Indigenizing a ‘canon’
The entry of ‘My Island Home’, ‘Baba Waiar’ and ‘Kulba Yaday’ into the repertoire of community choirs
Keywords:
Christine Anu, community choirs, national identityAbstract
The closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney opened with a performance by Christine Anu of ‘My Island Home’, bringing the song to a global stage. Anu also popularized two songs from the Torres Strait Islands, ‘Baba Waiar’ and ‘Kulba Yaday’. Like ‘My Island Home’, both songs are performed frequently by community choirs. The article examines the shifting contexts of ‘My Island Home’, ‘Baba Waiar’ and ‘Kulba Yaday’ from their origins through popular song and into community choirs. That each song was made popular by Anu is both illustrative of and unique in the contemporary indigenizing of the canon as a whole. It is argued that the flow of the songs is connected to the desire for community choirs to express and perform the evolving and converging processes of reconciliation and national identity.
References
ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics). 2011. Census of Population and Housing: Counts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/data (accessed 12 November 2012).
—2013. Australian Demographic Statistics, March 2013. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/3101.0 (accessed 8 October 2013).
Altman, Jon, and Melinda Hinkson, eds. 2007. Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia. Melbourne: Arena.
—2010. Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Anu, Christine. 2009. ‘A Thank You Note from Christine Anu’. http://masalai.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/daughter-of-the-saltwater-people-christine-anu (accessed 19 November 2012).
Anu, Helen. n.d. Koori Radio. http://www.gadigal.org.au/kooriradio/BroadcasterProfileClient.aspx (accessed 13 April 2012).
Auguste, Isabelle. 2010. ‘On the Significance of Saying “Sorry”: Apology and Reconciliation in Australia’. In Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory and Indigenous Australia, ed. F. Peters-Little, A. Curthoys and J. Docker, 309–24. Canberra: ANU e-press.
Australian Art Orchestra. 2012. Crossing Roper Bar Program Notes. http://aao.com.au/projects/program/crossing-roper-bar (accessed 21 November 2013).
Barney, Katelyn. 2005. ‘Celebration or Cover Up? “My Island Home”, Australian National Identity and the Spectacle of Sydney 2000’. In Aesthetics and Experience in Music Performance, ed. E. Mackinlay, D. Collins and S. Owens, 141–50. Buckinghamshire: Cambridge Scholars Press.
—2006. ‘“Women Singing Up Big”: The Growth of Contemporary Music Recordings by Indigenous Australian Women Artists’. Australian Aboriginal Studies 1: 44–56.
—2007. ‘On the Margins: Torres Strait Islander Women Performing Contemporary Music’. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 1(2): 70–90.
Barney, Katelyn, and Lexine Solomon. 2009. ‘“The Memories Linger On, but the Stories Tell Me Who I Am”: A Conversation between an Indigenous Australian Performer and a Non-Indigenous Music Researcher’. In Musical Islands: Exploring Connections between Music, Place and Research, ed. Elizabeth Mackinlay, Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Katelyn Barney, 70–93. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Beckett, Jeremy. 1981. Modern Music of Torres Strait. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Castejon, Vanessa. 2002. ‘Aboriginal Affairs: Monologue or Dialogue?’ Journal of Australian Studies 75: 27–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14443050209387800
Connell, John. 1999. ‘“My Island Home”: The Politics and Poetics of the Torres Strait’. In Small Worlds, Global Lives: Islands and Migration, ed. R. King and J. Connell, 195–213. London: Pinter.
Crofts, Penny. 2008. ‘Of Public Space: My Island Home’. Public Space: The Journal of Law and Social Justice 1. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/PubSpace/2008/1.html (accessed 20 February 2014).
Dan, Henry ‘Seaman’, and Karl Neuenfeldt. 2013. Steady Steady: The Life and Music of Seaman Dan. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Downie, Ellaine. 1996. ‘Why a cappella? Why Women? Why Now? The a cappella Movement in Popular Music in Australia from 1987–1995’. Unpublished MA thesis, Monash University.
