Garma 2004

Third Garma Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance, 7–9 August 2004

Conveners: Professor Marcia Langton (The University of Melbourne), Professor Allan Marett (The University of Sydney) and Dr Mandawuy Yunupingu (Yothu Yindi Foundation)

The clear high sound of a yidaki (didjeridu) rings out across Gulkula as a lone player painted in the colours of his Gumatj ancestors calls all in attendance at the Garma Festival of Traditional Culture to ceremony. This is the way it has always been done even since Ganbulapula, the great ancestral leader, led the very first Djalumbu ceremony at Gulkula and founded laws that Yolngu have observed to this day.

Bunggul (ceremony) is the root medium of intellectual, legal and religious discourse in Yolngu society through which disciplines in music, dance and design are drawn together to realise the laws for rom (correct practice, the way) bestowed upon Yolngu by their ancestors. Music and dance are also central to the Garma Festival. It was the work of Mandawuy Yunupingu’s celebrated band, Yothu Yindi, in promoting Yolngu culture worldwide that inspired the establishment of the Yothu Yindi Foundation in 1990. A Djalumbu ceremony culminating in the erection of a larrkitj (hollow log coffin) and a towering statue of Ganbulapula was led by Galarrwuy Yunupingu to inaugurate the Garma Festival in 1999. Since then, traditional performers from throughout northern Australia have participated in nightly ceremonial performances at each festival.

Each year, selected students from all over the world travel to the Garma Festival to participate in yidaki master classes led by the incomparable Djalu Gurruwiwi while young bands from neighbouring communities are encouraged to workshop their music at the Yirrnga Studio in nearby Gunyangara. This facility was officially opened in 1999 with an unforgettable concert by Yothu Yindi, and it has also been used to record albums for the Yothu Yindi Foundation Contemporary Masters’ Series which features some of the most talented traditional singers and didjeridu players in Australia. Albums in this series can be purchased at the festival or on-line from Skinny Fish Music.

The Garma Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance was inaugurated with funding from AIATSIS at the fourth Garma Festival of Traditional Culture in 2002. It drew together traditional performers from northern Australia and Papua New Guinea, and culminated in the release of the Garma Statement on Indigenous Music and Performance which called for the formulation of the National Recording Project for Indigenous Music. At this year’s symposium, Dr Yunupingu will lead discussions about the festival’s nightly bunggul performances, and Professor Marett will initiate discussion about the Yothu Yindi Foundation’s new research venture with the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney: the National Recording Project for Indigenous Music.

Our program will include:

• morning discussions on Saturday, Sunday and Monday of Dhalwangu and Gupapuyngu participation in nightly bunggul performances, and of historical Asian influences in Yolngu manikay (song) series;
• and afternoon discussions on Saturday and Sunday of preservation, documentation and access issues that are central to the National Recording Project for Indigenous Music featuring our special guests, the Bauls of Bengal.

Dr Aaron Corn, Secretary