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During the late twentieth century, Australia started to recognize the rights of the aboriginal people in Australia. Indigenous claims for self-determination revolved around struggles to maintain a distinct cultural identity in strategies to win and govern traditional land within the wider political system. While these fundamental challenges pervaded Indigenous affairs, contemporary popular music by aboriginal artists became increasingly important sign differ for traditional indigenous music.

Throughout an aboriginal life, music is used to teach them what they must know about their culture, about their place, and about its place in the world of nature and supernature. Their performance traditions, among the oldest in the world, but are also among the most endangered (Telford, 2000).

The indigenous Australians use of innovation of music instrument derived from the original indigenous music in Australia and absorb other music elements from world, represents their own music style differ from European civilization by indigenous musicians.

In Australia, the Australian indigenous music includes the music of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, who are collectively called indigenous Australians. It incorporates a variety of distinctive traditional music styles practiced by Indigenous Australian peoples, as well as a range of contemporary musical styles of and fusion with European traditions as interpreted and performed by Indigenous Australian artists (Australia government, 2013). Indigenous music is one of the important means of expressing Indigenous heritage- the past, present, and future. All Indigenous artists are responsible for safeguarding cultural knowledge. “They are more likely to write about subjects important to their communities, especially land and community issues as well as protest songs. Songs about land relate their love of and identification with the country, loss of land and attempts to return to one’s country. Community issues addressed in songs include alcohol and keeping culture. From ritual songs to those intended purely for entertainment, the Warlpiri, like all other Indigenous groups, have been using music to transmit knowledge and enhance social relations” (Oatey, 2012).

Didgeridoo is one of the popular traditional instruments of Australian indigenous people, it invented by indigenous Australians of northern Australia potentially within the last 1,500 years and still in widespread use today both in Australia and around the world (Hall, 2011). Didgeridoo typically made from bamboo, it extends about five feet and produces a low, vibrating hum. The popularity of the didgeridoo amongst alternative Western peoples has raised concerns that the didgeridoo has been taken out of its original music context. By the late 1980’s and continuing through the 1990’s, the didgeridoo spread to Europe and the Americas with sufficient popularity to support several bands featuring didgeridoo sounds blended with European melody instruments such as guitar, flute, violin, and clarinet in a variety of styles. A modern didgeridoo is usually cylindrical or conical and can measure anywhere from 1 to 3 m (3 to 10 ft) long (Finkel, 2013).

Fig.1 introduction to the structure of didgeridoo

youtube

Fig.2 Xavier Rudd-Didgeridoo remix

Traditionally, an Aborigine would go into nature and listen intensely to animal sounds, not just voices but also the flapping of wings or the thump of feet on the ground. The Aborigine would also listen to the sounds of wind, thunder, trees creaking, and water running. The essences of all these sounds were played with as much accuracy as possible within the droning sound of the didgeridoo (Australia government, 2015).

Contemporary Indigenous music continues the earlier traditions and also represents a fusion of contemporary mainstream styles of music such as rock and country music. Fig.1. is an introduction to the structure of didgeridoo. Fig. 2is a short video of Xavier Rudd remix didgeridoo and modern percussion music. He is an Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Flared instruments play a higher pitch than unflared instruments of the same length. However, the didgeridoo is played with continuously vibrating lips to produce the drone while using a special breathing technique called circular breathing. This requires breathing in through the nose whilst simultaneously expelling stored air out of the mouth using the tongue and cheeks. By use of this technique, a skilled player can replenish the air in their lungs, and with practice can sustain a note for as long as desired. Although traditionally the instrument was not widespread around the country - it was only used by Aboriginal groups in the most northerly areas - today it is commonly considered the national instrument of the Australian Aborigines and is world-renowned as a unique and iconic instrument.

