, or at least be intensified by, a “diaspora effect”, that is, the effect of expatriates on their community of origin. I argue that to understand the themes, form, performance practice and survival of this most localised of traditions we need to take into account the transnationalism of many Garfagnini and the role of campanilismo (loyalty to one’s home village) in sustaining emigrants abroad.

Thoughts on Music and Migration

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Thoughts on Music and Migration Sorce Keller, Marcello; Barwick, Linda Music is always significant to human beings everywhere. Such diverse social phenomena as religion, power structure, class structure or family relations are to some extent expressed, mirrored, reinforced, exhibited—or even flaunted—through the social use of sound. And just like all these other social phenomena, music is always in a state of flux, with new generations of music-makers, audiences, technologies and social contexts spurring new musical creations and forms, and adapting or supplanting old ones. Migration is a similarly universal phenomenon. The history of humanity is a history of migrations. Migratory peoples tend to take their music along with them, especially if there are sufficient numbers of them to sustain its practice in a social context, and even if they do not , that fact in itself can help us to understand some important features of the originating and host societies, and the role of the migrants in relation to them. The study of music in migratory contexts may thus be crucial to the study of musical cultures in general. The experience of migration does not make music any less relevant in the lives of the emigrants, and the study of musical attitudes, tastes, practices (and their progressive reshaping over time) may help us to understand how easy or difficult it is for migrants to strike a balance between assimilation, co-habitation (with other groups) and the maintenance of distinctive cultural traits.

Transnational Perspectives on Italy in Australia's Musical Landscape

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Transnational Perspectives on Italy in Australia's Musical Landscape Barwick, Linda; Sorce Keller, Marcello A transnational perspective is needed to understand not only the nature and development of the migratory flow of Italian people to Australia, but also the ongoing interactions of Italians in Australia with families in Italy and elsewhere in the diaspora. This chapter provides background to the papers contained in the rest of the volume, which address many different dimensions of the musical role of Italian immigrants in Australia. After providing an overview of the characteristic features of Italian immigration to Australia, including the predominance of immigration from poor peasant backgrounds, the chapter provides a framework for understanding the diversity of musical expressions of Italianness in the Australian context.

Italian Traditional Music in Adelaide in the 1970s and 1980s

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Italian Traditional Music in Adelaide in the 1970s and 1980s Barwick, Linda A version of this chapter was originally presented at the Second National Folklore Conference in Sydney in October 1986, responding to the conference theme “multicultural influences upon the Australian folk heritage”. This version of the paper presented here has been substantially updated with references to published research that has appeared since its original presentation. The paper addresses three questions: • In what sense it is useful to talk about “the Australian folk heritage” in the singular? • In what avenues might any “multicultural” influences operate? • How would it be possible to identify such influences after the event? Italy has a number of historical and geographical features that make its traditional popular culture extremely diverse. Political unification did not occur until 1861, and the national language remained largely literary and bureaucratic in use until the twentieth century. Because of this relatively recent political and linguistic unification of the country, regional cultures characterised by diverse dialects and rich oral traditions thrived until quite recently, when the impact of mass media began increasingly to overwhelm the underlying cultural diversity. Some aspects of these traditions have survived more strongly in Australia than in Italy because of lack of competition from the national language, while others have died out due to changes in social structures in Australia.

Dilemmas in interpretation: contemporary perspectives on Berndt’s Goulburn Island song documentation

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Dilemmas in interpretation: contemporary perspectives on Berndt’s Goulburn Island song documentation Barwick, Linda; O'Keeffe, Isabel; Singer, Ruth More than fifty years after the first recording session and twenty-six years after the original publication of Ronald Berndt’s article ‘Other creatures in human guise’ (Berndt, 1987), this paper presents some contemporary perspectives on his documentation of Marrwakara and Kaddikkaddik songs in Warruwi (Goulburn Island) in 1961 and 1964. Several puzzling features emerge from close attention to the documentation, some of which may now never be fully resolved. The authors (in particular O’Keeffe and Singer) undertook further documentation of these and many other archival songs in the period 2006-2012 as part of a larger research project on Western Arnhem Land song led by Barwick and funded by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project. We situate the Berndt song documentation in the broader context of the public ceremonial dance-song genre (known as manyarti in Mawng, or kun-borrk in Kunwinjku) that was the main focus of our project’s efforts, reflect on the significance of Berndt’s work, and provide re-transcriptions of the song texts, transliterating as relevant into contemporary Mawng orthography, and showing organisation of the text words into lines of verse, usually regularly repeated to form the sung version. This is a postprint of the original publication (authors' final version) with page numbers adjusted to match those of the publication.

