Ngiya Awungarra – I Am Here, Now

The indigenous culture of the two main Tiwi Islands – Melville and Bathurst, some 80km north of Darwin – has always been distinct from the mainland Aboriginal people of Arnhem Land and the Northern Territory. This intriguing Australian project Ngarukuruwala (We Sing Songs), initiated by French horn player and academic Genevieve Campbell, brings together the traditional Tiwi Strong Women’s Group with jazz-classical musicians from down south.

In 2009, Tiwi elders and Campbell visited the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra, to access and reclaim Tiwi ethnological recordings that had been collected over the last century. With audio dating from 1912 to 1981, the elders were able to hear their forebears’ recorded voices, and in some cases, themselves at an earlier age. Selecting various archival songs and tape identification snippets, this CD combines those sounds with the voices of contemporary Tiwi singers – reuniting the living and the dead – as well as with loosely arranged or improvised musical responses from the Western musicians. There are also a few more complex produced soundscapes.

The results vary from delicately beautiful to experimentally bizarre, with unadorned indigenous vocals blending with minimalist strings, brass, woodwinds, double bass and drums, creating fascinating ethno-classical-jazz hybrids.