Aboriginal Song Renewal

In this project, the team of researchers have worked with community members to renew and regenerate song practices. We don’t present these as definitive versions but rather offer them as creative interpretations that we hope will inspire others to develop their own interpretations into the future. These interpretations have already sparked new efforts to sing these songs again, and are taking on new lives among members of speaker communities. We hope to see further proliferations into the future.

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Fishing Song

This song was sung by women coming ashore at Tubowgule where the Sydney Opera House now stands. Documented in several early colonial sources, it has been reconstructed through the singing of Darug women led by Jacinta Tobin.

Snow

Song

John Lhotsky likely first heard this song of the Ngarigu people at Mutong hut, near present-day Dalgety, in the Australian Alps at the end of March 1834. We share performances on the banks of the river at Mutong, where Lhotsky first witnessed this performance, as well as a public performance at Sydney Conservatorium of Music

Koorinda Braia

Ngarigu people have experimented with singing this song recorded by Monaro pastoralist Henry Tingcombe and arranged by composer Isaac Nathan. Two versions of this ongoing revitalisation process are shared here - one a group singing on Country near Jindabyne, and the second a diplomatic presentation to the Governor of NSW in Government House on Gadigal Country.

Newly Created Songs

Workshops on old songs have generated something new

Publications

Foster, Shannon and Amanda Harris, ‘Informing practice through collaboration: listening to colonising histories and Aboriginal music’, in Creative Research in Music: Informed practice, innovation and transcendence, Anna Reid, Neal Peres Da Costa & Jeanell Carrigan (eds.) (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 82-92.

Troy, Jakelin, ‘Singing from the Mountains: when things really go right in Indigenous research a story of creative collaboration and Ngarigu cultural renewal’ in Keeping Time, Sally Treloyn, Amanda Harris, Nick Thieberger & Myfany Turpin (eds.) (Sydney: Sydney University Press, forthcoming 2024).