Repatriation and innovation: the impact of archival recordings on endangered dance-song traditions and ethnomusicological research

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Repatriation and innovation: the impact of archival recordings on endangered dance-song traditions and ethnomusicological research Treloyn, Sally; Googninda Charles, Rona For some time, ethnomusicologists working in Australian Aboriginal communities have repatriated and disseminated audio and video recordings from archival and personal collections to cultural heritage communities as a primary fieldwork method. Increasingly researchers are documenting these processes and are considering the complexities of repatriation and dissemination, and their role in supporting creative innovation and in sustaining performance traditions. As such, while we consider the contexts in which archival materials influence and may be used to innovate endangered song traditions, we might likewise consider ways in which the process of returning materials influences and innovates fieldwork and research. This paper will outline the materials and processes of repatriation involved in the Australian Research Council project 'Strategies for Preserving and Sustaining Endangered Song and Dance in the modern world: the Mowanjum and Fitzroy River Valley communities of WA'. The paper will present perspectives from both cultural heritage stakeholders and researchers on the role of repatriation of archival materials in: fostering partnerships between researchers and communities; in supporting the capacity of local organizations; in supporting intergenerational engagement around dance-song knowledge; and, in better understanding the intersections and tensions between traditional systems of knowledge management and dissemination, local community archives, and national archives.

Arriving, digging, performing, returning: an exercise in rich interpretation of a djanba song text in the sound archive of the Wadeye Knowledge Centre, Northern Territory of Australia

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Arriving, digging, performing, returning: an exercise in rich interpretation of a djanba song text in the sound archive of the Wadeye Knowledge Centre, Northern Territory of Australia Barwick, Linda; Marett, Allan; Blythe, Joe; Walsh, Michael This article covers issues around song language interpretation and documentation in relation to a djanba song in Murriny Patha language composed by Lawrence Kolumboort (djanba 11). Submitted with the permission of the volume editor, Prof. R.M. Moyle.

Barwick, L. (1994). The Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio: cross-cultural perspectives on related genres of popular music theatre

Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMT

Barwick, L. (1994). The Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio: cross-cultural perspectives on related genres of popular music theatre Barwick, Linda The Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio are contemporary traditions of sung popular theatre that use written librettos drawing on European chivalrous verse romances. Their present-day forms, themes and performance practice reflect the intercultural contact and conflict that have characterised their histories. After introducing case studies drawn from the Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio, the paper surveys the history of performance traditions associated with the chivalrous romance, including review of contemporary survivals in a number of performance media, and the use of writing in these and other popular traditions. In order to explain the striking parallels in present-day manifestations of both komedya and maggio, it is necessary to grasp the complex but largely hidden history of dramatic performances that have accompanied the published verse romances. This paper has been archived in PARADISEC as part of collection LB1, "Luna and Burgos (Ilocos Sur) (1993) and Vigan (Ilocos Sur) (1995)". Linda Barwick (collector), Linda Barwick (author), 1994; Article by Linda Barwick on 'The Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio', PDF, http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/LB1/items/ARTICLE 2013-02-12.

‘Scolpire le parole’ [sculpting the words]: Context sensitivity in vocal and movement performance style of the Tuscan Maggio.

Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMT

‘Scolpire le parole’ [sculpting the words]: Context sensitivity in vocal and movement performance style of the Tuscan Maggio. Barwick, Linda In the maggio (sung popular theatre) of the Garfagnana valley north of Lucca, the main dimensions open to improvisation, and thus to context sensitivity, are music and movement. The song session, lasting about three hours, is defined by the enactment of a written text, consisting of about 170 stanzas and read to performers a line at a time by an on-stage prompt. The same text is presented on a number of occasions through the summer months in a number of different outdoor venues. Whether performances take place in a clearing in the chestnut forest on a Sunday afternoon or, at night-time, in a piazza within one of the many small towns in the Garfagnana valley, the audience members who surround the performance space are vociferous in their applause and shouted encouragement for particularly appropriate and/or well-executed embellishments to the vocal line and movements (including stylised gestures and sword-fights). Within the Garfagnana, particular characteristics of music and movement have been traditionally associated with different localities. These days, the situation is considerably more complex, as massive emigration and other social changes have decreased the pool of performers and necessitated the formation of companies comprising members from a number of different localities. In addition, improved transport networks have meant that companies from the neighbouring Emilian area occasionally perform in the Garfagnana, so that performers and audiences are exposed to a much wider variety of performance styles than would have been possible in the past. Analysis reveals that rather than singing a fixed melodic contour, singers enjoy a considerable degree of flexibility in performance of the standard stanzaic melody. While most stanzas will be performed in a style associated with the singer's place of origin, other possibilities are available, which may be exploited depending on the contour being used by the other singers (some of whom may come from distant localities using a different style), on the place of performance (and thus the style most appreciated by the local audience), and, importantly, on the context within the narrative. Unusual contours and exceptionally elaborate ornamentation may be used to mark particularly important dramatic or emotional points in the text. Musical and movement aspects of the performance are thus responsive to the performance group, to the dramatic text, and to the audience.

