Guthi Girrmara ‘Stirring Up Songs’: reawakening archived Wangaaypuwan and Wiradjuri songs to inform our culture, language and identity

• Main Author: Hodgetts, Jesse
• Other Authors: University of Newcastle. The Wollotuka Institute, The Wollotuka Institute
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Aboriginal; First Nations; Decolonisation; Indigenous; Ngiyampaa; Wangaaypuwan; Wiradjuri; Indigenous Song; Indigenous Music; Indigenous Language; Indigenous Musicology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1478740

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) How can Indigenous peoples today engage with archival audio song material, recorded many decades ago by our Ancestors in their traditional languages, in ways that can inform our Songlines, Corroborees and Cultural practice today? Song has always been, and still is, an essential medium in which First Nations people share knowledge and experience. In current Aboriginal Language and Cultural revitalisation programs, traditional Aboriginal song forms can be overlooked or replaced with Western musical song forms further contributing to colonisation and loss of cultural diversity. This research set out to explore the cultural expressions, story, knowledge and song styles of traditional Wangaaypuwan and Wiradjuri songs and singers from my Country in western New South Wales, based predominantly on audio archives of the 1960s through to the 1980s. The songs on these recordings are sung by fluent speakers of Aboriginal Languages and appear to still have a recognisably 'traditional' sound, with little or no western influence. It quickly became apparent that western musical notation and analysis, while a helpful starting point, were insufficient to pinpoint the most culturally salient features of that 'traditional sound' that Wangaaypuwan and Wiradjuri descendants still recognise today. It was necessary to develop new, decolonised analytical categories and methods to capture the song features that are meaningful to the inheritors of this song tradition - the ‘magic’ of the songs that resonate with Country and with our spirit. This thesis proposes new ways of analysing those features of song style and Language, and suggests how the knowledge drawn from old songs can assist with Cultural revitalisation. It informs contemporary Wangaaypuwan and Wiradjuri Song and our Corroborees, ensuring that our Mayi (First Nations) ways of knowing, being, and celebrating remain sovereign and continuous.