The Hidden Music Maps

Some music is not not meant for public listening. Songlines, also called Dreaming tracks or the Dreaming, are a musical tradition of Aboriginal Australians that falls into this category.  It acts as a map to their land, a storage of origin stories, and a living archive of surrounding flora and fauna.1 Even though Western interest in this practice has significantly increased since the publication of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, only a few examples of the Dreaming are available on streaming platforms, for a wider audience. One of them is the performance of the Seven Sisters Songline, lasting circa an hour. This is a more popular Dreaming track, for it is also the subject of a museum exhibition in Canberra, at the National Museum of Australia. The entirety of the Songlines, however, is more deep and vast than the simplified versions presented online or on the museum halls. 

Considering this, one may wonder: why are most Aboriginal Songlines inaccessible online, for a wider public? In exploring this question, I make use of Dylan Robinson’s theories on Indigenous music studies, from his book Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Based on his argument that not all knowledge is meant for everyone, the first answer that comes to mind is the sacred character of the Dreaming. Aboriginals take great care in how they pass down their knowledge to the next generations, and only a select few get to be initiated in its secrets. 

As a follow-up question, I look into how an outsider or Westerner would study Indigenous music. Scholars trapped in an Eurocentric paradigm might project flawed understandings onto the culture of Aboriginals, like even Chatwin himself did, according to some critiques.2 If accuracy is not a feasible aim, then what could a Western study of Songlines be like? What can we learn from this Aboriginal practice? Neale Margo’s and Lynne Kelly’s book, Songlines: The Power and Promise, shows some answers to these questions. There are multiple layers to each Dreaming track, for which Aboriginals pursue a careful selection process in deciding who should be the keepers of their knowledge. 

In investigating why there are so few Songlines available to an outsider audience, I will cover several sub-topics. First, I look at who stores this knowledge, who are the ones who have access to the full Dreaming, if there are such people. Second, I explore how this knowledge is kept, through what practices and for what reasons. Afterwards, I glimpse at the content of the Songlines, based on what is available to outsiders. Finally, I discuss what we can learn from this culture and how we can contribute to keeping it alive.

Theoretical Framework: Listening to Indigenous Music

In this analysis, I make use of Dylan Robinson’s approach to Indigenous studies, as described in Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. He invites readers to reflect on their positionality and the knowledge they have access to based on their identity. Though the Western world is often eager for “complete accessibility” to the sources of their study, Indigenous communities cannot always offer this to any scholar exploring their culture.3 Certain knowledge is considered sacred, as Robinson, native american himself, highlights through the chapters introducing Hungry Listening.4 Making readers aware of their positionality, he asks them to reserve the second section of the book only for Indigenous people, and to skip forward to the next chapter if they do not identify as such.5 In doing so, Robinson creates a sense of recognition and respect for what is not one’s own. This theory stands at the basis of my analysis of Aboriginal Songlines too. I start with the premise of respect for what Indigenous people deem sacred, acknowledging that not all knowledge is open for everyone. Therefore, my paper does not focus on a specific Songline, but discusses the debate around this music and how one could learn from Aboriginals without trespassing into their world.

Method: Sources About the Songlines

British writer Bruce Chatwin went to Australia to learn more about the Songlines from experience, and not from other literary sources.6 In his famed traveling novel, The Songlines, he describes that Aboriginal “music [...] is a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.”7 He finds it to be “both a map and a direction-finder.”8 This was my first understanding of the Songlines, as the first encounter with them was through Chatwin’s book. His narratives, however, are combined with fiction too. He also romanticizes the stories of the Aboriginals, and his previous interactions with other Indigenous tribes seem to have influenced his perception of the Australian ones, as various reviews critique him on.9 There seems to be much more to the Songlines, even in the simplest of forms, than Chatwin manages to cover in his book.

In discussing the study of Aboriginal music, I will mostly make use of another source on the topic: Songlines : The Power and Promise by Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly. With both a Western and an Aboriginal perspective, the book is a more recent and nuanced look at the Songlines. While Chatwin’s novel is from 1987, by a white Westerner, the latter source was published in 2020, by authors of both Western and Aboriginal descent. Through close reading, I aim to highlight some of the main points of this book, in order to describe the function of Songlines, to investigate why most of its contents are kept between close quarters, and to analyze the means through which one can keep this musical culture alive, without disturbing its sacredness.