Italian traditional music in Adelaide

Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMT

Italian traditional music in Adelaide Barwick, Linda This article questions the framing of Italian and other immigrant music traditions within Australian folklore studies. It discusses the fundamental diversity of regional musical cultures brought by Australia's immigrants from Italy and some examples of performances in various contexts in Adelaide in the 1970s and 1980s. Includes musical transcriptions and English translations of song texts.

“An ample and very poetical narrative”: the vicissitudes of “La Pia” between the literary and oral traditions.

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMT

“An ample and very poetical narrative”: the vicissitudes of “La Pia” between the literary and oral traditions. Barwick, Linda In the nearly seven hundred years since Dante's Purgatorio first appeared, the story of “La Pia” (Purgatorio V, 130-136), a Sienese woman who died under mysterious circumstances in the Maremma region, has generated much speculation as to her identity and the possible reasons for Dante's having situated this courteous but cryptic soul amongst the negligenti of antePurgatorio. These seven scant lines, placed at the very end of Canto V of Purgatorio, continue to give rise not only to a plethora of commentaries (surveyed and analysed in Diana Glenn's recent work)3, but also to a significant body of creative works that have expanded, elaborated and explored the fragmentary history of Pia. This paper concentrates on the circulation and dissemination of theatrical works drawing on the Pia story in the 19th and 20th centuries, with special emphasis on the Tuscan maggio, a form of sung popular theatre still performed in northwestern Tuscany today. There, La Pia is known to Maggio audiences, as indeed she was to Dante scholars until the end of the nineteenth century, by the name of “Pia de' Tolomei,” and her story unfolds over the course of about three hours.

THE LAST BIWA SINGER: A Japanese Blind Musician in History, Imagination and Performance

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

THE LAST BIWA SINGER: A Japanese Blind Musician in History, Imagination and Performance de Ferranti, Hugh This book concerns the traditions of Japanese blind musicians and ritualists who accompanied themselves on the biwa, as embodied in the music and identity of Yamashika Yoshiyuki (1901-1996). Yamashika was the last person to have earned his income from performing a repertory of musical tales, songs and rites with biwa (a four-stringed lute), and to many seemed like a twentieth-century apparition of the blind bards who first performed the Tale of the Heike and other canonical medieval narratives. Yamashika’s identity as a musician and individual was far more complex, but he became well known as "the last biwa hōshi" and was the subject of books, media programs, and a feature-length documentary film. An apparent living relic of a Japan long vanished, Yamashika even appeared in the New York Times in his last years. The author draws upon approaches from Japanese historical and literature studies, performance studies and ethnomusicology in an examination of history, which yielded on the one hand images of blind singers that still circulate in Japan and on the other a particular tradition of musical story-telling and rites in regional Kyushu, of representations of Yamashika in diverse media, of his experiences training for and making a living as a professional performer and ritualist from the 1920s on, and of the oral compositional process in performances made between 1989 and 1992. Item HDF1-YY46-A from the Paradisec archive - Yamashika performance of the second dan of the tale "Shuntokumaru", recorded March 7th, 1989.

The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia: year one in review

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia: year one in review Marett, Allan; Yunupingu, Mandawuy; Langton, Marcia; Gumbula, Neparrŋa; Barwick, Linda; Corn, Aaron The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia was conceived at Gunyangara in Arnhem Land during the inaugural Indigenous Performance Symposium in August 2002. The symposium was funded by the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and hosted by the Yothu Yindi Foundation (YYF) as part of the fourth Garma Festival of Traditional Culture. Indigenous communities have used recording technologies to circulate and support the inter-generational transmission of their performance traditions for several decades now. Many Indigenous performers now keep recordings of their forebears’ past performances and listen to them for inspiration before performing themselves. In recent years, community digital archives have been set up in various Australian Indigenous communities. Not only can recordings reinforce memory and facilitate the recovery of lost repertoire, they can also provide inspiration for creative extensions of tradition. This paper reports on the outcomes of pilot studies undertaken in 2005 to develop and trial appropriate procedures and methodologies, and establish infrastructure requirements for the project. Ultimately, the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia hopes to aid Indigenous communities in sustaining cultural survival by stimulating lifelong interest in performance traditions through its serial recording and documentation initiatives, and the collections that it will deposit in local repositories for perpetual community access. Permission to archive granted by Lindsay Read on behalf of the Australia Council for the Arts, 4 December 2006.

