There are several opinions on the relationship between ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ music in the context of Aboriginal Australia and this deserves to be noticed in order to research an
event which manages both types of music and dance separately or together.25 It is necessary to
define the ‘kardiya’ songs applied in the programs of Milpirri.
First of all, the debate on how to draw a line between the two derives from the fact that Christian music made roots so deeply. Wild (1997, 1998a) included Christian music in a genre of contemporary music as well as popular music and Torres Strait Islander music, and counted folk, country and rock as popular music. Following his introductory article in the encyclopaedia Australia and the Pacific Islands, Peter Dunbar-Hall (1998) added reggae and calypso to contemporary trends in Aboriginal music. In his book Our Place, Our Music, Marcus Breen (1989) not only discussed traditions and the destruction of Aboriginal culture but also insisted that in the early 1980s reggae became the black music of the future for many Aboriginals, following a performance by Jamaican singer Bob Marley in Adelaide in early 1979. Contrarily, Wild (1994) argued that in Australian Aboriginal culture continuity between the traditional and the contemporary is not usually implied: Once contaminated by the culture of the settlers the tradition is destroyed and is replaced by contemporary culture. He mentioned ‘it is not a tradition which can be easily transferred to a contemporary context without significant transformation’ (ibid.:188).
In order to research Aboriginal rock music in the NT, it is inevitable to know to what extent the Warlpiri rock bands are influenced by Arnhem Land bands including Yothu Yindi.
25 This discussion can refer to an acrylic paint movement and Megaw (1988:170) called it ‘Contemporary
Describing the history of ‘contemporary’ Aboriginal music is always stuck with this group. In the golden years of the Yolŋu rock band, several researchers were riveted to merely a song, ‘Treaty’, using it in the title of their articles (Nicol 1993; Hayward 1993; Stubington & Dunbar-
Hall 1994). Around 1975 Aboriginal peoples were seeking to get their message across to the Australian public with rock music as a particularly important vehicle of their protest (Ellis 2001). However, the novelty of Yothu Yindi, a Yolŋu group from northeast Arnhem Land, was that they played and sang a blend of both traditional music of the Gumatj and Rirratjingu clans and rock music, in both English and Yolŋu dialects. M. (name avoidance) Yunupiŋu, the leader of the group said ‘[t]echnology today accepts natural science and music, thereby opening new horizons in the study of music which combine sophisticated contemporary sounds with those of the old and draw people together in the process’ (1999). The establishment of Garma Festival was thus dependent on the activity of Yothu Yindi, so that in this respect the research on Milpirri is proposed to be paralleled with Garma in Chapter 5.
There are several researchers interested in Aboriginal rock bands in central Australia. Recent discussions on Aboriginal contemporary music have been reinforced particularly by Dunbar-Hall and Chris Gibson. In their comprehensive overview of contemporary Aboriginal music in Deadly Sounds, Deadly Places, they insisted ‘what constitutes “traditional” music is much contested’ (2004a:17). They indicated the adverse circumstances faced by Aboriginal
musicians, such as unfair expectations by audiences, and racism and sexism in the music industry (2004b). The song ‘Nitmiluk’ of the group Blekbala Mujik, which they also researched
(2004a, 2004b), signifies the Katherine area, which is between Arnhem Land and Lajamanu. In common with a large proportion of Aboriginal rock music, it relies on a country and western feel with guitar and feature a traditional part with Arnhem Land didjeridu and clapsticks. Clinton Walker’s (2000) book, Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music, steered Larrikin Records to support Indigenous musicians by publishing a number of recordings, including a double CD compendium of historic Aboriginal country music performances (Dunbar-Hall & Gibson 2004a). In his book Walker testimonies that he became a fan of Warumpi Band when he first time heard their debut single Jailanguru Pakarnu in 1983.
Ellis (1994) indicated that the emphasis of research on still-living traditions must be changed because the singers frequently regard outside researchers as unimportant interrupters of their ceremonies. She admitted that both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers had gradually become aware that documentation itself risked creating problems in a sensitive performance culture. In Barwick’s (2000) article analysing the commodification of Indigenous song, she
criticised that very few recordings of Indigenous genres of Aboriginal song became available despite the 1990s boom in world music. The term ‘world music’, according to Tony Mitchell (1992), came into currency in 1987 as a marketing tag referring to popular music originating in countries outside the normal Anglo-American and European Australian sources of popular music, while the initial impact of world music in Australia occurred later. Murray Garde (1998, 2000) commented on internet communications of Aboriginal music in the case of the Arnhem Land Aboriginal community of Maningrida, whose internet site was established in 1995. In his
report, the Maningrida and Yothu Yindi music sites were the only two with any Indigenous input as of 1998. Nowadays a number of movie clips of Aboriginal music including Warlpiri ancestral and contemporary in Lajamanu are available in YouTube and websites related to Milpirri.
Although Milpirri does not feature country music, it is taken as a typical product of non- ancestral music in Lajamanu. Walker (2000:13) describes country music as no longer
‘contemporary’ in Aboriginal society.
Aboriginal country music is a very real phenomenon, a long and rich tradition that opened the door for all Aboriginal endeavour in popular culture to follow, and it’s a tradition that’s still alive today even though it was dented in the eighties by the advent of black rock and is now swamped in the broader marketplace by a myriad of multicultural styles.
