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Central Australian Women's Ritual Music: Knowing through Analysis Versus Knowing through Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Linda Barwick
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Extract

What can one “know” about any sort of music by means of musical analysis? What relationship can that “knowledge” bear to the knowledge of performers? These questions, pertinent perhaps to all musicologists, arise particularly strongly for me because for the past three years my work on Central Australian music has involved analysing documents of fieldwork carried out by other researchers (mainly Catherine Ellis) during the 1960s and early 70s, despite the fact that I have neither field experience in Central Australia nor extensive performance experience with performers of Central Australian traditional music. What follows is not intended as an apologia for “armchair” ethnomusicology, but rather as an attempt to open up, through discussion of the problematics of historical ethnomusicology, philosophical questions I believe to be central to the ethnomusicological enterprise.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 22 , 1990 , pp. 60 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the International Council for Traditional Music

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References

List of Recordings Analysed

Performance 1, recorded by C.J. Ellis at Port Augusta in January 1966 on Ellis field tape 66/22-24. Performed by Antikirinya women.Google Scholar
Performance 2, recorded by Catherine Ellis at Port Augusta in January 1966 on Ellis field tape 66/30-31. Performed by Antikirinya women.Google Scholar
Performance 3, recorded by Catherine Ellis at Port Augusta in 1969 on Ellis field tape E69/27-8. Performed by Antikirinya women.Google Scholar
Performance 4, recorded by Margaret Kartomi at Yalata in September 1969 on Kartomi field tape KY69/9, AIAS 1713B-1714A. Performed by Yankunytjatjara women.Google Scholar
Performance 5, recorded by Margaret Kartomi at Pidingga Lake near Yalata on 8 September 1969, on Kartomi field tapes KY69/12-13, AIAS 1714. Performed by Yankunytjatjara women.Google Scholar
Performance 6, recorded by Margaret Kartomi at Pidingga Lake near Yalata on 11 September 1969, on Kartomi field tapes KY69/20-21, AIAS 1716B. Performed by Yankunytjatjara women.Google Scholar
Performance 7, recorded by Isobel (Sally) White at Port Augusta on 31 January 1970, on White field tape number WA70/8-9, AIAS 3034B-3035A. Luise Hercus also recorded the performance on her tapes 310-312. Performed by group of Antikirinya women in the sandhills behind the Davenport Reserve.Google Scholar
Performance 8, recorded by Isobel (Sally) White at Yalata on 6 August 1970, on White field tape WY70/10-11, AIAS 3035A-B. Performed by Yankunytjatjara women.Google Scholar
Performance 9, recorded by Isobel (Sally) White at Yalata on 17 August 1971, on White field tape WY71/6-7, AIAS 3042B-3043A. Performed by large group of Yankunytjatjara women.Google Scholar

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