'From the 1950s to the 1980s, Barrtjap (Tommy Burrenjuck, c. 1925–1992) was a ritual leader and one of the most prominent singers/composers in Belyuen (Delissaville), one of the heartlands of the wangga tradition. The community’s proximity to Darwin in the Northern Territory meant that Barrtjap and his songs were heard and recorded by many visitors and tourists. Characterised by great musical inventiveness and precision of form, Barrtjap’s songs mixed his ancestral language, Batjamalh, with the utterances of the song-giving ghosts who visited him in a dream. The CD includes recordings of Barrtjap’?s repertory made by Alice Moyle, Allan Marett and other visitors to Belyuen. Barrtjap’s wife, the late Esther Burrenjuck, collaborated closely in the documentation work on Barrtjap’s repertoire, and his sons Kenny Burrenjuck (d. 2010) and Timothy Burrenjuck have carried on his songs and his legacy into the present day.' (Publication summary)
Dedication: Dedicated to the late Ester Burrenjuck, wife and mother of the singers
The recording of this CD was undertaken with the assistance of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Song documentation was supported by PARADISEC, the University of Sydney, the Australian Research Council (DP0450131 and DP1096897), the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (Western Arnhem Land Song Project) and the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia. The project was funded by the University of Sydney and the Australian Research Council.
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)