As an existing phenomenon, globalization becomes one of the major issues being researched in a social science field. Indigenous culture trend to the big world, is it good? Since more people will realize indigenous culture from Australia. However, if is not good? Foreign cultures maybe sweep the indigenous world. Social scientists divide this topic into three major dimensions: economic globalization, political globalization, and cultural globalization. Any study on globalization will fall on one or more than one of these three aspects. Therefore, the identification of the relationship between globalization and cultural homogenization, in this article, will follow such pattern and falls on cultural dimension.

Fig.3. Friedman's book The World Is Flat

Globalization as a study usually brings about conflicts among different scholars. The origin of these conflicts is distinctive views of such phenomenon. Some scholars claim that globalization is more or less the same as liberalism, westernization, or even Americanization in the whole world. One of these figures is Thomas L. Friedman, an American journalist, columnist and author of New York Times who is famous for his book, The World is Flat (Fig. 3). Friedman defines globalization as the spread of free-market capitalism to different countries in the world, which resulting in market openness, deregulation and privatization. In addition, these evolutions are the products of incentives from states and individuals for establishing a more competitive economic structure. Friedman interprets globalization in a neo-liberal perspective by observing successful models from newly industrialized countries including China, India, etc. Economic booming comes and national power rises after adopting a more capitalized and liberal market system in these countries. Therefore they obtain higher international status and become more influential worldwide, which is the outcome of globalization and on the other hand, pushes this process forward.

These scholars are categorized as hyperglobalists which preserving optimistic attitude towards globalization, while some others, the skeptics, deny the existence of globalization and criticize those hyperglobalists. Skeptics usually criticize hyperglobalists for equaling globalization to westernization or Americanization. They fundamentally regard globalization as a myth and hence disagree with the existence of homogenization of economic, political and cultural institutions or values. The battle of ideas mostly occurs in cultural dimensions, since the other two are usually explicit and therefore can be measured more easily.

Cultural globalization, by its definition, is an interaction between people of diverse cultures, values, and ways of life, which the culture, according to Manfred B. Steger, is referring to symbolic construction, articulation, and dissemination of meaning in daily life (Steger, 2003). The exchange of ideas, attitudes, and values can lead to either positive or negative results or both. The advancement of communication, transportation technologies accelerated cultural globalization which technological development being the key factor for this process.

When different cultures in the world interact to result in cultural globalization, cultural homogenization functions by diffusing western culture to non-western societies with spreading of cultural products and values through those multinational corporations. Cultural homogenization is a combination in global culture following the global economy, i.e. a world culture and a set of universal values and institutional forms are established by homogenizing different cultures. Cultural globalization and homogenization are the same concepts with interacting and fusing of cultures and become unequal without fusing of cultures. A more intuitive description is, when different cultures merge by interacting with each other, there will be no difference between cultural globalization and homogenization. Otherwise, they are two distinctive concepts.

While hyperglobalists take this process for granted as well as welcoming it, skeptics reject such thought by claiming that cultural resistance to the invasion of western culture is witnessed with the evidence of religious fundamentalism and the cultural ethnic conflicts labeled as the clash of civilizations. Clash of Civilizations, first being proposed by American political scientist Samuel Phillips Huntington in the magazine Foreign Affair in 1993, is a term for describing possible conflicts among different cultural systems in a modern world. The reason for such possibility is cultural differentials in nature and difficulty of eliminating them. Globalization ties various regions to increase interactions itself is a source for more frequent collisions among cultures. Dissolution of the Soviet Union even terminated ideologies and pushed cultures to the front line, i.e. when ideologies were still the main characters in global conflicts, cultural problems stayed behind the historical curtain and were almost forgotten, therefore clash of cultures were not significant during the cold-war period. When reviewing human history, cultural conflicts existed since they are distinctive fundamentally. Religious collisions composed Cruciata (from 1096 to 1291) and some other warfare.

