Waralungku

Back in 2013, Darwin-based Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter Shellie Morris released the album Together We Are Strong – Ngambala Wiji Li-Wunungu: The Song People’s Sessions – a two-disc collaboration with the Borroloola Songwomen. Hailing from their small remote community in the Gulf of Carpentaria region of the Northern Territory, it was an emotional opportunity for the award-winning Morris to return to her grandmother’s country, and finally learn her family’s Yanyuwa language – Shellie was adopted as a baby and raised by a non-Indigenous family in Sydney.

A decade on, this new album, Warralangku, consists of ten songs, with the Arrkula Yinbayarra group, and features four endangered languages: Yanyuwa, Garrwa, Gudanji and Marra. All the songs were written by local women, and ‘dedicated to reclaiming their languages for future generations,’ in order to preserve and promote their unique cultural heritage.

Borroloola singer Marlene Karkadoo, who had a dream to create this new collection of songs after the 2013 release, said, “Some of the ladies had never sung before, and none of us have had a career like Shellie… We wanted to come together and shine a spotlight on these languages that are dying out, and we want the young people and the world to hear them and our stories.”