Dreyer, Anne. 1954. Anne Dreyer’s Aboriginal Songs for You and Me. Melbourne: D. Davis & Co.
Feld, Steven. 2000. ‘A Sweet Lullaby for World Music’. Public Culture 12(1): 145–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/08992363-12-1-145
Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Godwell, D. 2000. ‘The Olympic Branding of Aborigines: The 2000 Olympic Games and Australia’s Indigenous Peoples’. In The Olympics at the Millennium: Power, Politics and the Games, ed. K. Schaffer and S. Smith, 243–57. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Harbison, Melissa. 1995. ‘Island Way Brought to Life’. Koori Mail, 17 May: 20.
Hayward, Phillip. 1993. ‘Safe, Exotic and Somewhere Else: Yothu Yindi, Treaty and the Mediation of Aboriginality’. Perfect Beat 1(2): 33–42.
Hore, Rachel. 2012. Personal communications, 16 and 18 April.
Ingamells, Ann. 2010. ‘Closing the Gap: Some Unsettling Assumptions’. Journal of Social Inclusion 1(1): 7–22.
Jose, Nicholas. 2003. ‘Necklace of Pearl: A Review of North of Capricorn: The Untold Story of Australia’s North’. Australia Book Review, November: 11–12.
Lawe Davies, Chris, and Karl Neuenfeldt. 2004. ‘Mainland Torres Strait Islander Songwriters and the “Magical Islands” of the Torres Strait: Songs as Identity Narratives’. In Island Musics, ed. Kevin Dawe, 137–51. Oxford: Berg.
Lehmann, Beat. 2012. Personal correspondence, 11 November.
Lloyd, Jessie. 2010. Interview, 14 January.
—2012. Personal correspondence, 13 November.
Loos, N., and K. Mabo. 1996. Eddie Koiki Mabo: His Life and Struggle for Land Rights. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
Mabo, Eddie Koiki. 2005. ‘Music of the Torres Strait’. In Landscapes of Indigenous Performance: Music, Song and Dance of the Torres Strait and Arnhem Land, ed. Fiona Magowan and Karl Neuenfeldt, 46–56. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Mackinlay, Elizabeth. 2000. ‘Blurring Boundaries between Restricted and Unrestricted Performance: A Case Study of the Ngadirdji of Yanyuwa Women in Borroloola’. Perfect Beat 4: 73–85.
McCloskey, Patrick. 2008. ‘Voices in the Desert’. Koori Mail, 24 September: 29.
McCloskey, Patrick, and Katrina Stowe. 2008. Many Roads One Voice: A Choral Event Embracing Diversity, Uniting Cultures in a Celebration of Song. http://www.myspace.com/caamamusic/blog/423746058 (accessed 9 June 2009).
McMahon, Elizabeth. 2003. ‘The Gilded Cage: From Utopia to Monad in Australia’s Island Imaginary’. In Islands in History and Representation, ed. Rod Edmond and Vanessa Smith, 190–202. London: Routledge.
McRae, Loani. 2012. Personal communication, 12 November.
Magowan, Fiona, and Karl Neuenfeldt, eds. 2005. Landscapes of Indigenous Performance: Music, Song and Dance of the Torres Strait and Arnhem Land. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Mar, Phillip. 1997. ‘“Island Home”: Cover Versions’. Communal/Plural 5: 145–51.
Merlan, Francesca. 2005. ‘Indigenous Movements in Australia’. Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 473–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.34.081804.120643
Mitchell, Rod. 2013. Personal correspondence, 25 October.
Mitchell, Tony. 1996. ‘Real Wild Child: Australian Popular Music and National Identity’. In Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania, ed. Tony Mitchell, 173–213. London: Leicester University Press.
Moore, Allan F. 2012. Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song. Farnham: Ashgate.
