Vendor: Õ¬Äе¼º½
Type: CD
Price: 20.00

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Barrtjap (Tommy Burrenjuck, c. 1925–1992) was a ritual leader and one of the most prominent singers/composers in Belyuen (Delissaville), one of the heartlands of the wangga tradition. The community’s proximity to Darwin in the Northern Territory meant that Barrtjap and his songs were heard and recorded by many visitors and tourists. Characterised by great musical inventiveness and precision of form, Barrtjap’s songs mixed his ancestral language, Batjamalh, with the utterances of the song-giving ghosts who visited him in a dream. The CD includes recordings made by Alice Moyle and other visitors to Belyuen as well as Marett’s own recordings. Barrtjap’s wife, the late Esther Burrenjuck, collaborated closely in the documentation work on Barrtjap’s repertoire, and his sons Kenny Burrenjuck (d. 2010) and Timothy Burrenjuck have carried on his songs and his legacy into the present day.