Keepers of the Songlines: Open and Close Stories

There are multiple “layers” to each Songline.10 The ones that are accessible to everyone, including non-Aboriginals, are called “open” stories, while those known only by a small group of Aboriginals are called “close.”11 The few examples of Songlines available online are from the first category. Such is the performance of the Seven Sisters story, “which the custodians call the schoolkids’ version,” for it is greatly simplified.12 The performance lasts circa an hour and includes English translations of the narrative.13 The National Museum of Australia also exhibits this Songline in its open, simplified version, and so do books on the topic.14 What readers see “in published anthologies of Aboriginal stories are those told to children to start them on a journey to an adult level of understanding. When considered from within the Aboriginal culture, those outside it are the equivalent of children.”15 Curious visitors and readers might want to know more, yet the close, deeper layers of the story are only meant for “a select few,” based on age, gender, and family ties in the Aboriginal communities.16

Getting to know a Songline’s close version takes training and a fitting “family lineage.”17 One has to be related to the “owner” of the song.18 “In the Indigenous system, not all people can know all knowledge, and because it is a non-text-based system,” one can learn about various Songlines only from “the right people, at the right time, in the right place.”19 This process can last a lifetime, and indeed Aboriginal archivists take it as “more than a job or even a passion[;]...it is their life purpose.”20 If some deeper levels of the Songlines are not even open to all Aboriginals, how could a Westerner expect to have access to them? 

Storing Songlines: Memory and the Third Archive

Unlike written Western archives, Aboriginal ones are not based on text, but they are “embodied,” passed down orally from one generation to another.21 This process is based on performance and on visual cues from the country, and is gradually pursued by initiates.22 Furthermore, songs stand at the center of these performances. “As senior Yanyuwa woman Eileen McDinny explains, ‘Everything got a song, no matter how little it’s in the song – name of plant, birds, animal, country, people, everything got a song.’”23 This incredible amount of information is stored through the use of spatial cues as well, locations to which each song refers to.24 Everything, however, is connected to the human memory.

It seems the main reason why so much of the Songlines are kept secret, even from parts of the Aboriginal communities, has to do with the fragility of memory, which is prone to error. It is not only a matter of sacredness and tradition. If every song would be repeated by everyone in a slightly different manner, then with time Songlines would lose their meaning. Therefore, they are passed down only to those “ready to receive and protect” them.25 Adding to this, songs are age or gender-related, part of a “social structure” that aims for accuracy of knowledge.

Another method of storing information that recently gained momentum in some Aboriginal communities is the Third Archive. Mentioned by Neale and Kelly in their book, this is a combination of Western archival methods and the content of the “oldest culture.”26 The authors do not specify how exactly this is done, but it involves Aboriginals using new technology for storing the Songlines. Such an archive would not run into the same problems as the usual oral tradition of performances.

Songline Content: Sharing Dreaming Stories of the Country

Though not all layers of the Songlines are open, Aboriginals can still share what these songs are generally about. The content of the Songlines varies in its subject matters. If one were to use “standard Western encyclopedic terms for the knowledge that can be retrieved from the Songlines, the headings would include animals, plants, genealogies, geology, climate and seasons, land management, geography, astronomy, calendars, natural resources, ecology, religion, laws and ethics, among many others.”27 Furthermore, musical narratives differ in their extension on the land. Some Dreaming tracks travel as far as the whole continent, like the “Kungkarrangkalpa,” known as the Seven Sisters saga, while others expand only on a small area.28

Taking the Seven Sisters as an example, this Songline, as explained in its simplified version, involves seven siblings running from “their relentless pursuer Wati Nyiru, who harmed the eldest sister.”29 Their presence is connected to the site at Kuru Ala, and the Anangu people consider the Kungkarrangkalpa so “palpable” there, that they only whisper when in its surroundings, in fear of “disturbing” Wati Nyiru, and “for other reasons not disclosed.”30 The Pleiades constellation is also connected to the Seven Sisters Songline, representing the siblings’ run until the sky.  

Discussion

By some considered the oldest culture on Earth, the Aboriginal Australian musical tradition is in need of more people to respect and preserve it. As Neale and Kelly argue, “Songlines have been around for millennia and will be around for many millennia to come if we lend a hand to keep them alive.”31 How to do this is one of the most important questions for the future, especially since some of the youth in Aboriginal communities lack the interest of following the Songlines rites and being initiated into the deeper knowledge of the close stories. As an outsider, keeping this culture alive and learning from it seems difficult without full access to the more complex layers of the Songlines. Nonetheless, the open stories, the “children level” of understanding the Dreaming, is still something worth appreciating. 

I based this paper only on the open version of Songlines, particularly that of the Seven Sisters, but I withdrew from further analyzing this performance since it seemed besides the point of my research. What I rather sought to achieve is a clear and concise explanation of why Songlines should not be sought in their entirety by those outside Aboriginal communities, why they are so tied to only a few initiates, and how Westerners can help in preserving this culture. Further studies can better analyze these issues though a more empirical approach, perhaps holding interviews with members of Aboriginal communities, going to Australia and seeing the Songlines exhibition in the National Museum, or trying to live among the few lasting Aboriginal communities and experiencing their culture, but always from a respectful standpoint.