In Huntington’s later book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), cultural including religious conflicts were narrated as the product of cultural differences, consciousness or awareness of them and human nature of liking similarities while hating heterogeneous, i.e. discrimination. Cultural differences were too immutable to reduce following conflicts. Economic developments and social changes lead people to leave from their homelands which diminish their local identities. As a substitution, cultures, and religions provide identities transcending national boundaries which were provided by territorial consciousness. In addition, the spreading of western cultures triggers the protection of local values. On the other hand, successful economic regionalism with the aid of economic globalization in countries comprising China and India enhance global influences and competitiveness, which consolidate cultural consciousness and encourages these countries to export their own cultures reversely.

Huntington confronts with criticisms from some scholars even after his death; still, his views help to introduce another concept which is opposite to homogeneity: the heterogeneity. Heterogeneity supported by skeptics because of the dominance of western media, for instance, leads to the dominance of western propaganda and values, and triggers resistance from non-western countries. According to skeptics, this scenario may be illustrated by a phrase: the war on cultural imperialism.

Regardless what opinions skeptics hold, homogenization itself is flawed. It is basically over-simplified, focusing on the production of culture only. People in all countries are assumed to be willing to accept western cultures with no question simply because western products are powerful to capture their hearts, which is practically impossible since human beings think critically and have the ability to interpret the meaning of any culture product. As illustrated before, cultural consciousness resists propagation of western cultures. Impacts of colonization show its defects at the same time. Former colonizing nations, which were all western countries except Japan (which was the colonizer of Taiwan during the Second World War), do not always remain strong ties with former colonizing regions. Even the Indigenous population of Australia was reduced by 90% estimated that between 1788 and 1900, they are still creating amazing music to the world.

Australian Indigenous music incorporates a variety of distinctive traditional music styles, such as rock and roll, country, rap and reggae, practiced by Indigenous Australian peoples as well as a range of contemporary musical styles of and fusion with European traditions as interpreted and performed by Indigenous Australian artists (Australia government, 2013). The traditional forms include many aspects of performance and musical instrumentation which are unique to particular regions or Indigenous Australian groups; there are equal elements of musical tradition which are common or widespread through much of the Australian continent, and even beyond.

Fig.4. Shellie Morris. an indigenous Australian singer/songwriter

youtube

Fig. 5. Saltwater People Song

Shellie Morris is an indigenous Australian singer/songwriter who plays a mix of contemporary folk music and contemporary acoustic ballads. Morris is currently a featured Aboriginal singer with the Black Arm Band (A collaboration of Australia's top indigenous artists and jazz musicians); her contemporary solo career is searching for her Aboriginal family in the Northern Territory. Saltwater People Song incorporated with the Borroloola Songwomen, this is one of representative remix song she created.

Fig.6. Collaborating for Indigenous Rights 1957-1973

Those pictures selected from aboriginal land rights in Australia from 1957-1973, its aims to return to lands to indigenous Australians by the Commonwealth, state or territory governments of Australia based on recognition of dispossession (Wikipedia). View of history means acknowledging Australia‘s past. Aboriginal people were arrested for being politically minded, so the Black Arm Band decided to sing politically through the music as another way to tell their stories. Indigenous music is not only absorbing music elements from different music style; they use music to represent themselves.

Unfortunately, according to a Statement on Indigenous Australian Music and Dance endorsed in 2011 by the International Council for Traditional Music, around 98% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music traditions have already been lost (Grant, 2014). The statement claims that modern lifestyles and the ongoing devastating impact of colonization are affecting the dissemination of cultural knowledge between generations; on the other hand, many senior composers and performers have passed away leaving limited or no record of their knowledge resulted in a serious cultural loss.

Population decline of indigenous people in Australia is also a big problem preventing the spread of Indigenous music. Australia has two broad Indigenous population categories: Aboriginal people, who share biological ancestry back to the original occupants of the continent, and Torres Strait Islander people, whose Melanesian roots are traced to the archipelago between the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea. According to estimates from the 2006 Census, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) Australians made up 2.5% of the total Australian population (Smith et al, 2008). As descendants of the original inhabitants of the Australian continent, Indigenous Australians have fought legally and politically for certain native title rights. While the current legal framework within Australia has not met all the demands of the Indigenous population, there are enough additional rights available to Indigenous populations to warrant a special treatment within demographic and population analysis (Smith, 1980; Smith et al, 2008). However, there are other historic events and forces beyond prior occupation of relevance, including significant population decline after colonization (Smith,1980; Smith et al, 2008), forcible removal of children from their families, legal discrimination in terms of wages (Broome, 2010) and separate labor market programs like the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme (Morphy & Sanders, 2002).

