Screen Worlds, Sound Worlds and School: a Consideration of The

australiaa n societ s y fo r mumsic education e Screen worlds, sound worlds and i ncorporated school: a consideration of the potential of the ethnomusicology of Australian Indigenous film for music education Michael Webb Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Australia Thomas Fienberg Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Australia Abstract This article arises from the authors’ belief that there is a need to develop motivating ways for students across Australia to meaningfully encounter Australian indigenous music, the breadth and richness of which is beginning to be conveyed via a diverse range of mainstream media texts. Engaging with theoretical insights from the ethnomusicology of film, specifically, by examining the notions of sound worlds and sound space, we consider ways Australian Indigenous film might be profitably employed in the classroom study of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music and dance. We consider in some detail the films Yolngu Boy (2000) and One Night the Moon (2001), and suggest classroom approaches to the study of these films based on our own school experiences with them. The article demonstrates ways students might be led to develop analytical, musicological, and performance skills, in order to come to a better understanding of aspects of Australian indigenous musical cultures and Australian experience. Key words: Ethnomusicology of film; Australian indigenous film; music video; media texts Australian Journal of Music Education 2011:2,30-43 Introduction by our own (differing) convictions regarding the urgent need to discover diverse, motivating, In this article we discuss the potential of and authentic ways through which school Indigenous film for meaningful classroom students might experience Australia’s indigenous engagement with Australian indigenous music. musical culture. Our (again, different) personal Selected Indigenous films, we believe, can serve experiences with One Night the Moon in particular, as a profitable starting point in educational in school performance contexts, have convinced encounters with Australian indigenous sound us of the positive learning benefits of such film worlds. Drawing on a new sub-field, the study, which we believe deserves to be more ethnomusicology of film, we sketch out how Indigenous film might be brought into school music programs, by examining the sound worlds 1. All films referred to in this article are available on DVD. The Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu music videos referred to are readily and sound space of the films, Yolngu Boy (2000) accessible on the Internet. Also see the Resources section of this 1 and One Night the Moon (2001) . We are prompted article, below, for access to selected clips from the films. 30 2011, No. 2 fully developed. Additionally, we are interested set out a kind of introductory ethnomusicology of in exploring ways to develop a more rigorous the film Yolngu Boy such as might be undertaken musicological methodology among students, in the school context. Next, we discuss projects since it is our opinion that this area of music we have developed or co-developed involving education has been neglected in recent times. adaptations of One Night the Moon for “live” We believe this novel approach is promising for performance. We bring additional film and video a number of reasons. First, films comprise “screen material into the discussion at several points, to worlds,” that is, they present human societies in emphasise that the possibilities for classroom microcosm, whereas in the school classroom, the study extend beyond our two “focus” films. totality of a culture and its music overwhelms. “Placing people in motion,” Slobin writes, “means Terminology you have to construct an integrated and logical society, music and all” (Slobin 2008, p. 4). As such, Slobin (2008) proposes that from an films can handily indicate ways music works in ethnomusicological point of view, “every film is and as culture, and significantly, Indigenous films ethnographic” because it “presents the viewer communicate insider understandings of a musical with a human society,” and “every soundtrack culture and exert a different kind of control over acts like an ethnomusicologist” since the film it to mainstream film. Second, approaching music soundtrack offers “sonic substance to the through a screen world can help curb a tendency housing, clothing, language, and customs of the to objectify music since music is complexly place” (pp. 3-4, emphasis removed). From Slobin’s woven into the social and cultural fabric of this perspective, an ethnomusicological approach to “world”. Third, feature films, including the ones film highlights the “extroversive” elements of a considered here, often present the range of film’s soundtrack – the music and sounds of the musics of a society, thus conveying something of natural and social worlds – “since they signal and the richness and complexity of social and cultural interpret most of the cultural and social content” reality. Fourth, films employ narrative as a way of of a film (p. 8). knowing, in contrast with knowing by notion or In Global Soundtracks, Slobin (2008) presents rational approaches to knowledge. Not only is this a typology of “global cinema systems” (pp. approach to transmitting knowledge common x-xviii) that includes “subcultural cinema”, a in many indigenous societies; it may also have term he uses for a “body of work produced greater immediacy in classroom contexts. Finally, by minority filmmakers within a multicultural as Wood explains, Indigenous films are often society” (Slobin, 2009, p. 153). Relatedly, in Native made expressly to “transmit languages and Features, Wood (2008) refers to “Indigenous cultures” (Wood, 2008, p. 85), that is, to “support film” and concentrates on films from “North the survival of the people depicted” (Wood, 2008, America, the Arctic, Oceania, and Australia” by p. 72), and they also offer a corrective to views of (for the most part) indigenous directors, which cultures and societies constructed by dominant tell indigenous stories (Wood, 2008, p. 4). While groups. As Langton (2006) notes, with films Wood’s identification of regions and aspects of his such as One Night the Moon in mind, “fictional or categorization of Indigenous film are problematic cinematic accounts have until recently depended (as he acknowledges [see Wood, 2008, pp. 66-67, on preconceived notions of people, place and 83-85], and as we will see), we borrow his more culture” (p. 58). accessible label for use in the music educational Following a discussion of terminology used in context. the article and a brief synopsis of each film, we Wood (2008) views “Indigenous and non- Indigenous films as labels at the extreme ends of Australian Journal of Music Education 31 a continuum” (pp. 66-67) and he does not “try to “receive ceremony” – to be initiated into the specify exact degrees of indigeneity” (p. 67). He ancestral belief-system. The boys grow apart in considers as Indigenous both of the films under their teenage years, and one falls into crime and discussion in this article. One Night the Moon is faces a prison sentence, while another becomes Aboriginal director Rachel Perkins’ retelling of an fixated on football. The one who most cherishes incident in the career of an Aboriginal tracker that the tribal traditions and beliefs convinces the was first told in a documentary film by another other two to trek with him to Darwin through Aboriginal filmmaker, Michael Riley. Yolngu Boy the rugged terrain of North East Arnhem Land presents a different case. As Wood explains: (the bush and tribal practices contrast sharply Neither director…nor scriptwriter…are with shopping malls and suburban living) to seek Indigenous, but the film was produced in part by protection from the law through an Aboriginal Galarrwuy Yunupingu, the lead singer of Yothu elder. Yindi. The Yothu Yindi Foundation, established One Night the Moon (2001), directed by Rachel to support the development and teaching of Yolngu culture, even partially funded the film. Perkins, is based on the real life experiences of The Yunupingu brothers brought the filmmakers tracker Alexander Riley in the Dubbo area of New together with the Arnhem Land Indigenous South Wales. One evening in the early 1900s, a communities that the film depicts, and many young girl climbed through the window of her community members were involved in both the home and wandered off, apparently in search of development of the script and in monitoring the the moon. Her parents call in a police search party daily shooting production. (Wood, 2008, p. 189). that fails to find her before she perishes. The film Given this background, Wood includes Yolngu Boy follows the emotional journey of the white settler among his list of Indigenous films. and his wife, and the tragedy of the settler’s It is also helpful to define the terms “sound refusal to allow an Aboriginal tracker on ‘his’ land world” and “sound space”. We use the term to retrace the footsteps of the child. sound world (or worlds) to refer to the total We concentrate on these particular films sonic environment of a culture or cultures as for a number of reasons. As will be seen, in represented in the film, including all of its sound thoughtfully engaging and evocative ways, both practices and music making. Sound space refers films centre on the idea of cultural difference to the soundtrack of a film and how its “space” and distinctiveness, and on living in balance with is proportionally allocated

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