Tiwi + Jazz Program

MAGIC MIRRORS SPIEGELTENT MERITON FESTIVAL VILLAGE 20 JANUARY 75MINS NO INTERVAL

Awi Mamanta, ngawa Ngarukuruwala group ngawa kukunari ngini ngawa ngintirikuruwala kangi Sydney Festival.

Anganuwanga kukunari ngimpurumi awuta ngawa mantawi kapi wuta pitirikipinga. Ngawatuwu ngimpitimarti tuwanga ngini ngawa ngarukuruwala.

Wangatunga mamirnikuwi.

Dear friends, we in the Ngarukuruwala group are happy to be performing at Sydney Festival. We are very pleased to meet you all and to share our songs with you. Singing makes us feel happy and strong, and we hope you have a good time with us as we sing.

TIWI + JAZZ AUSTRALIA

TIWI + JAZZ AUSTRALIA

PERFORMERS Calista Kantilla, Regina Kantilla,Teresita Puruntatameri, Mary Elizabeth Moreen, Karen Tipiloura, Leonie Tipiloura, Jacinta Tipungwuti, and (also on guitar) Cynthia Portaminni.

We are honoured to have senior songman Eustace Tipiloura performing with us tonight. He, Calista and Leonie are the last elders in Wurrumiyanga who have full knowledge of the old song language.

Violin Michelle Kelly Viola Virginia Comerford Bass Clarinet Jason Noble Trumpet Casey Nicholson Trombone Simon Bartlett French Horn Genevieve Campbell Double Bass Dave Ellis Drums Jamie Cameron Sound Bob Wheatley Thanks to Arts NT Regional Arts Fund, AIATSIS (Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies), Australia Council for the Arts, Mantiupwi Country Group, Primary Communication, Tiwi Land Council, Tiwi Islands Training and Education Board, Hardy Aviation, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney.

Fabric designs by BIMA Wear, Wurrumiyanga, Bathurst Island. Ceremonial spear by Bede Tungutalum.

All archive recordings and text transcriptions are presented with the permission of Tiwi Traditional Owners and follow all protocols of cultural respect.

CREATORS’ NOTES The Wangatunga Strong Women’s Group are from Bathurst and Melville Islands, north of Darwin. We grew up together and have been singing together for many years, first as children learning from our elders and now teaching our grandchildren.

Ngarukuruwala means ‘we sing’. It is how we describe the connection we share and the way we spend our day. Our songs are about our people.

We hear stories. We put stories into songs, so singing and dancing about everything is how we maintain our culture. We don’t write things down like you mob. Our songs are our history books. We are respected as elders and leaders in the community because of our knowledge of Tiwi stories about the land, the animals and the spirits, the ceremonies and the old language.

Tonight you will hear Tiwi voices recorded in 1912, 1928, 1954 and 1975. These, our direct family ancestors, have long-since passed away. They have all had their Yiloti (final) Pukumani ceremonies and so there are no restrictions on you hearing their voices – in fact, as Traditional Owners we are proud to be sharing the talents of these important songmen and women of the past. We hope to inspire the next generation to continue their song tradition by showing how the old songs are still relevant in a modern world.

TERESITA PURUNTATAMERI AND REGINA KANTILLA

Since 2007, as Ngarukuruwala, the Tiwi Strong Women’s Group and musos from down south have shared songs and musical ideas to create some new versions of old songs. In 2009, eleven Tiwi elders and I visited AIATSIS in Canberra to reclaim Tiwi songs, collected by anthropologists over the last century.

This was a significant and moving experience for the group as they heard the recorded voices of great-grandfathers, and even their younger selves, for the first time. The repatriation of this material has informed all our collaborative work since and has had a great impact in the community as elders use it to maintain ceremony and language.

All our music starts from the Tiwi original, closely following the traditional song form or re-working old melodies with a healthy amount of improv thrown in. A defining feature of Tiwi music is that it has always been ‘contemporary’.

Song texts use the first person and present tense, placing each song in the ‘now’, every time it is heard. Tiwi + Jazz comes in the middle of a recording project that explores musical, cultural and emotional intuition as we create a series of duets with recordings selected from the archive by elders. We’re bringing the recordings (and, through their voices, the ancestors themselves) into this space as co-performer, creating a personal connection and transmission of experience between them and all of us – past and present. Tiwi songs are items of significant Australian musical heritage that we should all be proud of.

As the old ladies say, what we sing is who we are.

GENEVIEVE CAMPBELL

This project is assisted by the Australian Government’s Major Festivals Initiative in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals, Sydney Festival, Perth International Arts Festival, Malthouse Theatre and Auckland Arts Festival.