Tropes of Longing and Belonging: Nostalgia and Musical Instruments in Northeast Arnhem Land

Author:

Toner P.G.

Abstract

In the musical traditions of the Yolngu of northeast Arnhem Land, in northern Australia, the evocation of ancestrally-significant places is of primary ideological and aesthetic importance. This is primarily done through song texts, when a singer “paints a picture” of a place in the mind's eye of the audience; when done with great skill, such evocation can produce strong feelings of nostalgia as listeners recall those places and the personal and ancestral events which took place there. Musical instruments can also be used in this way, either through tropes in the song texts, which make reference to the instrument and its ancestral significance, or through the actual sound of the instrument as an enacted trope during the musical performance itself. In either case, the mention or use of musical instruments can resonate powerfully with ideas about ancestors, people and places, making musical instruments important symbols in Yolngu culture.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Subject

Music

Reference44 articles.

1. Melody and the Musical Articulation of Yolngu Identities

2. There has been an interesting shift in the marketing of the didjeridu to accommodate the increasing number of non-Aboriginal players from around the world seeking “authentic” instruments. For many years the few didjeridus available through Aboriginal art centres in Arnhem Land were sold as art objects. Today, however, there is a demand for didjeridus as musical instruments. They are still elaborately decorated, but they are also marketed as instruments tuned to a particular key.

3. In addition to the religious property (songs, dances, artistic designs, and so on) of their own patrifilial group, Yolngu people also have rights in and responsibilities toward the religious property of the patrifilial groups of their mothers (nga nd ipulu) and their mother's mothers (märipulu). These rights and responsibilities find their expression in both ritual and non-ritual contexts.

4. Song textual glosses for this and other place names were provided as “Darwin”, the capital city of the Northern Territory, but subsequent discussion revealed that the terms could refer to any city and may have been used originally in reference to Macassar.

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