A Musicologist’s Wishlist

Linda Barwick’s paper in Language Documentation and Description (3) (SOAS)

This paper summarises some of the issues that have arisen for me in my collaborations with linguists in documentation of Australian song. It provides pointers for recording techniques and guidelines as to some of the things that musicologists would like to know about musical performance, especially in the case of musical traditions and practices transmitted orally within small language groups (as is typically the case for documentation of musical traditions in endangered languages).

2003 Paradisec Conference

From Transient Languages and Cultures, the proceedings of the 2003 PARADISEC workshop on Researchers, communities, institutions and sound recordings. There are many papers directly and indirectly relevant to fieldwork with Indigenous Australian languages.

Murriny Patha song project

MP song: There’s also a community-oriented version of the site here.

From the project web site:

Our project documents the language and music of public songs and dances composed and performed by Murrinh-patha-speaking people, most of whom now live in the community of Wadeye (Northern Territory). The three main song genres are thanpa, wurlthirri and malkarrin.

PROJECT AIMS
1. To document historical recordings and contemporary performance of the three Murrinh-patha song genres at Wadeye
.2. To consider the interrelationships (historical and contemporary) of these Murrinh-patha genres with other genres of public dance song at Wadeye and neighbouring areas.
3. To assess the musical and linguistic significance of these genres in the wider Australian and international context.
4. To develop appropriate models for conserving, documenting, discovering, accessing and using the recordings and other materials within the community and outside, as an exemplar for other cultural documentation projects.