LibGuides: First Nations Resources: Music

Music

Homeland Calling by Ellen van Neerven, Danzal Baker
Homeland Calling is a collection of poems created from hip-hop song lyrics that channel culture and challenge stereotypes. Written by First Nations youth from communities all around Australia, the powerful words display a maturity beyond their years. Edited by award-winning author and poet Ellen van Neerven, and brought to you by Desert Pea Media, the verses in this book are the result of young artists exploring their place in the world, expressing the future they want for themselves and their communities. These young people are the future, and their passion for their culture, languages and homelands is beyond inspiring.
Landscapes of Indigenous Performance by Fiona Magowan; Karl Neuenfeldt (Editor)
This collection shows how traditional music and dance have responded to colonial control in the past and more recently to other external forces beyond local control. It looks at musical pasts and presents as a continuum of creativity; at contemporary cultural performance as a contested domain; and at cross-cultural issues of recording and teaching music and dance as experienced by Indigenous leaders and educators and non-Indigenous researchers and scholars.
Songlines by Margo Neale & Lynne Kelly
Songlines are an archive for powerful knowledges that ensured Australia's many Indigenous cultures flourished for over 60,000 years. Much more than a navigational path in the cartographic sense, these vast and robust stores of information are encoded through song, story, dance, art and ceremony, rather than simply recorded in writing. Weaving deeply personal storytelling with extensive research on mnemonics, Songlines offers unique insights into Indigenous traditional knowledges, how they apply today and how they could help all peoples thrive into the future. This book invites readers to understand a remarkable way for storing knowledge in memory by adapting song, art, and most importantly, Country, into their lives.
Songlines: First Knowledges for Younger Readers by Margo Neale & Lynne Kelly
Margo Ngawa Neale and Lynne Kelly invite you on a journey through the oldest, biggest library of knowledge on Earth. This knowledge isn't held in books: you will find it in Songlines of the land, sea and sky. This introduction to Indigenous traditional knowledges covers history, art, song, science and more. Find out what Songlines are, how they work, and how they can help all people thrive into the future.
Songspirals by Gay'wu Group of Women
Wuymirri -- Wikun -- Guwak -- Wititj -- Goŋ-gurtha.
'We want you to come with us on our journey, our journey of songspirals. Songspirals are the essence of people in this land, the essence of every clan. We belong to the land and it belongs to us. We sing to the land, sing about the land. We are that land. It sings to us.' Aboriginal Australian cultures are the oldest living cultures on earth and at the heart of Aboriginal cultures is song. These ancient narratives of landscape have often been described as a means of navigating across vast distances without a map, but they are much, much more than this. Songspirals are sung by Aboriginal people to awaken Country, to make and remake the life-giving connections between people and place. Songspirals are radically different ways of understanding the relationship people can have with the landscape. For Yolngu people from North East Arnhem Land, women and men play different roles in bringing songlines to life, yet the vast majority of what has been published is about men's place in songlines.

Gurrumul by Robert Hillman
One of the most inspiring music stories of our generation. From concert halls to recording studios and into Aboriginal heartlands, this is the story of Australia's Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. This unique Indigenous man is one of the most inspiring music stories of our generation. Part road trip, part biography, Robert Hillman's account of Gurrumul's life and music offers rare insights into the sources of his inspiration.
Steady Steady by Henry 'Seaman' Dan; Karl Neuenfeldt
Replete with Seaman Dan's stories of his active and sometimes dangerous life in Queensland, Australia, as a boat captain and pearl diver, this memoir follows his fascinating life and later development as a professional singer and musician. From his birth on Thursday Island in 1929 through the release of his albums following his 70th birthday, this account showcases traditional music from the Torres Strait Islands--which brings together Polynesian, Melanesian, and Indigenous Australian traditions--and reflects the important periods in the life of this Australian national treasure.
Tell Me Why: The Story of my Life and my Music by Archie Roach
A powerful memoir of a true Australian legend: stolen child, musical and lyrical genius, and leader. No one has lived as many lives as Archie Roach - stolen child, seeker, teenage alcoholic, lover, father, musical and lyrical genius, and leader - but it took him almost a lifetime to find out who he really was. Roach was only two years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. Brought up by a series of foster parents until his early teens, his world imploded when he received a letter that spoke of a life he had no memory of. In this intimate, moving and often shocking memoir, Archie's story is an extraordinary odyssey through love and heartbreak, family and community, survival and renewal - and the healing power of music. Overcoming enormous odds to find his story and his people, Archie voices the joy, pain and hope he found on his path through song to become the legendary singer-songwriter and storyteller that he is today - beloved by fans worldwide. Tell Me Why is a stunning account of resilience and the strength of spirit - and of a great love story.

Some Songs from the Torres Strait by Ron Edwards
A large collection of songs from various Islands, including Stephen Island, Mabuiag Island, Dauan Island, Saibai Island, Coconut Island, Murray Island & Darnley Island.
Songs from Coconut Island by Ron Edwards
A collection of songs from Coconut Island.
Songs from Dauan Island by Ron Edwards
A collection of songs from Dauan Island.
Songs from Warraber Island by Ron Edwards
A collection of songs from Warraber Island.

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