The power of music sustaining Indigenous languages

Perth Now

5 days ago

For musician and producer Deline Briscoe, using language in her songs is not just a responsibility, it is a continuation of tradition and honouring her ancestors.
"That's one of the forms we pass on our knowledge, including survival, including kinship systems, including stories," the Kuku Yalanji woman told AAP.
"For me, that's the importance of keeping that oral tradition going because it's the way that we connect to the feeling, and when you feel something you can really understand it deeper.
"Music brings that to the human experience."
Ms Briscoe is one of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people interviewed for a digital project at the University of Queensland, exploring how music can help prevent the loss of Indigenous languages.
The suite of videos explores the connection between music and language.
University of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit associate professor Katelyn Barney said researchers hope students will use the resource to learn about the power of music as a way to safeguard languages.
"We wanted to really listen to people's story and allow them to share the ways they're using music," she said.
"The people we interviewed talked about how there was a need for more resources around reclamation, revitalisation through music and how music can be a really powerful tool to do that."
Assoc Prof Barney, who collaborated on the project with Ms Briscoe and Wiradyuri author and University of Queensland professor Anita Heiss, said a common theme in the interviews was the responsibility artists felt to maintain language.
Biripi Worimi musician and University of Queensland alum, Jamaine Wilesmith said growing up, his language wasn't often spoken around him.
He'd been trying to learn his language for six years and found incorporating it into his songs helped him preserve and familiarise himself with it.
"When I use the language in my songs or writing it gives me a sense of pride, nostalgia and misery," Mr Wilesmith said."I love that when I sing or speak in language I've done right by my people and proven to our ancestors that we are strong enough and are still here, even though they're not."
Ms Briscoe's ancestors are front of mind for her too.
She said it's important to remember the effort started long ago, with work to capture and keep language dating back to colonisation.
"There's a lot of stories of communities that have written whole language dictionaries from songs in the hymn books," she said.
"That was a deliberate act, there was a deliberate choice to translate the hymns into their language, preserve their language.
"The songs kept going, the pronunciation is there, the intonation, all the nuances are there in those songs, even when we weren't allowed to practice our traditional style of singing they were still using these songs as a way of preserving our language."