'Jimmy Muluk (born c. 1925, died sometime before 1986) was one of the great wangga songmen, whose musical virtuosity and love of diversity and variation are exceeded by no other singer. A Mendheyangal man, he held traditional country around the Cape Ford area south of the Daly River mouth, but he lived most of his life in and around Belyuen on the Cox Peninsula. For many years he led a dance troupe presenting performances for tourists at Mica Beach, and later at Mandorah. He also mentored younger generations of singers to perform with him in public at tourist corroborees and the Darwin Eisteddfod. The success of his strategy for intergenerational transmission of knowledge was evident when Marett and Barwick recorded the same singers, now men, in the 1990s. Muluk’s mentee, Colin Worumbu Ferguson, leads the Kenbi dancers today.' (Publication summary)
Dedication: Dedicated to the late Alice Jorrock, beloved elder of Belyuen and enthusiastic advocate for her language and culture, who helped us in many ways
For the Sake of a Song : Wangga Songmen and their Repertories
Allan Marett
,
Linda Barwick
,
Lysbeth Julie Ford
,
Sydney
:
Sydney University Press
,
2012
7074307
2012
selected work
lyric/song
Indigenous story
'Wangga is a genre of public dance-song from the Daly region of northwest Australia; the country that lies to the north and south of the mouth of the Daly River. The book (and this website) focuses on the songmen (Medjakarr in Batjamalh; Ngalinangga in Marri Tjavin) who have composed and performed wangga in the Daly region in the last fifty years.'
'Many of these singers are now deceased, though their descendants and heirs continue to perform the songs in ceremonies and various public events. At the core of the book is a corpus of some 150 wangga song texts, organised into six repertories: four from the Belyuen-based songmen Barrtjap, Muluk, Mandji and Lambudju, and two from the Wadeye-based Walakandha and Ma-yawa wangga groups, which are named after the ancestral song-giving ghosts of the Marri Tjavin and Marri Ammu people respectively.' (Source: wangga.library.usyd)
