ATS1346 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Natural Sounds, Circular Breathing, Didgeridoo
25 May 2018
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Week 9 – Traditional Australian Indigenous Musics
Music and Music-making in Indigenous Australia
• Dreamtime
o Important for identity making
• Cosmology
o How do we relate to world and spirit world around us
• Aboriginal notions of ‘time’
o Aboriginal don’t consider time as linear but non linear
▪ Past in present
▪ Believe ancestors is always with them so need music to keep
connection strong
• Totemism/Animism
o Connected to environment
o Totem can be object: animal/rock → symbols for groups to identify
themselves
o Relationship individual or group has with natural objects or elements
(wind/fire)
o Animism: believe all living things have a soul
• Musicking the land
o People are in clans
o Use songs as maps and story telling to keep knowledge alive – passed
down through story telling – oral not written
• Song lines
o Help demarcate your land from someone elses land
o Link between present and past
o E.g. Seven Sisters Songlines – Josephine Mick (1994)
• Connects people with ancestors and people now
Instruments, sound production and geographical location
• Boomerang clapsticks – blima (Yolngu language)
o Sparse around Western and central Australia
• Stick against ground
o Sparse in central and western Australia
• Skin drum
o Only northern of Queensland
• Bark or skin pads
• Hollow log drums
• Wooden gongs
• Bull roar
• Use of plants – gum leaves
• Seed rattles
• Natural sounds
o Body percussion
▪ Hand clapping
▪ Lap/thigh slapping
▪ Foot stamping
o Vocal sounds
▪ Can imitate animals
▪ Hissing
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