Sound recordings as maruy among the Aborigines of the Daly region of north west Australia

This paper reflects on a set of anxieties concerning the relationship between living traditions of song and dance and the body of audio recordings of these traditions that have been generated in the course of my research. To what extent can the recordings be considered representative of the performance tradition and what role do they play in my research methodology? What are the best ways to make these recordings available to the communities from which they emanated? It seems almost inevitable that we should use our recordings as a lens through which to view aspects of a musical culture, and that the imperfection of the lens should cause us concern. But how do our interlocutors regard the recordings? How are they framed within their culture? To what extent does an understanding of these matters free us from our anxieties? In this paper I will examine how people in the Daly region of North Australia locate sound recordings within their cosmology, and how they, and other Aboriginal people in northern Australia, use archival recordings as integral elements of their traditions as sources for new creativity, to assist in the recovery of forgotten songs, as educational resources and as the focal point of discussions with visiting researchers. I will also discuss ways in which these insights have affected the design of a local archive set up in 2002 in the Daly community of Belyuen.Australian Research Council; the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies; Hong Kong University Grants Committee; Australian Academy of the Humanities; Australian E-Humanities Network; Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sydney; School of Society, Culture and Performance, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydne

Endangered songs and endangered languages.

It is widely reported in Australia and elsewhere that songs are considered by culture bearers to be the “crown jewels” of endangered cultural heritages whose knowledge systems have hitherto been maintained without the aid of writing. It is precisely these specialised repertoires of our intangible cultural heritage that are most endangered, even in a comparatively healthy language. Only the older members of the community tend to have full command of the poetics of song, even in cases where the language continues to be spoken by younger people. Taking a number of case studies from Australian repertories of public song (wangga, yawulyu, lirrga, and junba), we explore some of the characteristics of song language and the need to extend language documentation to include musical and other dimensions of song performances. Productive engagements between researchers, performers and communities in documenting songs can lead to revitalisation of interest and their renewed circulation in contemporary media and contexts.Australian Research Counci

Musical and linguistic perspectives on Aboriginal song

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue 'Studies in Aboriginal Song' edited by Marett and Barwick. Since 1984, numerous collections of essays dedicated entirely or partly to Aboriginal song and dance appeared. Each of these represented a response to particular stimuli. Much of the work presented in the present volume, Studies in Aboriginal Song: A Special Issue of Australian Aboriginal Studies, resulted from research projects that focus on endangered language and music and involved either collaborative work between linguists and musicologist, or work by scholars with training in both disciplines. Faced as we are with the ongoing and escalating loss of so many of Australia’s Indigenous languages and performance traditions, there is some evidence that studies of Aboriginal song are increasing. And yet too little is being done too late by too few. In musicology in particular, the discipline has failed adequately to respond to the cultural tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes as manifold traditions of Australia’s Indigenous heritage are lost to future generations of Aboriginal peoples and to the national heritage. Major initiatives, such as the various endangered language programs mentioned in our essay, and the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia, are attempting to find solutions that will empower Indigenous peoples in their struggle to maintain their threatened languages and traditions in the face of the enormous forces arrayed against them. But so much remains to be done, not least in training young persons, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, with the disciplinary and practical skills to meet this challenge.Australian Research Counci

Walakandha Wangga

For the last 40 years or so, the Walakandha wangga, a repertory composed collaboratively by a number of Marri Tjavin singers, has been the most prominent wangga performed in Wadeye. Initiated in the mid-1960s by Stan Mullumbuk (1937–1980), the Walakandha wangga repertory came to function as one arm of a tripartite ceremonial system organising ceremonial life at Wadeye, in complementary relationship with sister repertories djanba and lirrga. The dominant themes of the Walakandha wangga are related to the activities of the Marri Tjavin ancestral dead – the Walakandha – as givers of wangga songs and protectors of their living descendants. Longing for return to Marri Tjavin ancestral country is another common theme. Many specific places are named. Foremost among these is the hill Yendili – one of the places where Walakandha ancestors reside

