Indigenising the Documentation of Musical Cultural Practices: Torres Strait Islander Community CDs/DVDs
Karl Neuenfeldt and Will Kea
Introduction
Music plays a major role in Indigenous cultures because as Frith suggests, “[music] offers, so intensely, a sense of both self and others, of the subjective in the collective” (1996, 110). Over the past several decades, Indigenous peoples worldwide and in Australia have increasingly engaged not only with the technologies and techniques of the cultural production of music but also its documentation as a cultural practice (Barney 2007, Neuenfeldt 2007a, Ottosson 2007, Dunbar-Hall and Gibson 2004, Diamond 2002, Scales 2002).
This exploration of the phenomena focuses on the multiple roles of Will Kepa, a Torres Strait Islander audio engineer, musician, producer and cultural broker. In particular, his contributions to four community CDs/DVDs recorded on-location in the Torres Strait region of far northern Queensland, Australia in 2007-2008 that documented music (and dance) as a cultural practice. It provides an instructive example of how the documentation of cultural practices is being Indigenised and how Indigenous Australians are accessing all-important technological means and production skills to influence – ideally – representations of their cultures (Langton 1993), albeit often in collaboration with non-Indigenous Australians (Barney and Solomon 2009, Neuenfeldt 2005, 2001). It argues that cultural brokers such as Kepa who understand Indigenous protocols, languages and cultures can contribute significantly to documentation projects. Before detailing the project, Will Kepa’s multiple roles in documentation and his comments on them, it is useful to provide some brief background information on the Torres Strait region, Torres Strait Islanders (henceforth Islanders) and their musical styles – all of which are not well known by most Australians.
The Torres Strait Region and Torres Strait Islanders
The Torres Strait region is more than just a major maritime passageway linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans and separating New Guinea from Australia. Since the colonial era it has also been a cultural crossroads. Starting in the mid 19th century, maritime industries such as beche de mer and pearling attracted a multinational workforce (Mullins 1995, Ganter 1994). The migrants brought with them their Polynesian, Melanesian, Afro-American, European and Southeast and Northeast Asian musical and performance cultures (Costigan and Neuenfeldt 2007, Mullins and Neuenfeldt 2005, Nakta and Neuenfeldt 2005, Neuenfeldt 2004, Mullins and Neuenfeldt 2001). Since the colonial era these diverse and multicultural traditions have combined with local Indigenous traditions to fashion a unique musical culture that circulates both in the Torres Strait region and on the Australian Mainland (Neuenfeldt 2008) – which is now home to approximately two-thirds of Islanders.
Islanders are an Indigenous ‘minority within a minority’. In 2006, 2.5 percent of Australians identified as Aboriginal and Islander (or both). Out of the approximate Indigenous population of five-hundred thousand, approximately twenty-five thousand, or 5 percent, claimed Torres Strait Islander status (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007). Within the Torres Strait region itself, 81 percent of the approximately seven-thousand residents identified as Islander (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007). On the mainland, there are sizeable Islander communities on the east coast of Queensland (e.g. Cairns, Innisfail, Townsville, and Mackay) but also in capital cities and Western Australia (e.g. Pilbara region).
There are 18 distinct Islander communities scattered across the hundreds of islands of the Torres Strait region (and two on nearby Cape York Peninsula). They range from a few hundred people to the approximately five thousand residents of Thursday Island, which is the economic and administrative centre. However, in the context of Australian communities they are all quite small and also very isolated. Similar to other Indigenous peoples worldwide they have to confront daily considerable challenges in the areas of employment, health and education. They also have been historically constituted by governments variously – and sometimes confusingly – as either subjects, objects or citizens (Nakata 2004). Consequently, they have been drawn into not only the orbit of “welfare colonialism” (Beckett 1987) but also at times contentious and highly politicised issues of land and sea rights (Scott and Mulrennan 1999) and autonomy (Osborne 2009).
In general terms, contemporary Islander culture is a mixture of considerable European/Anglo-Australian colonial and migrant influences superimposed on a predominantly Melanesian base. The two traditional languages, Meriam Mir and Kala Lagaw Ya (and its dialects), are respectively linked to Papuan and Aboriginal languages. This reflects the historical reality of Torres Strait as a north-south conduit for trade and culture between New Guinea and Australia. The main lingua franca of the region is now Torres Strait Creole as Islanders increasingly live and work outside the confines of their island homes (Shnukal 2004). Historically they had been confined on ‘reserves’ by all-intrusive race-based laws (Nakata 2007, Kidd 1997) that were legislated in Australia during the era when European settler colonies were “drawing the global colour line” (Lake and Reynolds 2008). Some race-based restrictions lasted into the 1960s.
