'Early in 2010 I heard for the first time a recording of a performance of balga songs made in 1974 in Port Keats (Wadeye). Intrigued to hear this performance of balga—a dance-song genre championed by language groups of the Kimberley region, but here being sung by people some hundreds of kilometres away in the Daly region—I was immediately struck by two songs that were very similar to two songs in the balga repertory of the Ngarinyin/Wunambal composer Scotty Martin. Some months later I had the opportunity to listen to the recording in the company of Martin and other elder performers of Kimberley balga and junba. Martin immediately recognised the two songs as very much like his own. How the songs came to be performed in Port Keats in 1974, less than five years after Martin composed them, however, was a mystery, and there was much discussion about who the singers, particularly the lead singer, could possibly be. Martin, himself an expert composer and singer of song styles of the Kimberley (including all types of balga/junba and wolungarri) and the didjeridu-accompanied genres of the Daly (wangga and lirrga) provided an authoritative analysis of the songs: while the songs were indeed his and the entire repertory sounded Ngarinyin/Wunambal, they were ‘cross and square’ and ‘mixed up at the beginning’'. (Introduction)
