It’s really great. It’s like they’re all here. I hear all of these voices and I sing with them, you know? — Yikliya Eustace Tipiloura, senior songman and Elder Perhaps the most defining feature of Tiwi song is the importance placed on the creative innovation of the individual singer/composer. Tiwi songs are fundamentally new, unique and occasion specific, and yet sit within a continuum of an oral artistic tradition. Performed in ceremony, at public events, for art and for fun, songs form the core of the Tiwi knowledge system and historical archive. Held by song custodians and taught through sung and danced ritual, generations of embodied practice are still being created and accumulated as people continue to sing. In 2009 Genevieve Campbell and eleven Tiwi colleagues travelled to Canberra to reclaim over 1300 recordings of Tiwi songs, made between 1912 and 1981, that are held in the archives at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). The Old Songs are Always New explores the return home of these recordings to the Tiwi Islands and describes the musical and vocal characteristics, performance context and cultural function of the twelve Tiwi song types, giving an overview of the linguistic and poetic devices used by Tiwi composers. For the past 16 years Campbell has been working closely with Tiwi song custodians, studying contemporary Tiwi song culture in the context of the maintenance of traditions and the development of new music forms. Their musical collaboration has resulted in public performances, community projects and recordings featuring current senior singers and the voices of the repatriated recordings. For this publication, Elders have enabled the transcription of many song texts and melodies for the first time, shedding light on how generations of Tiwi singers have connected the past with the present in a continuum of knowledge transmission and arts practice.

Keeping Time: Dialogues on music and archives in Honour of Linda Barwick explores current issues in ethnomusicology and the archiving and repatriation of ethnographic field recordings. The 19 chapters by 36 authors consider archiving practices as a site of interaction between researchers and cultural heritage communities; cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding song; and the role of musical transcription in non-Western music. This volume is international in scope with case studies with Indigenous and minority peoples from Papua New Guinea, China, India, the Torres Strait and mainland Aboriginal Australia; the latter being the focus of the majority of chapters. Topics include the revival of songs from early written sources, creation of new songs based in old genres, the concept of “sing” in other languages, spirits as the origin of song knowledge, and how to manage ethnographic records over time. Keeping Time approaches Indigenous practices from a range of disciplines, including linguistics, history and performing arts, as well as Indigenous Studies, cultural revitalisation (including reclamation of Indigenous languages), Indigenous knowledge and application to climate change. Offered in honour of Emeritus Professor Linda Barwick, the founder of the Indigenous Music, Language and Performing Arts series, Keeping Time offers a diverse range of opinions on ethnographic research practices and their value to society. There are 3 audio examples available to be listened to here: https://open.sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/keeping_time.html

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.

The Gift of Song: Performing Exchange in Western Arnhem Land tells the story of the return of physical and digital cultural materials through song and dance. Drawing on extensive, first-person ethnographic fieldwork in western Arnhem Land, Australia, Brown examines how Bininj/Arrarrkpi (Aboriginal people of this region) enact change and innovate their performance practices through ceremonial exchange. As Indigenous communities worldwide confront new social and environmental challenges, this book addresses the questions: How do Indigenous communities come to terms with legacies of taking and collecting? How are cultural materials in digital formats received and ritualised? How do traditional forms of exchange continue to mediate relationships? Combining ethnomusicological analysis and linguistically and historically informed ethnography, this book reveals how multilingualism and musical diversity are maintained through kun-borrk/manyardi, a major genre of Indigenous Australian song and dance. It retheorises the core anthropological concept of ‘exchange’ and enriches understanding of repatriation as a process of re-embedding tangible objects through intangible practices of ceremony and language.

"The Gurindji people of the Northern Territory are perhaps best-known for their walk-off of Wave Hill Station in 1966, protesting against mistreatment by the station managers. The strike would become the first major victory of the Indigenous land rights movement. Many discussions of station life are focused on the harsh treatment of Aboriginal workers. Songs from the Stations portrays another side of life on Wave Hill Station. Amongst the harsh conditions and decades of mistreatment, an eclectic ceremonial life flourished during the first half of the 20th century. Constant travel between cattle stations by Indigenous workers across north-western and central Australia meant that Wave Hill Station became a cross-road of desert and Top End musical styles. As a result, the Gurindji people learnt songs from the Mudburra who came further east, the Bilinarra from the north, the Nyininy from the west, and the Warlpiri from the south. This book is the first detailed documentation of wajarra, public songs performed by the Gurindji people in response to contemporary events in their community. Featuring five song sets known as Laka, Mintiwarra, Kamul, Juntara, and Freedom Day, it is an exploration of the cultural exchange between Indigenous communities that was fostered by their involvement in the pastoral industry.."--Publisher's website.

This book demonstrates the processes of intercultural musical collaboration and how these processes contribute to facilitating positive relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia. Each of the chapters in this edited collection examines specific examples in diverse contexts, and reflects on key issues that underpin musical exchanges, including the benefits and challenges of intercultural music making. The collection demonstrates how these musical collaborations allow Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to work together, to learn from each other, and to improve and strengthen their relationships. The metaphor of the “third space” of intercultural music making is interwoven in different ways throughout this volume. While focusing on Indigenous Australian/non-Indigenous intercultural musical collaboration, the book will be of interest globally as a resource for scholars and postgraduate students exploring intercultural musical communication in countries with histories of colonisation, such as New Zealand and Canada.

The incredible story of the resilience and recovery of Australia's First Nations languages Australia's language diversity is truly breathtaking. This continent lays claim to the world's longest continuous collection of cultures, including over 440 unique languages and many more dialects. Sadly, European invasion has had severe consequences for the vitality of these languages. Amid devastating loss, there has also been the birth of new languages such as Kriol and Yumplatok, both English-based Creoles. Aboriginal English dialects are spoken widely, and recently there has been an inspiring renaissance of First Nations languages, as communities reclaim and renew them. Bina: First Nations Languages Old and New tells this story, from the earliest exchange of words between colonists and First Nations people to today's reclamations. It is a creative and exciting introduction to a vital and dynamic world of language. 'Years in the making, Bina offers a multidimensional reflection on how many diverse languages across this continent continue to vibrate in rich and profound ways. The emergence of Indigenous linguists Gari Tudor-Smith and Paul Williams as authors of this survey alongside Felicity Meakins signals an important and welcome shift in the Australian linguistics landscape.' —Professor Clint Bracknell, University of Western Australia, Nyungar musicologist and musician