Similar to Indigenous peoples worldwide, music and dance are key components in iterating who Islanders think they are – and also wish to be. They are also sites for the dialogical construction of a contemporary Islander identity, a way of asserting via the arts, “‘this is who we are’” (Nakata 2007, 142), helping articulate processes of “change in continuity/continuity in change” (Sharp 1993, 13) in Islander culture. As Lawrence observes: “Wherever Islanders live – whether in the home islands or in Mainland cities and towns – they express their culture and identity through music and dance performances” (1998a, 52). As accessible and enjoyable elements of Ailan Kastom (Island Custom), music and dance have proven to be effective for nourishing and preserving connections to home-islands. Those connections are crucial because as Beckett notes: “To be an Islander, one must have an island!” (1987, 209).
In the context of notions of ‘ownership’ of cultural practices in general, and music and dance repertoire in particular, York has noted how there is a considerable perception of cultural ownership, partly reflecting “a desire to negotiate, affirm, and maintain a specific identity, not only within Australian culture at large, but also within Islander culture” (2000, 343). Further to this, cultural practices are not necessarily open to everyone to access, including other Islanders: “Islanders tend to deliberately reserve a special portion of their repertoire for their exclusive use, preserving a unique set that is not only representative of familiar people or particular families, but is also specific to the most fundamental place in which identity resides, the home island” (York 2000, 343–344). Thus it is in the cultural crucible of the Torres Strait region that Islander culture continues to be negotiated and then perhaps re-circulated to communities elsewhere.
By being recorded and filmed collaboratively on-location, the four community CDs/DVDs are instructive examples of the nature of some current projects that are documenting cultural practices in the very localised cultural crucible of remote island communities, whose small communities are nonetheless closely linked to larger communities of Islanders ‘down south’. A technologically, culturally and musically skilled person such as Will Kepa can act as a bridge between not only home-island and mainland Islanders but also Islanders and ‘whitefellas’.
Torres Strait Islander Musical Styles
According to Mabo, “Music features in everyday activities of the Islanders’ lives. Certain songs and dances are associated with major rituals and must be sung in a special way. There are songs for all sorts of games, such as ball games, string games, skipping, jogging and boating” (2005, 49). Islanders have two significant and sometimes overlapping styles of music they mainly perform and compose: the sacred and the secular. Style is used here in the sense of “an idiom of recognizable musical elements (or codes), performance procedures, and contextual purpose, use, and meaning” (Sherinian 2007, 238). There is also an overlap in some local categorisations of ‘contemporary’ or ‘traditional’ Islander music, which challenge notions of the two as necessarily distinct categories. Similar to Islander music, Dunbar-Hall and Gibson note in the context of Aboriginal music how stylistic markers of contemporary and traditional styles can coexist (2004, 28). Thematically, Islander songs deal with a wide range of topics from the spiritual and dramatic to the political and humorous. However, because of the maritime environment of Torres Strait, many secular songs relate to the region’s seascapes, in particular maritime work (Fuary 2009). The themes of sacred songs range from those drawn from various Christian texts sung accapella (or with Islander drums) as hymns/language hymns to kores, contemporary songs with guitar or band accompaniment.
Another key aspect of Islander music is that in the Torres Strait region stylistic eclecticism has historically been a characteristic of music (and dance) repertoire and practice. This tendency has been documented in the corpus of field recordings and analysis starting as far back as 1898 with the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait by Haddon and Myers (Haddon 1901-35). Further documentation was conducted by Beckett (2001, 1981, 1972), Lawrie (2006, 1970), Laade (1977) and Lawrence (2004, 2000, 1998a, [1998b]). The community CDs/DVDs described below add to that corpus and include both sacred and secular music styles.
The Project and Personnel
The project was innovative in the sense that such a comprehensive undertaking had not been previously initiated in the Torres Strait region.
