Formal Performance: The Relations of Music, Text and Dance in Arnhem Land Clan Songs

Abstract

The or manikay of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, Australia are realized by their Aboriginal owners in performance alone and are orally transmitted.1 These performances are formal in that they obey certain variable rules and achieve variable but consistent structures depending on the nature of the different performance occasions for which they are deemed appropriate (Clunies Ross 1983). The variability of their performance contexts, determined largely by ritual propriety, together with the fact that each performance of is a complex act which integrates performance elements expressed through several different media, has led us to the view that the description and analysis of such complex, orally transmitted standardized forms can only proceed by means of the collection and analysis of a variety of formal performance events.2 Manikay have been called clan songs because they constitute discrete sets of song-subjects which celebrate the behavior and characteristics of spirit beings, known as wangarr, who are thought to have affinities with particular Aboriginal clans or aggregates. Each manikay song has a particular wangarr as its subject. Manikay wangarr include natural species, like White Cockatoo and King Brown Snake, human-like spirits, inanimate resources and artifacts such as Wild Honey and Boomerang and celestial and weather phenomena, like North-West Monsoon. Manikay may be sung around the evening campfire for enjoyment, but their more formal purpose is to ritualize death in a series of elaborate mortuary rites, to celebrate boys' circumcisions and to accompany ceremonies of diplomacy called Rom. Djambidj is a manikay whose ownership is shared by a number of landowning units belonging to the moiety known as Djowunga (or Dhuwa among the Yolngu living farther east). Most of their estates lie near the mouth of the Blyth River in North-Central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory (Hiatt 1965: Ch. 2 and Meehan 1982: Chs. 2 and 3). Theoretically, all male members of Djambidj-owning clans may sing it, but in practice singing is the specialty of quite a small number of mature men. Djambidj-owning clans speak a number of Arnhem Land languages, chiefly Burarra, but also Nagara and Gunavidji. Farther east, near Milingimbi Mission, the thematically related manikay Gamalangga is sung by members of the