So, under the background of globalization, indigenous Australian culture will become assimilation or the product of cultural hybridization? Through the analysis, I believe that as long as the world toward a generally good (peace and alternating direction), the culture will gradually gather together, the area of contact will be more and bigger, the things people can talk will be more and more.

In the twentieth and 21st centuries, Indigenous musicians have played a vital role in defining Australia’s contemporary music identity, in building bridges with the broader Australian community, and in actively contributing to our cultural expression internationally. Contemporary Indigenous music embraces all genres from folk and roots to blues, rock, pop, hip pop, and classical forms (Music Australia).

Although Indigenous music has delectably changing in the modern society, the other forms of music such as rock, jazz, bush, folk, country and classical music also account for big percent in human’s life in Australia. Compare to Indigenous Australian, other musical forms also create about recognition of rhythmic patterns derived from our environment and a sense of place. Australian classical music is represented by ensembles like the Australian String Quartet, Guitar Trek and the Stellar Quintet; state and community orchestras, such as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Ku-Ring-Gai Philharmonic Orchestra; choirs of all sorts based at schools, universities and community centres such as the Australian Girls Choir and the Sydney Philharmonic Choir; and operatic groups such as Opera Australia and Pinchgut Opera. Classical music in Australia is derived from our European history and traditions. It is generally notated, written for specific instruments and follows defined structures. Contemporary classical or ‘new music ‘does away with and refines some traditional approaches. New music is contemporary classical or art music composed in the 20th and 21st centuries. Sound are and computer generated music are related genres. Australia has a large number of high-quality ensembles, many focusing on performing works by Australian composers (Music Australia).

Cultural assimilation is the process by which a person or a group's language and/or culture come to resemble those of another group, but it is not final result for indigenous Australians.

Australian folk song idioms have been influenced by successive waves of migrants from diverse backgrounds, beginning with the British, Irish, Scottish and Welsh convicts. Australian rock music, a form of popular music with country and rhythm and blues roots, emerged in the 1950s and 1960s when the style of music was growing in popularity around the world (Mijo Consulting, et al, 2008). The 1990s saw the continued expansion and then popularity of alternative music. It also saw a renaissance in music festivals, with some dozen or more being established and holding their own.

Alternative rock is a genre of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s and 2000s. Indigenous music in Australia become a prat in the huge musical form, it is unique, but not become mainstream in the modern society.

Songs, in particular, can be important vehicles for transmitting local cultural and historical information, encoding knowledge of genealogies and mythologies, records of ancestors and kinships, knowledge of the universe and the land, medicinal and culinary knowledge, social norms, taboos, histories, and cultural skills and practices, among other things. So when those songs disappear, much more than the songs themselves are lost.Allan Marett, a music researcher has convincingly argued that the disappearance of Australian Aboriginal songs could “potentially compromise our ability to adapt to as yet unforeseen changes” (Marett, 2010). Songs may contain information (ecological knowledge, for instance) that could help us deal with contemporary issues challenging the future of our country – even the planet.

“Hybridities, then, may be differentiated according to the components in the mélange. On the other hand, an assimilationist hybridity in which the center predominates…” (Pinterse, 1995). Globalization brings intensive interactions of people around the world, linking different culture and values together. Through the analysis, cultural homogeneity is an impossible outcome, instead, heterogeneity and hybridization are. In addition, cultural globalization is a procedure of competition and negotiation.