“An ample and very poetical narrative”: the vicissitudes of “La Pia” between the literary and oral traditions

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMT

“An ample and very poetical narrative”: the vicissitudes of “La Pia” between the literary and oral traditions Barwick, Linda In the nearly seven hundred years since Dante's Purgatorio first appeared, the story of “La Pia” (Purgatorio V, 130-136), a Sienese woman who died under mysterious circumstances in the Maremma region, has generated much speculation as to her identity and the possible reasons for Dante's having situated this courteous but cryptic soul amongst the negligenti of antePurgatorio. These seven scant lines, placed at the very end of Canto V of Purgatorio, continue to give rise not only to a plethora of commentaries, but also to a significant body of creative works that have expanded, elaborated and explored the fragmentary history of Pia. This paper concentrates on the circulation and dissemination of theatrical works drawing on the Pia story in the 19th and 20th centuries, with special emphasis on the Tuscan maggio, a form of sung popular theatre still performed in northwestern Tuscany today. There, La Pia is known to Maggio audiences, as indeed she was to Dante scholars until the end of the nineteenth century, by the name of “Pia de' Tolomei,” and her story unfolds over the course of about three hours. How have seven lines from Dante managed to expand to fill three hours of Maggio performance? The story is a long but fascinating one. Permission to archive from Diana Glenn, Flavia Coassin and Margaret Baker received 3 December 2006

Cybraries in paradise: new technologies and ethnographic repositories.

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Cybraries in paradise: new technologies and ethnographic repositories. Barwick, Linda; Thieberger, Nicholas Digital technologies are altering research practices surrounding creation and use of ethnographic field recordings, and the methodologies and paradigms of the disciplines centered around their interpretation. In this chapter we discuss some examples of our current research practices as fieldworkers in active engagement with cultural heritage communities documenting music and language in the Asia- Pacific region, and as developers and curators of the digital repository PARADISEC (the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures: ). We suggest a number of benefits that the use of digital technologies can bring to the recording of material from small and endangered cultures, and to its re-use by communities and researchers. We believe it is a matter of social justice as well as scientific interest that ethnographic recordings held in higher education institutions should be preserved and made accessible to future generations. We argue that, with appropriate planning and care by researchers, digitization of research recordings in audiovisual media can facilitate access by remote communities to records of their cultural heritage held in higher education institutions to a far greater extent than was possible in the analog age. Note: This is a postprint, with the pagination adjusted to match the published version for citation. Used with permission from Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (30 November 2006). Visit http://www.erlbaum.com to purchase a copy of the book.

A musicologist’s wishlist: some issues, practices and practicalities in musical aspects of language documentation.

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT

A musicologist’s wishlist: some issues, practices and practicalities in musical aspects of language documentation. Barwick, Linda This paper summarises some of the issues that have arisen for me in my collaborations with linguists in documentation of Australian song. It provides pointers for recording techniques and guidelines as to some of the things that musicologists would like to know about musical performance, especially in the case of musical traditions and practices transmitted orally within small language groups (as is typically the case for documentation of musical traditions in endangered languages).

Planning for PARADISEC

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Planning for PARADISEC Barwick, Linda PARADISEC is a collaborative digital research resource set up by the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University in 2003, with funding from the Australia Research Council's Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities scheme. Conceived and created in cyberspace, the project locates its digitisation equipment at the University of Sydney, its website at ANU, and metadata database at the University of Melbourne, with researcher contributions from all three Universities. Current planning issues concern provision of appropriate levels of digital rights management and access for the many stakeholder communities located throughout the Asia-Pacific region. This presentation outlines the principles that have guided us in planning and implementation of PARADISEC.

PARADISEC: Background statement for the APAC Data Collections workshop, 18 October 2005

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT

PARADISEC: Background statement for the APAC Data Collections workshop, 18 October 2005 Barwick, Linda PARADISEC (http://www.paradisec.org.au) is a cross-institutional research initiative established in 2003 by the Universities of Sydney, Melbourne and the Australian National University, joined in 2004 by the University of New England. Funded by the Australian Research Council's Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities Programme, participant institutions and Grangenet, PARADISEC offers a web-enabled facility for collaborative digitisation, management and access to Australian researchers' ethnographic recordings of endangered languages and musics of the Asia Pacific region. The collection is housed in APAC’s store facility, where it is managed by Stuart Hungerford. Since portable field recording equipment became readily available in the 1950s, many thousands of hours of ethnographic recordings have been made by Australian researchers. These unique and irreplaceable records are now in danger of being lost to future generations because of the impending obsolescence of analogue recording formats, deterioration of the original tapes, and orphaning of the collections as their creators retire or die. Before PARADISEC, there was no Australian repository available to salvage recordings made in the Asia-Pacific region. Indexing orphaned collections preparatory to digitisation was an important step in itself: our catalogue of 2400 records currently includes data on 390 languages from 50 countries in our region, previously inaccessible information that is now accessible worldwide via our web catalogue. As well as salvaging old recordings, we provide a facility for deposit and management of current research collections and advice on data creation and management for researchers planning future field trips. Our data collection hosts material recorded as long ago as the early 1950s and as recently as 2005.