Murray, Neil. 2008. Native Born: Songs of Neil Murray. Melbourne: One Day Hill.
—2010. Personal conversation, 2 November.
Neuenfeldt, Karl. 2003. Interview with Miseron Levi. TRC 5013. Canberra: National Library of Australia.
—2004. Interview with Henry Dan. TRC5543: National Library of Australia.
—2012. Personal correspondence.
—2013. Personal correspondence.
Ottosson, Åse. 2010. ‘Aboriginal Music and Passion: Interculturality and Difference in Australian Desert Towns’. Ethnos 75(3): 277. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2010.503899
Perry, David. 2009. dirtsong: The Black Arm Band. Melbourne International Arts Festival. http://www.melbournefestival.com.au/assets/education/MelbFest_dirtsong_EdPack.pdf (accessed 8 November 2012).
Reed, L. 2002. ‘“Awakening”: The Politics of Indigenous Control and Authenticity at Sydney 2000’. Australian Music Research 7: 92–102.
Reynolds, Henry. 2003. North of Capricorn. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Rickwood, Julie Ann. 1997. ‘Liberating Voices: Towards an Ethnography of Women’s Community a cappella Choirs in Australia’. Unpublished MA thesis, Australian National University.
—1998. ‘Embodied a cappella: The Experience of Singing a Displaced Eclectic Repertoire’. Perfect Beat 3(4): 68–84.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1979. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press.
Schlech, Susan, and Jane Haggis. 2001. ‘Migrancy, Multiculturalism and Whiteness: Re-charting Core Identities in Australia’. Communal/Plural 9(2): 143–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13207870120081460
Seden, Nia, and Tionne Seden. 2011. ‘Gondwana National Indigenous Children’s Choir and the Cairns Residency’. Behind the Swirl, Gondwana Choirs Choristers Edition, August. http://www.gondwanachoirs.com.au/behindtheswirl/choristersedition.pdf (accessed 13 April 2012).
Short, Damien. 2003. ‘Reconciliation, Assimilation, and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia’. International Political Science Review 24(4): 491–513. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/01925121030244005
Slater, Lisa. 2007. ‘My Island Home is Waiting for Me: The Dreaming Festival and Archipelago Australia’. Continuum 21(4): 571–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304310701630019
Smith, Graeme. 2003. ‘Folk Music Revival’. In Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia, ed. John Whiteoak and Aline Scott-Maxwell, 286–89. Sydney: Currency House.
—2005. Singing Australia: A History of Folk and Country Music. Melbourne: Pluto Press.
—2008. ‘Folk Music: Movements, Scenes and Styles’. In Sounds of Then, Sounds of Now, ed. Shane Homan and Tony Mitchell, 151–66. Hobart: ACYS.
Stratton, Jon. 2006. ‘Two Rescues, One History: Everyday Racism in Australia’. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 12(6): 657–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630601030867
Straw, Will. 1991. ‘Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music’. Cultural Studies 5(3): 368–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502389100490311
Strelein, Lisa. 2005. ‘From Mabo to Yorta Yorta: Native Title Law in Australia’. Washington University Journal of Law and Policy 19: 225–71.
Subasic, Emina, and Katherine J. Reynolds. 2009. ‘Beyond “Practical” Reconciliation: Intergroup Inequality and the Meaning of Non-Indigenous Identity’. Political Psychology 30(2): 243–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00690.x
Turino, Thomas. 2008. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
van Leeuwen, Theo. 1988. ‘Music and Ideology: Notes towards a Socio-semiotics of Mass Media Music’. Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture Working Papers 2(1): 29–30.
York, Frank A. 1995. ‘Island Song and Musical Growth: Toward Culturally Based School Music in the Torres Strait Islands’. Research Studies in Music Education 4: 28–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1321103X9500400105
Young, Graham. 2000. ‘Reconciliation to a European Dreaming?’ ON LINE opinion—Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/print.asp?article=3133 (accessed 10 November 2009).