Reference

Ambar Hamid.(2013).Indigenous Australian Music and Dance. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Sou45vT1s

Australia government. (2013). Australian Indigenous ceremony - song, music and dance. Retrieved from http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/austn-indigenous-ceremony

Australia government. (2015). Australian indigenous ceremony-song, music and dance. Retrieved from http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-s tory/aus tn-indigenous -ceremony

Broome, R. (2010). Aboriginal Australians: A history since 1788. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Retrieved from http://arrow.latrobe.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/latrobe:10604

Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC) (2012), Report on GST revenue sharing relativities 2012 update. Canberra.

Edwards, M.(2008) Aboriginal heritage threatened through lost languages http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-02-01/aboriginal-heritage-threatened-through-lost/1030422

Pinterse, J. N. (1995). Globalization as hybridization. Global Modernities. Retrieved from http://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/rm230/Nederveen%20Pieterse.pdf

Steger, M.B.(2003), Globalization: A Very Short Introduction

Telford, h, w. (2000). Australian Aboriginal music. Retrieved from http://hmcs.scu.edu.au/musicarchive/AusGeneral.html

Hall, P. D. (2011). Arnhem Land on the Agenda in Recent Texts on Australian indigenous Music and Dance. Musicology Australia, 30(1), 49-52. Doi: 10.1080/08145857.2008.10416729

Harris, J. (2003). Hiding the Bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Australia", Journal of Aboriginal History, Vol. 27, pg.79-104

Marett, A. (2010). Vanishing Songs: How Musical Extinctions Threaten the Planet.Ethnomusicology Forum, 19(2), 249-262. Doi:10.1080/17411912.2010.508238

Oatey,S, H. (2012) What is culture? A compilation of quotations. GlobalPAD Core Concepts. Retrieved from https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/ interculturalskills/global_pad_-_what_is_culture.pdf

Wikipedia. Aboriginal land rights in Australia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_land_rights_in_Australia

Smith, L. (1980). The Aboriginal population of Australia. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Retrieved from http://www.popline.org/node/468461

Smith, L., McCalman, J., Anderson, I., Smith, S., Evans, J., McCarthy, G., et al. (2008). Fractional identities: The political arithmetic of Aboriginal Victorians. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 48(3), 533–551.

#indigenous music #globalization #music #australia

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lauriell-blog1 · 8 years ago

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The Existence Australian Indigenous Music

“Indigenous music is a voice that crosses boundaries. It is the true voice of this country because it is linked to the land. It enriches this nation, and shows the nation’s true identity.”

-David Milroy

During the late twentieth century, Australia started to recognize the rights of the Aboriginal people in Australia. Indigenous claims for self-determination revolved around struggles to maintain a distinct cultural identity in strategies to win and govern traditional land within the wider political system. While these fundamental challenges pervaded Indigenous affairs, contemporary popular music by Aboriginal artists became increasingly important as a means of mediating viewpoints and agendas of the Australian national consciousness.

The traditional music of Indigenous Australians holds a lot of important meaning to their culture. Throughout an aboriginal life, music is used to teach them what they must know about their culture, about their place, and about its place in the world of nature and supernature. Embedded in a purely oral tradition, the music is learned by imitation and passed on without reference to any written notations. At puberty, a young child learns the first karma songs which about totemic plants and animals of his or her clan and the history and mythology of the group, that belongs to his or her lineage and have specific melodic formulas and modes that distinguish them from other group’s songs (Finkel, 2013). To the Australian aboriginal, music is understood naturally, and an integral part of life. Their performance traditions, among the oldest in the world, but are also among the most endangered. A statistic from ABC NEWS (Edwards, 2008) showed before the arrival of Europeans, more than 250 languages were spoken on this continent. However, the number is to be in the dozens and there are concerns many languages are on the verge of extinction.

The existence of Australian Indigenous music is being threatened by the modernization of popular mainstream music impact, the population decline of Australian Indigenous and the loss of Indigenous languages.

