Dr Michael Walsh has recently retired from the Linguistics Department at Sydney University. A longer version of this paper was presented at the Australex Conference, 25 September 2007, University of Adelaide.  

Whether you are a professional musician, a music critic or “just” a layperson you will have developed a vocabulary for describing and evaluating songs. Songs can be portrayed in terms of emotion (a real tearjerker), of nostalgia (reminds me of Italy), of memories (our song) or of quality (insipid, powerful, sublime, worthless). But how does one evaluate and describe songs in an Australian Aboriginal language? This question has particular personal resonance as I have been engaged in a collaborative research project with a team of linguists and musicologists for some years now. While this project seeks to document the song traditions of one particular group: the Murriny Patha of northwest Australia (http:// azoulay.arts.usyd.edu.au/mpsong), it has made me wonder what lexical resources are deployed in other languages in this arena.  

For the Murriny Patha, kangunu signals “tune of song” and “aroma” while lurritj is “loud (of words, music)” but can also mean “strong, powerful”. So there is a strong association between words to describe song and the body.  

This kind of association can be found in many other Aboriginal languages. The Bininj Gun-wok of the Northern Territory, for example, have a root, kodj, for “head” which also refers to “pitch melody” and “rhythmic mode of song”. The same root appears in a number of other expressions: kakodjwarre (its kodj is bad) or manmanjyak (it has no taste) are used when the pitch of the didgeridoo doesn’t match that of the singer; kakodjmanjmakmen (its kodj has a good taste) is used when the melody is right, lining up with the didgeridoo; ngakodjborledke “I bend the music, the melody”, as when adding an arabesque or other form of melodic ornamentation.

These music-body polysemies are also encountered among the Yolngu of north east Arnhem land: yutunggur “thigh” = song verse; dhambu “head” = melody. For the Pintupi (central Australia) we have such terms for melody as mayu “scent” and yatjila/ yankuntjirra “taste”. And for Kukatja (Western Australia) we encounter ngurru putarri “beautiful melody” (Moyle, Balgo Music 1997: 29). For the last mentioned it turns out that ngurru is “taste” and putarri’s primary meaning is “having much fat”. For the Kukatja as well as other Aboriginal groups the stomach is the seat of the emotions, so the good feelings associated with the song are appropriately related to the good feelings derived from the taste of meat with much fat. For the Ngarinjin (Kimberleys, WA) the performance of a good tune is rendered by marrarri buma “you sorrow”. This points directly to the strong feeling that pervades the interaction of living people and the spirits of their deceased relatives; both taste and sorrow are associated with fat in this language.

In the same language we find terms for melodic contour that are not unlike English in that we too can say “his voice went down”: yarrij “to go down” = descending pitch; burai “lift, raise, lever” = “rise in pitch, both at the commencement of a new descent and within a descent”. To describe voice range Ngarinjin has the 3 langgan “throats” or registers: arrangun “top”; balaga “middle”; alya/alye “bottom”; “big throat” for a singer able to perform in all 3 ranges. And it is intriguing to see meanings for some of these terms in non-musical contexts: balaga “50-50, equal share”; alya/alye “underneath, below”. For Murriny Patha the speed of the song can be described in terms of clapsticks: mirn’ga pandharryit “cautious clapsticks”; mirn’ga pirtpirt “fast clapsticks”; mirn’ga purrkpurrk “dancing clapsticks”; mirn’ga tjimardamarda “waiting clapsticks”.

Another area of interest is the range of meanings associated with the verb “to sing”. In Yir Yoront (northern Queensland) the single verb root, wung, has this range of senses: 1. carry, take (to a place), 2. sing (a song), 3. drove (animals), 4. bring/take (people) to a place, 5. manage, supervise, carry on, be the boss for, 6. wear [e.g. of shoes]. In Murriny Patha, the verb root, rel, can be used for “sing” (Aboriginal song) as in ngirelnu “I’ll sing (a song)” but also appears as “chant a curse (sorcery)” as in ngirranyirelnu “I’ll chant a curse on you”. This is a reflection of the English usage: to “sing” a person.

Although it is a little saddening I would like to conclude with some observations on the probable longevity of some of this specialized vocabulary. When I began fieldwork on Murriny Patha in 1972 the song traditions were still quite strong. At Port Keats (later, Wadeye) there were groups of Aboriginal people singing around campfires nearly every night. This was before TV was available and, as many houses were without electricity, other forms of evening entertainment like gramophones or radio were quite rare. When I returned to the community after an absence of about a dozen years in 1986 almost all houses had electric power, most houses had TV and/or radio and traditional singing had virtually ceased. Similar stories can be told for many of the other communities I have mentioned. However this specialized vocabulary of Aboriginal song perhaps differs from its counterpart in English and other western European languages where it is often separate from the idiom of the wider population. It may be that the vocabulary of Aboriginal song will continue even as the song traditions languish. Because the vocabulary is more integrated into everyday language it may end up being adapted to the range of new musical forms evolving in Aboriginal communities.  

Note I am grateful to Linda Barwick for supplying some details about speeds in Murriny Patha. Relevant references can be found at http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/linguistics/staff/mwalsh.shtml