The Gift of Song

The Gift of Song: Performing Exchange in Western Arnhem Land draws on first-person ethnographic fieldwork, to examine how Bininj/Arrarrkpi (Aboriginal people of this region) enact change and innovate their performance practices through ceremonial exchange.

Reuben Brown is a non-Indigenous (Settler/Balanda) applied ethnomusicologist specialising in Indigenous song and dance practices from western Arnhem Land (kun-borrk/manyardi). Brown has co-authored publications with Indigenous Australian ceremony leaders as well as musicologists, linguists, anthropologists, and historians on the relationship between language and song and the reuse of archival recordings to support transmission of Indigenous knowledge. Brown is an ARC DECRA research fellow at the Research Unit for Indigenous Languages, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. His DECRA project investigates how ceremonial performance at Indigenous festivals in northern Australia enacts diplomacy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants, and between different clan and language groups.

1. Following Footsteps 2. 'They Still Help Us': Legacies of Exchange 3. 'You Belong to Gunbalanya': A Reburial Ceremony 4. 'It's a Secret, For You': A Mamurrng Ceremony 5. 'That Spirit Changed My Voice': A Funeral Ceremony for Nakodjok 6. 'I'll Tell You This Corroboree Song': An Intercultural Exchange in 1948 7. 'Join in and Dance': Festivals and New Forms of Exchange 8. 'We're All Family Now': Understanding the Exchange