Compare to Indigenous music in Australia, early musical forms changing from the 1900s to 1940s when the hundreds of thousands of people who arrived in Australia after the First World War greatly influenced Australia becoming a modern society. They brought with their own skills, commitment to family, education and cultural values. A series of new concepts are about a new approach to design and architecture, new public buildings and a new style of leisure, and even new sounds such as jazz music.

Senior artist and elder David Mowaljarlai OAM (1928-1997) once stated:” songs were the first idea, the principle of sharing which underlies our system”. For Indigenous Australians, each song designed as a part of a moment in a larger story; songs make up a song series or a ‘songline’ which is a map of the country based on the travels of the Dreaming ancestors (Unknown, 2015). To knowledgeable Aboriginal people, seeing a painting or a design will call to mind a song. Many senior painters sing as they paint the story of the song.

Indigenous music is an important means of expressing Indigenous heritage- the past, present, and future. All Indigenous artists are responsible for safeguarding cultural knowledge. However, Indigenous-popular musicians tend not to write straight love songs. They are more likely to write about subjects important to their communities, especially land and community issues as well as protest songs. Songs about land relate their love of and identification with the country, loss of land and attempts to return to one's country. Community issues addressed in songs include alcohol and keeping culture. From ritual songs to those intended purely for entertainment, the Warlpiri, like all other Indigenous groups, have been using music to transmit knowledge and enhance social relations (Oatey, 2012).

youtube

Ambar Hamid. 2013.Indigenous Australian Music and Dance.

Music is a vital part of Indigenous Australians’ cultural maintenance. Didgeridoo and Clapsticks are traditional instruments for Australian Indigenous people, especially the Didgeridoo is a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia potentially within the last 1,500 years and still in widespread use today both in Australia and around the world (Hall, 2011). Didgeridoo typically made from bamboo, it extends about five feet and produces a low, vibrating hum.

However, According to a Statement on Indigenous Australian Music and Dance endorsed in 2011 by the International Council for Traditional Music, around 98% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music traditions have already been lost (Grant, 2014). The statement claims that modern lifestyles and the ongoing devastating impact of colonization are affecting the dissemination of cultural knowledge between generations; on the other hand, many senior composers and performers have passed away leaving limited or no record of their knowledge resulted in a serious cultural loss.

Australian Indigenous music incorporates a variety of distinctive traditional music styles practiced by Indigenous Australian peoples as well as a range of contemporary musical styles of and fusion with European traditions as interpreted and performed by Indigenous Australian artists. The traditional forms include many aspects of performance and musical instrumentation which are unique to particular regions or Indigenous Australian groups; there are equal elements of musical tradition which are common or widespread through much of the Australian continent, and even beyond. The culture of the Torres Strait Islanders is related to that of adjacent parts of New Guinea and so their music is also related.

Jazz is an art form that bridges art and popular music in Australia. Jazz is often improvised; it ranges from traditional styles including swing and Dixieland to highly original forms of contemporary art music (Music Australia).

In Australia, Indigenous singers who developed jazz, blues and soul did so in combination with their own lyrics, intonation, and rhythms which reflected where they were from (Wells, 2014). Music remains one of the primary means by which Indigenous Australians maintain and communicate their own identity and culture.

Indigenous world-class jazz, blues, and soul performers have continued with Christine Anu from the 1990s through to Crossing Roper Bar in the 2000s and Jessica Mauboy from 2010 to the Barefoot Divas since 2012. Indigenous jazz, blues and soul and songwriting become part of a conscious public process in claiming Indigenous identities. Right now, Australia has a small but high-quality jazz scene, with a number of respected city venues, jazz clubs in major centers around the country, and a large number of festivals. The annual Freedman Jazz Fellowship provides a good barometer of quality jazz musicianship (Music Australia). Indigenous music and other festivals across Australia celebrate Indigenous music, culture, and identity. In the Torres Strait Islands, the Thursday Island Cultural Festival Winds of Zanadth is held every two years and brings together performers from the 18 inhabited islands. Dance groups that include singers and drummers perform and compete across the four-day festival. Indigenous jazz, blues, and soul has captured the heart, challenged the mind, and enraptured audiences. It has taken courage, vision, and belief in Indigenous identity and culture and has taken audiences to mysterious places, as well as nurtured and given balm to the soul from the earth from whence the singers came. This is new musical forms that Australian Indigenous connects their traditional performance style to modern music performance and style, and become successes.