Conclusion

Even if restricted, access to the Dreaming is still available for curious outsiders, who can learn from the Aboriginal culture and help in keeping it alive. Since the publication of Bruce Chatwin’s traveling novel on the topic, public interest in this culture has significantly increased. The book, however, is also partially fiction, and seems to involve a flawed portrayal of the Aboriginal tribes and Songlines. Margo Neale’s and Lynne Kelly’s work does more justice to understanding the Dreaming, as Songlines are also called. They offer a more recent and nuanced perspective, straight from Australian and Aboriginal communities, one of them being a Western Australian, and the other being an Indigenous Australian. Based on literature on the topic, Songlines can be conceived as a map of the Australian land, but also as an archive of Aboriginal cultural history and surrounding fauna and flora. 

Closely reading Neale’s and Kelly’s publication reveals some answers to why so few parts of the Songlines are available online, answers hinted by Dylan Robinson’s theories on positionality and sacred knowledge too. Besides conforming to tradition, the main concern is preserving accuracy through time. Only a select group of people get to know the most complex Songlines, which they dedicate their lives to. It seems Aboriginal communities are based on a strict social structure through which members learn about deeper layers of the Songlines, depending on gender, age and family ties. Only the children's level of stories embedded in the Dreaming are disclosed to the general public too. These are the “open” narratives found in the exhibition of the National Museum of Australia, in the Seven Sisters Songline performance and in books on the topic. The “close” and sacred stories are not easily shared, due to the fear of losing their accuracy through flawed repetition by those who are not initiated enough to preserve their message. 

Songlines are preserved through performance, which has song at its core, and through the memory of those ready to dedicate their lives to become a living archive, but there are also other means of storing this knowledge, with which outsiders can help as well. A new method of maintaining the meaning of the Dreaming is also the Third Archive, mentioned by Neale and Kelly. This is a combination between Western technological means of archiving and the structure of Aboriginal communities based on which knowledge is passed down to each new generation. It is one of the means through which outsiders can help Indigenous people with keeping their culture alive: offering technical support, but not interfering with the traditional structure of who is meant to know the deeper layers of Songlines. Further exploring how this could be done would entail going to Australia and actually talking to the members of Aboriginal communities, yet until then this paper presented some guidelines for how one can treat the study of Songlines from afar.

As Robinson also holds true, outsiders should respect the voices of Indigenous people and explore only the sounds which are open for public discourse. Even if this might go against the principle of free information, some knowledge is better left untouched by the masses, so as not to lose its clarity by reinterpretation.

Endnotes

1. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook. 

2. Robert Clarke, “Star Traveller: Celebrity, Aboriginality and Bruce Chatwin's the Songlines (1987),” Postcolonial Studies 12, no. 2 (2009): 229-246, https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790902887197.  

   Christine Nicholls, “A Wild Roguery: Bruce Chatwin’s ‘the Songlines’ Reconsidered,” Text Matters 9, no. 9: 22-49, https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.09.02.

3. Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening : Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies, Indigenous Americas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), 22. 

4. Robinson, Hungry Listening, 25.

5. Robinson, 25.

6. Bruce Chatwin, “Chapter 3.” in The Songlines (Pennsylvania: Franklin, 1987), eBook.

7. Bruce Chatwin, “Chapter 21,” in The Songlines (Pennsylvania: Franklin, 1987), eBook.

8. Bruce Chatwin, “Chapter 3,” in The Songlines (Pennsylvania: Franklin, 1987), eBook.

9. Robert Clarke, “Star Traveller: Celebrity, Aboriginality and Bruce Chatwin's the Songlines (1987),” Postcolonial Studies 12, no. 2 (2009): 229-246, https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790902887197.  

   Christine Nicholls, “A Wild Roguery: Bruce Chatwin’s ‘the Songlines’ Reconsidered,” Text Matters 9, no. 9: 22-49, https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.09.02.

10. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

11. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

12. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

13. Aboriginal NRM. “Kungkarangkalpa: Seven Sisters Songline.” November 9, 2013. Video, 1:07:31. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3igXR7oL8FU.

14. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

15. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Spiral Forever,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

16. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

17. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

18. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

19. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

20. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

21. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

22. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

23. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

24. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

25. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

26. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

27. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

28. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” eBook.

29. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” eBook.

30. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” eBook.

31. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “The Promise of Songlines,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

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