宅男导航

Manikay are the ancestral songs of Arnhem Land, passed down over generations and shaping relationships between people and the country.

Singing Bones foregrounds the voices of manikay singers from Ngukurr in southeastern Arnhem Land and charts their critically acclaimed collaboration with jazz musicians from the Australian Art Orchestra, Crossing Roper Bar. It offers an overview of W盲gilak manikay narratives and style, including their social, ceremonial and linguistic aspects, and explores the Crossing Roper Bar project as an example of creative intercultural collaboration and a living continuation of the manikay tradition.

鈥淭hrough song, the ancestral past animates the present, moving yol艐u (people) to dance. In song, community is established. By song, the past enfolds the present. Today, the unique voices of W盲gilak resound over the ancestral ground and water, carried by the songs of old.鈥�

Audio examples are available at:

Dr Samuel Curkpatrick is a researcher and musician with a particular interest in intercultural collaboration and Indigenous Australian music. He is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University, and teaches at Stirling Theological College, University of Divinity.

Collaboration
Preface
Glossary
Introduction

1. Impelled: songs from the ground
2. Connected in song
3. Abundant articulation: the living text of Manikay
4. Narrative constellations
5. Living bones: 鈥淭hose clapping sticks have a song鈥�
6. Grooving together: the Crossing Roper Bar collaboration
7. Interwoven voices: a brilliant aesthetic
8. Playing together: collaboration and creativity

Epilogue: new friendships
Bibliography
Discography
Appendix 1: song texts
Appendix 2: Young W盲gilak group tour and performance history
Index