The popularity of the didgeridoo amongst alternative Western peoples has raised concerns that the didgeridoo has been taken out of its original music context. By the late 1980’s and continuing through the 1990’s, the didgeridoo spread to Europe and the Americas with sufficient popularity to support several bands featuring didgeridoo sounds blended with European melody instruments such as guitar, flute, violin, and clarinet in a variety of styles. A modern didgeridoo is usually cylindrical or conical and can measure anywhere from 1 to 3 m (3 to 10 ft) long (Finkel, 2013). Generally, the longer the instrument, the lower its pitch or key. However, flared instruments play a higher pitch than unflared instruments of the same length. The didgeridoo is played with continuously vibrating lips to produce the drone while using a special breathing technique called circular breathing. This requires breathing in through the nose whilst simultaneously expelling stored air out of the mouth using the tongue and cheeks. By use of this technique, a skilled player can replenish the air in their lungs, and with practice can sustain a note for as long as desired.

Contemporary Indigenous music continues the earlier traditions and also represents a fusion of contemporary mainstream styles of music such as rock and country music. Some common traditional instrumentation used is the didgeridoo and clapsticks being used to give a different feel to the music.

youtube

ididjaustralia.2011. Mikey Gurruwiwi playing didgeridoo along to Geoffrey Gurrumul

This video is a boy plays didgeridoo cooperate with the song who singing by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, who is an Indigenous Australian musician who can sing in Yolŋu languages and English. Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu can play drums, keyboards, guitar and didgeridoo to singing stories of his land in both languages in modern ways. This boy follows Yunupingu’s song from the computer, and use didgeridoo to creating new musical mix style even playing didgeridoo individually is not fair-sounding. Personally, the tone of didgeridoo is monotonous with heavy body, it is a not convenience instrument (because of its length) even most of didgeridoo by bamboo or other light-weight and local material.

Population decline of Indigenous in Australia is also a big problem preventing the spread of Indigenous music. Australia has two broad Indigenous population categories: Aboriginal people, who share biological ancestry back to the original occupants of the continent, and Torres Strait Islander people, whose Melanesian roots are traced to the archipelago between the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea. According to estimates from the 2006 Census, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) Australians made up 2.5% of the total Australian population (Smith et al, 2008). As descendants of the original inhabitants of the Australian continent, Indigenous Australians have fought legally and politically for certain native title rights. While the current legal framework within Australia has not met all the demands of the Indigenous population, there are enough additional rights available to Indigenous populations to warrant a special treatment within demographic and population analysis. However, there are other historic events and forces beyond prior occupation of relevance, including significant population decline after colonization (Smith,1980; Smith et al, 2008), forcible removal of children from their families, legal discrimination in terms of wages (Broome, 2010) and separate labour market programs like the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme (Morphy & Sanders, 2002).

The historical treatment of Indigenous Australians is arguably one of the major factors in the currently high level of socio-economic disadvantage. Indigenous Australians are one of the most disadvantaged population groups, if not the most disadvantaged, within Australia in employment, income, education, housing and health (SCRGSP, 2009).

The other reason for the policy and research focus on the Indigenous population is geography. Although Indigenous Australians make up a small percentage of the overall Australian population, their concentration in relatively remote areas means that in much of Australia the Indigenous population forms a sizeable minority or even a majority. The relative concentration of Indigenous Australians in remote parts of the country is demonstrated in Fig. 1, which shows the percentage of the population across Australia who identify as being Indigenous, as well as the percentage of the total Indigenous population who live in that region. Results are given for 37 Indigenous Regions, the least disaggregated level in the Australian Indigenous Geographic Classification (ABS, 2008b), based loosely on the old Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) Regions.