Preface

Dissertação de mestrado (Quimica Farmacêutica Industrial), apresentada á Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de CoimbraA via ubiquitina-proteassoma desempenha um papel importante na homeostase celular, exercendo também um papel relevante na regulação de diversas vias celulares, incluindo no crescimento e na proliferação celular, na apoptose, na reparação do ADN, na transcrição e na resposta imune. O proteassoma é um complexo multienzimático que contém vários centros ativos, sendo a sua função principal degradar proteínas desnecessárias ou danificadas. Algumas patologias humanas devem-se a alterações nesta via. Como tal, a inibição da via ubiquitina-proteassoma por inibidores do proteassoma pode ser uma abordagem terapêutica racional para várias doenças, tais como o cancro e doenças inflamatórias. Com o objetivo de obter novos inibidores do proteassoma para o local ativo CT-L, foram utilizados os seguintes métodos computacionais: modelação por homologia, farmacóforos, docking e virtual screening. Foi desenvolvido e validado um modelo de homologia para o local ativo CT-L que teve como base o código PDB 3UN8. Na modelação farmacofórica, obtivemos e validámos dois modelos farmacofóricos: um modelo com base na estrutura de inibidores conhecidos do local ativo β5c e um modelo com base na estrutura do recetor. Na etapa de virtual screening foi efetuado o docking molecular tendo como base a estrutura de ligandos (no qual se utilizou o modelo farmacofórico obtido com base na estrutura de ligandos) e tendo como base a estrutura do recetor (sem a utilização de farmacóforos como filtro). Os resultados foram analisados de modo a selecionarmos potenciais compostos hitThe ubiquitin proteasome pathway plays an important role in cellular homeostasis and also it exerts a critical role in regulating a wide variety of cellular pathways, including cell growth and proliferation, apoptosis, DNA repair, transcription and immune response. The proteasome is a multienzyme complex, containing several active centers and the main function of the proteasome is to degrade unneeded or damaged proteins. Defects in this pathway have been implicated in a number of human pathologies. Inhibition of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway by proteasome inhibitors may be a rational therapeutic approach for various diseases, such as cancer and inflammatory diseases. To obtain new proteasome inhibitors for the CT-L active site, were used the following computational methods: homology modeling, pharmacophores, docking and virtual screening. Using the PDB code 3UN8, it was developed and validated an homology model for the CT-L active site. In pharmacophoric modeling, we obtained and validated two pharmacophoric models: a model based in the structure of known inhibitors of the β5c active site and a model based in the receptor structure. In the virtual screening step, the molecular docking was made based in ligand structure (in which was used the pharmacophoric model ligand based) and based in the receptor structure (without the use of the pharmacophore as a filter). The results were analised so we can select potential hit compound

Muluk's Wangga

Jimmy Muluk (born c. 1925, died sometime before 1986) was one of the great wangga songmen, whose musical virtuosity and love of diversity and variation are exceeded by no other singer. A Mendheyangal man, he held traditional country around the Cape Ford area south of the Daly River mouth, but he lived most of his life in and around Belyuen on the Cox Peninsula. For many years he led a dance troupe presenting performances for tourists at Mica Beach, and later at Mandorah. He also mentored younger generations of singers to perform with him in public at tourist corroborees and the Darwin Eisteddfod. The success of his strategy for intergenerational transmission of knowledge was evident when Marett and Barwick recorded the same singers, now men, in the 1990s. Muluk’s mentee, Colin Worumbu Ferguson, leads the Kenbi dancers today

Mandji's Wangga

Billy Mandji was a prolific and popular Belyuen songman. Active from the 1960s to the 1980s, he travelled widely and was recorded in Kununurra, Timber Creek, Oenpelli and Beswick Creek as well as his home community of Belyuen (Delissaville). He was a prominent participant in the tourist corroborees presented by people from Belyuen in various locations around Darwin and the Cox Peninsula. In addition to composing songs of his own, Billy Mandji inherited songs in Emmi-Mendhe from the Emmiyangal people with whom he lived at Belyuen, and he also sang the Emmi-Mendhe songs of Jimmy Muluk (see Muluk’s Wangga), often in the role of backup singer. His own language, Marri Tjavin, appeared rarely in his songs, and many of Mandji’s songs are composed in untranslatable ‘ghost language’. Although Allan Marett recorded Mandji’s songs in 1988, he was never able to work with him on documenting his songs, so the translations and interpretations are the result of working with other speakers, especially his extremely knowledgeable ‘daughter’ (brother’s daughter), Marjorie Knuckey Bilbil

Ma-Yawa Wangga

The Ma-yawa wangga repertory was given to songmen by the Marri Ammu ancestral ghosts known as Ma-yawa. Before the late 1960s, it seems that this repertory was frequently performed at Wadeye, but nowadays Marri Ammu people join their Marri Tjavin neighbours in performing the Walakandha wangga repertory for ceremony. All but one of the Ma-yawa wangga songs were composed by the senior Marri Ammu lawman and artist Charlie Niwilhi Brinken (c. 1910–1993), but so far as we know, no recording was ever made of him singing. Maurice Tjakurl Ngulkur (Nyilco) (1940–2001), the Marri Ammu songman, inherited the repertory and added one of his own songs to it. Since his passing in 2001, the songs have rarely been performed. With its strong focus on the Dreamings (ngirrwat) and Dreaming sites (kigatiya) of the Marri Ammu people, the Ma-yawa wangga repertory holds a unique place within the corpus

Lambudju's Wangga

Bobby Lane Lambudju (1941–1993) was a leading Wadjiginy songman at Belyuen in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose songs display a rich variety of forms, diverse melodies and even mixes of languages (his own language, Batjamalh, as well as Emmi-Mendhe, the language of his adoptive family). Three of Lambudju’s father’s brothers were prominent Wadjiginy songmen who died before he was old enough to learn from them. Their songs were held in trust for him by the Emmiyangal singer Nym Mun.gi, who passed them on to Lambudju when he was old enough. Many of Lambudju’s songs concern his country to the north of the Daly River and in particular Rak Badjalarr (North Peron Island), the place to which people from Belyuen return after their death