Cirrus@Austlit

'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)

'Bobby Lane Lambudju (1941–1993) was a leading Wadjiginy songman at Belyuen in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose songs display a rich variety of forms, diverse melodies and even mixes of languages (his own language, Batjamalh, as well as Emmi-Mendhe, the language of his adoptive family). Three of Lambudju’s father’s brothers were prominent Wadjiginy songmen who died before he was old enough to learn from them. Their songs were held in trust for him by the Emmiyangal singer Nym Mun.gi, who passed them on to Lambudju when he was old enough. Many of Lambudju’s songs concern his country to the north of the Daly River and in particular Rak Badjalarr (North Peron Island), the place to which people from Belyuen return after their death. (Publication summary)

'Billy Mandji was a prolific and popular Belyuen songman. Active from the 1960s to the 1980s, he travelled widely and was recorded in Kununurra, Timber Creek, Oenpelli and Beswick Creek as well as his home community of Belyuen (Delissaville). He was a prominent participant in the tourist corroborees presented by people from Belyuen in various locations around Darwin and the Cox Peninsula. In addition to composing songs of his own, Billy Mandji inherited songs in Emmi-Mendhe from the Emmiyangal people with whom he lived at Belyuen, and he also sang the Emmi-Mendhe songs of Jimmy Muluk (see Muluk's Wangga ), often in the role of backup singer. His own language, Marri Tjavin, appeared rarely in his songs, and many of Mandji’s songs are composed in untranslatable ‘ghost language’. Although Allan Marett recorded Mandji’s songs in 1988, he was never able to work with him on documenting his songs, so the translations and interpretations are the result of working with other speakers, especially his extremely knowledgeable ‘daughter’ (brother’s daughter), Marjorie Knuckey Bilbil.'  (Publication summary)

'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)

'For the last 40 years or so, the Walakandha wangga, a repertory composed collaboratively by a number of Marri Tjavin singers, has been the most prominent wangga performed in Wadeye. Initiated in the mid-1960s by Stan Mullumbuk (1937–1980), the Walakandha wanggarepertory came to function as one arm of a tripartite ceremonial system organising ceremonial life at Wadeye, in complementary relationship with sister repertories djanba and lirrga. The dominant themes of the Walakandha wangga are related to the activities of the Marri Tjavin ancestral dead – the Walakandha – as givers of wangga songs and protectors of their living descendants. Longing for return to Marri Tjavin ancestral country is another common theme. Many specific places are named. Foremost among these is the hill Yendili – one of the places where Walakandha ancestors reside.' (Publication summary)

'The Ma-yawa wangga repertory was given to songmen by the Marri Ammu ancestral ghosts known as Ma-yawa. Before the late 1960s, it seems that this repertory was frequently performed at Wadeye, but nowadays Marri Ammu people join their Marri Tjavin neighbours in performing the Walakandha wangga repertory for ceremony. All but one of the Ma-yawa wangga songs were composed by the senior Marri Ammu lawman and artist Charlie Niwilhi Brinken (c. 1910–1993), but so far as we know, no recording was ever made of him singing. Maurice Tjakurl Ngulkur (Nyilco) (1940–2001), the Marri Ammu songman, inherited the repertory and added one of his own songs to it. Since his passing in 2001, the songs have rarely been performed. With its strong focus on the Dreamings (ngirrwat) and Dreaming sites (kigatiya) of the Marri Ammu people, the Ma-yawa wangga repertory holds a unique place within the corpus.' (Publication summary)

'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)

'Like many other Aboriginal song traditions, the song tradition that forms the focus of Melodies of Mourning, namely women’s crying songs (ngäthimanikay), is highly endangered and has been repeatedly identified as such by Yolngu associated with the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia (Anon. 2007). Given the fragility of this tradition, and the fact that the loss of song traditions have major implications for their owners, for the health of communities and of individuals, and for the national heritage, this book is particularly welcome and timely.' (Introduction)

'The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Murray Garde on the endangered genre of songs from western Arnhem Land in Northern Territory and another by Allan Marett on the contemporary relevance of a didjeridu-accompanied repertory recorded by Alice Moyle in the 1960s, the wangga songs of composer Jimmy Muluk.'  (Introduction)