Research Catalog

Title

The old songs are always new : singing traditions of the Tiwi Islands / Genevieve Campbell with Tiwi elders and knowledge holders.

Author

Campbell, Genevieve Anne

Publication

• Gadigal Country, NSW : Sydney University Press, 2023.
• ©2023

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xlv, 315 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits, music; 26 cm.

Summary

Perhaps the most defining feature of Tiwi song is the importance placed on the creative innovation of the individual singer/composer. Tiwi songs are fundamentally new, unique and occasion specific, and yet sit within a continuum of an oral artistic tradition. Performed in ceremony, at public events, for art and for fun, songs form the core of the Tiwi knowledge system and historical archive. Held by song custodians and taught through sung and danced ritual, generations of embodied practice are still being created and accumulated as people continue to sing. In 2009 Genevieve Campbell and eleven Tiwi colleagues travelled to Canberra to reclaim over 1300 recordings of Tiwi songs, made between 1912 and 1981, that are held in the archives at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). The Old Songs are Always New explores the return home of these recordings to the Tiwi Islands and describes the musical and vocal characteristics, performance context and cultural function of the twelve Tiwi song types, giving an overview of the linguistic and poetic devices used by Tiwi composers. For the past 16 years Campbell has been working closely with Tiwi song custodians, studying contemporary Tiwi song culture in the context of the maintenance of traditions and the development of new music forms. Their musical collaboration has resulted in public performances, community projects and recordings featuring current senior singers and the voices of the repatriated recordings. For this publication, Elders have enabled the transcription of many song texts and melodies for the first time, shedding light on how generations of Tiwi singers have connected the past with the present in a continuum of knowledge transmission and arts practice.

Series Statement

Indigenous music, language and performing arts

Subject

• Songs, Tiwi (Australia) > History and criticism
• Folk songs, Aboriginal Australian > Australia > Tiwi Islands (N.T.) > History and criticism
• Tiwi (Australian people) > Music > History and criticism
• Tiwi (Australian people) > Folklore
• Folk songs, Aboriginal Australian
• Tiwi (Australian people)
• Northern Territory > Tiwi Islands

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• Folklore

Note

• "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this publication contains names and images of people who have died. The inclusion of any names, voices and/or images of deceased people is done with the permission of their family"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliograpical references (pages 291-301) and index.

Call Number

JMF 23-301

ISBN

• 9781743328750
• 1743328753
• 9781743328767 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781743328842 (canceled/invalid)

OCLC

1371815137

Author

Campbell, Genevieve Anne, author.

Title

The old songs are always new : singing traditions of the Tiwi Islands / Genevieve Campbell with Tiwi elders and knowledge holders.

Publisher

Gadigal Country, NSW : Sydney University Press, 2023.

Copyright Date

©2023

Type of Content

text

still image

notated music

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Indigenous music, language and performing arts

Bibliography

Includes bibliograpical references (pages 291-301) and index.

Other Form:

ebook version : 9781743328767

Research Call Number

JMF 23-301