It was again Wild who with the same field tape of Jesus Purlapa recorded the first local band in Lajamanu, named ‘Lajamanu Bushrangers’ (Wild 1979, 1987b:113). As he (2000) mentions in Country and Western Music, country music became less dominant during the 1980s and 1990s but remained an important influence in Aboriginal country-rock. Ottosson (2006:176)
concluded that gospel and country music are perceived as the ‘Oldfella’ music in Lajamanu. Rock music, a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1950s, has attracted bands in the remote communities in central Australia for decades. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar, a back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass
guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments. It is said that the major sources of inspiration to Aboriginal musicians in the late ‘70s were Bob Marley and the movie Wrong Side of the Road
depicting Aboriginal reggae bands struggling for recognition and linked with land rights (Dugan n.d.). Ottosson (2003:5) summarised how it was rare for local people to call their country music ‘contemporary’.
Almost every indigenous person I meet anywhere in the country can tell how they were brought up on country, with uncles strumming away every night on old beat-up acoustic guitars, singing old Hank Williams, Jimmy Rodgers, Tex Morton and Jimmy Reeves tunes. These tunes travelled with indigenous practitioners, vinyl records and via radio to the Centre, where touring Country Shows were other important influences from the 1930s up until the 80s. Country music has thus circulated and been reworked within indigenous social contexts for generations and few of the musicians would define it as a ‘contemporary’ or even ‘nonindigenous’ music forms.
The lyrics sung in those songs are considered to be the social background of the creation of the event of Milpirri. On the variety of Warlpiri people’s taste in music, Melinda Hinkson (2004) mentions that beyond their own ceremonial songs, people enjoy gospel and blues, country, reggae, folk, rock and roll and its precursor R and B, pop and dance music, as well as more recent genres such as Gangsta rap, or a subgenre of hip hop that reflects the violent lifestyles of some inner-city youths. All styles are represented at town concerts, which some older people as well as children and teenagers regularly attend. In the film Samson and Delilah (2009), it was notable that petrol-sniffing ‘Samson’ (Rowan McNamara) wakes up to
Indigenous rock music everyday in a Warlpiri community near Alice Springs. I will mention in the following chapter my first negative impression of another Warlpiri community – Lajamanu, full of rubbish and humbug.
North Tanami Band (see figure 2.7), together with Lajamanu Teenage Band, is important for its involvement in Milpirri and is, as Ottosson (2006) agrees, Lajamanu’s most respected band and the longest in existence. The Band’s name refers to the Tanami Desert and to lineage as a means of expressing a group’s rights to a place, a recurring theme in
contemporary Aboriginal expression (Dunbar-Hall & Gibson 2004a). They sing in Warlpiri and English about common contemporary Aboriginal community and Warlpiri history. As described in the previous chapter, the band was founded by kumunjayi Jupurrurla, the father of Zacharia Patterson Jakamarrra. Jakamarrra, the current lead vocal of the band, has succeeded in singing in both Warlpiri and English through the bilingual education program in the 1980s and is concerned about the declining standard of education: ‘Well I hope, for me I want him [his son] to learn Warlpiri first, then English come later’ (Patterson commented in ‘Going Back to Lajamanu’ 2009). This idea of bilingual education was common with Yunupiŋu who was the lead singer of Yothu Yindi and was the principal of Yirrkala Bilingual School: ‘If you have control over both languages, you have double power’ (Yunupiŋu commented in ‘Bi-Lingual Education Programs’ 1999).
Lajamanu Teenage Band also plays a mix of desert reggae, rock, gospel and rhythm and blues. As Dunbar-Hall and Gibson (2004a) mentioned, when the Band sang about land in their
Figure 2.7: Jacket of Album Warlpiri Tribe, North Tanami Band (2005)
‘Leave my Grandpa’s Land’ on their album Echo Voices, they had connected with a tradition of
rock songs by Central Australian music groups over a period of some decades. There is reggae bounce falling on beats 2 and 4 in some songs such as ‘Echo Voices’ and ‘Wiyappa Wanti Jalu’ (Don’t Drink and Drive) warning in English and Warlpiri against drinking and driving. ‘Please Come Home’ is a Warlpiri gospel styling; however, many of the other songs were pure popular
music as Aboriginal art collector Will Owen (2007) insisted in his blog series, which were selected for permanent archiving by the National Gallery of Australia (UNC Library News and Events 2014). The Band released their first album Dreamtime Hero shortly after their
performance at the Barunga Festival in 1996 (Corn 2002:227), and followed up two years later with Vision, which was nominated for an Aria Award for Best World Music Album (Australian Recording Industry Association 2012). Through the titles and lyrics of those songs, it is clear that Indigenous bands in Lajamanu emphasise prominent themes such as land, caring for children and family, prison life, drinking, and keeping culture strong, as Oien (2000) mentioned
of a typical song of Lajamanu Teenage Band in Tell Me Stories.Less prominent are love songs, which have an important role in traditional Warlpiri Yilpinji. This series of contemporary rock music might have influenced the creation of Milpirri which has a form connecting contemporary and traditional programs.
Non-ancestral music is thus not always as ‘contemporary’ as is represented in the literature, and whether Christian music and country music can be classified as ‘contemporary’ or ‘traditional’ is unclear as they are fluid and constructed concepts It can be said that research on Lajamanu’s present music has been running smoothly mainly because of Ottosson. She demonstrated that country music at least was interpreted as ‘Oldfella’ music by local people
during her field research, including at the Lajamanu Sports Weekend, which I could not observe before writing this. However, Milpirri promotes hip hop dance for Lajamanu schoolchildren with instruction by Tracks, but does not give them a chance to sing rock music on the stage as in the Sports Weekend. In a later chapter it will be necessary to see their attitude to kardiya music and how it affected their attendance at school and their original culture through Milpirri.