'The day I was finalising this edition of Australian Aboriginal Studies a book about Aboriginal music landed on my desk. Our Place, Our Music (edited by M . Breen, Aboriginal Studies Press 1989) arrived too late to be reviewed here, but no doubt it will receive the attention it deserves in a subsequent edition. Its significance in the context of some of the pages that follow here is that it is a further addition to an area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies which seems to be under-represented. It had been my intention in editing a volume that had music as a theme to elicit some substantial contributions discussing the new music that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are producing today. I was not particularly successful. This is not to denigrate those excellent studies of so called 'traditional' music, of which the first two papers are good examples. However, there is an apparent lack of material available on electronic music (for example) and other popular contemporary genres. Despite requests fired in various directions, I was unable to secure papers on any of these topics. Perhaps those who contemplate research in the arts field generally will be inspired to fill this gap. Having listened on many occasions to the thump and rhythm of electric soul across the tropic twilight of a number of Arnhem Land communities, I wonder how anyone interested in music and modern social movements could resist this as a research topic.' (Editorial introduction)
Contents indexed selectively.
'In the introduction to his article 'Mystery and Change' (1987), Peter Sutton, while noting with implicit approval that ethnomusicology seems to be shifting away from 'close descriptions and essentially musicological analyses of Aboriginal songs' towards a 'deeper and more balanced approach' that investigates 'the relationships between music and the wider context of Aboriginal culture', states that 'there are always good reasons for some continuance of narrow and formalist studies of cultural expression' (1987:77). Sutton's article then goes on to discuss regularities and irregularities in song performance rights, song language, song text stability, and the ways in which song texts and their sequences relate to the events in accompanying mythological explanations. H e suggests that exceptions to the regularities proposed by Aboriginal theories are essential to the vitality of the culture: 'it is the dialectical interplay between regularities and irregularities which constitutes the system' (ibid.:88); and he concludes that a truly unchanging musical system (as appears to be proposed by Central Australian cosmology, and implicitly, by some ethnomusicologists) 'would have had far-ranging destructive effects on a traditional Aboriginal community. An evolving musical tradition in such a society is not merely decorative but essential' (ibid.:90).' (Publication abstract)
'It is a sad task to have to announce the death of someone as brilliant, lively and witty as Don Laycock. He was born in Newcastle on 6 October 1936 and died in Canberra, 27 December 1988 after a short illness. Don was a man of wide interests whose publications include such diverse items as the book The Best Bawdry (1982), articles on extraterrestial languages and on the history of card-games. Although his professional work was primarily concerned with the New Guinea area, he had an involvement with Aboriginal studies going back thirty years.' (Introduction)
'This is the second of Richard Moyle's books on central Australian Aboriginal music, following Songs of the Pintupi (R. Moyle 1979). In general, it follows the same format with an ethnographic introduction, an account of song categories, a chapter each on musical instruments, musical ethnography, musical analysis and notation, and a conclusion. In Alyawarra Music, the ethnographic component is considerably extended in comparison with Songs of the Pintupi, both in the general introduction and in the musical ethnography. Otherwise, the organisation of the material, the issues addressed, and the style of analysis are essentially similar. The author himself acknowledges that Alyawarra Music builds on the ideas and methods of Songs of the Pintupi. A bonus of this book is the small disc of recorded musical examples that comes in a cover sleeve. There are few commercially available recordings of central Australian Aboriginal music. Of the nine short examples on the disc (they range from seventeen seconds to one minute in duration) only four are represented in musical notation in the book, although the texts of all examples are given. It is a pity that the matching of recorded music with musical notation in general is not better facilitated, especially as it would have been a relatively simple matter to give references to the AIAS tape archive where the recordings are lodged. Despite this and the small number and duration of recorded examples, w e must be grateful for this addition to the readily available recordings of central Australian songs.' (Introduction)