Figure. 1 Percentage of regional population who identify as being Indigenous (shading) and percentage of the total Indigenous population who live in that region (numbers), 2006.

Of the total Indigenous population, 9.07 % live in Australia’s largest city, Sydney. However, only a very small share (1.10 %) of the total population of Sydney identifies as being Indigenous. On the other hand, around 80.49 % of the population of Apatula identified as being Indigenous. This means this central desert region of Australia with a surface area of 548,070 km2 includes only about 10,500 Indigenous Australians or 2.04 % of the total Indigenous population. This relative distribution means that services delivered to the Indigenous population are likely to be more expensive on average than those delivered to the non-Indigenous population, based simply on the lack of economies of scale in many of the areas in which Indigenous Australians live (CGC, 2012).

In addition to Indigenous females having relatively high rates of fertility, as shown later in this paper, high rates of intermarriage between Indigenous males and non-Indigenous females mean that a significant minority of Indigenous children are born to non-Indigenous mothers (ABS, 2011a). In 2006, 57 % of the Indigenous population was aged under 25 years, compared to just 33 % of the non-Indigenous population. At the other end of the age distribution, only 12 % of the Indigenous population was aged over 50 years, compared to 31 % of the non-Indigenous population (Smith et al, 2008).

Music, song, ceremony, performance and dance are today a very important part of Aboriginal life and customs, they are not stopping create better music even today. Aborigines use didgeridoos in formal ceremonies at such events as sunsets, circumcisions, and funerals. Apart from the sacred ceremony, the didgeridoo played recreationally as an accompaniment to clan songs, entertainment songs, teaching songs and individually-owned songs. Traditionally, only men play the didgeridoo and sing during ceremonial occasions, although both men and women may dance. Female didgeridoo players do exist, but their playing takes place in an informal context and is not specifically encouraged by Aboriginal elders.

Although Indigenous music has delectable changing in the modern society, the other forms of music such as rock, jazz, bush, folk, country and classical music also account for big percent in human’s life in Australia. Compare to Indigenous Australian, other musical forms also create about recognition of rhythmic patterns derived from our environment and a sense of place. Australian classical music is represented by ensembles like the Australian String Quartet, Guitar Trek and the Stellar Quintet; state and community orchestras, such as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Ku-Ring-Gai Philharmonic Orchestra; choirs of all sorts based at schools, universities and community centres such as the Australian Girls Choir and the Sydney Philharmonic Choir; and operatic groups such as Opera Australia and Pinchgut Opera. Classical music in Australia is derived from our European history and traditions. It is generally notated, written for specific instruments and follows defined structures. Contemporary classical or ‘new music ‘does away with and refines some traditional approaches. New music is contemporary classical or art music composed in the 20th and 21st centuries. Sound are and computer generated music are related genres. Australia has a large number of high-quality ensembles, many focusing on performing works by Australian composers (Music Australia).

Allan Marett, a music researcher has convincingly argued that the disappearance of Australian Aboriginal songs could “potentially compromise our ability to adapt to as yet unforeseen changes” (Marett, 2010). Songs may contain information (ecological knowledge, for instance) that could help us deal with contemporary issues challenging the future of our country – even the planet.

In Australia, Indigenous communities keep their cultural heritage alive by passing their knowledge, arts, rituals and performances from one generation to another, speaking and teaching languages, protecting cultural materials, sacred and significant sites, and objects. In order to protect Indigenous heritage, Indigenous people continue to call for rights at a national and international level. They developed statements and declarations which assert their ownership and associated rights to Indigenous cultural heritage. These statements and declarations are a means of giving the world notice of the rights of Indigenous people. They also set standards and develop an Indigenous discourse that will, over time, ensure that Indigenous people’s cultural heritage is respected and protected.

Reference

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