In the few earlier documentation projects, beyond acting as informants and performers, Islanders were not often involved in the technological aspects of documentation and there were few recordings readily available to the communities. Since the advent of digital technology, there have been CDs done by organisations, communities or individuals but no documentation project had been intentionally trans-regional. The four CDs/DVDs of music, dance and oral history interviews were recorded and filmed at Badu, Mabuiag, Warraber/Sue and Iama/Yam Islands in 2007-2008 under the patronage of the Torres Strait Regional Authority (henceforth TSRA) as part of a pilot project not only to document cultural practices but also to assess cultural appropriateness and logistical and financial feasibility. (Two more are currently (2010) being done at Erub (Darnley Island) and Boigu Island.) There were several other funding and administrating partners, including the TSRA’s Gab Titui Cultural Centre, Arts Queensland, the National Library of Australia and CQUniversity Australia. A key goal of the project was to be inclusive in order to acknowledge that Islander cultural practices are trans-gendered and trans-generational: women and men, children and elders all participate. Communities chose the repertoire. However, the producers maintained an overview of how many songs could be recorded, what would be the balance of sacred and secular songs, and, if needed, how many songs could be embellished by the addition of ‘overdubs’, instrumentation or vocals added to a basic recording. The final four TSRA CDs/DVDs contained eighty-six songs (and ten dances). Stylistically, forty-six songs were sacred and forty were secular. Other songs (and dances) were also recorded but for various reasons – usually either technological or aesthetic – not all could be included but nonetheless copies of them were provided to the communities.
It is also important to note that there is restricted access to Outer Island communities in the Torres Strait region. Formal approval to visit is needed and both the TSRA and local Prescribed Body Corporates (representing traditional owners) have research protocols that must be followed. Producers (and researchers) ignore at their peril the fact that a long process of consultation can ensue before production can commence, consultation that ideally will address appropriately some of the issues of concern to communities. Outsiders such as music and film producers and researchers definitely cannot just arrive in an isolated community, turn on their equipment and proceed immediately to record or film. Similarly, the process of consultation can follow on well after a project’s completion; in some ways completion provides but an illusion of closure. If a mutually beneficial relationship has resulted from a project, then the producers (and researchers) may be asked to lend support to the community in other ways, such as making grant applications or supplying research materials.
Along with Will Kepa, the production crew consisted of Islander cinematographer Murray Lui and its non-Indigenous members: audio engineer and co-producer Nigel Pegrum, cinematographer and editor Brett Charles and co-producer and executive producer Karl Neuenfeldt. Travel to the islands was either by dinghy or small airplane. The recording equipment and instruments were transported via freighter from Cairns to Thursday Island and then by barge to the islands. Because the project had collaboration as a priority, communities were consulted at the pre-production, production and post-production phases about the content, design and distribution of the CDs/DVDs, including the right of final approval before they were pressed. Although all the members of the production crew had experience working in the Torres Strait region, there were still many challenges – technological, logistical, cultural and aesthetic – that were only worked out by trial and error as each island had its own unique social, cultural, religious, political and natural environments.
Will Kepa’s Roles
Born in 1982, Will Kepa (2008) is part of a large extended Islander family from Iama/Yam Island in the Torres Strait. He grew up on the Mainland, mostly in the Cairns region. From an early age, he was immersed in the cultural activities of the Islander community and after high school did a Diploma in Music at Cairns’ Tropical North Queensland Institute of TAFE (2008). There he learnt the basics of the music industry such as audio engineering, musicianship and production. He also began to work with live sound mixing crews and served his musical apprenticeship as a bassist and drummer with pub and reggae bands. He also performed with well-regarded North Queensland acts such as Seaman Dan, Kamerunga, the Briscoe Sisters and Tribe of Jubal at major Australian folk festivals and concerts, and produced north Queensland acts such as Zennith and Cygnet Repu. Internationally, in 2008 he was a member of the Australian Indigenous contingent to the Festival of Pacific Arts in Samoa and in 2009 the Ariu Panipan troupe of Islander dancers and singers performing traditional music and dance in Hawaii in connection with the Zamiyakal exhibition of Islander dancing apparatuses. In 2010 he will be recording his first solo CD, funded by Arts Queensland. Will is unique in his versatility as an audio engineer, musician, producer and cultural broker and what follow are descriptions and analysis of how those roles contributed to the TSRA CDs/DVDs project.
In Will’s multiple roles in the TSRA project he had an influential input into the project (Wolffram 2009) and thus potentially the future shape of Islander musical cultural practices. The project was an intense period but he did have a chance to reflect on the importance of such projects when he was interviewed for one of the DVDs (Iama Wakai Tusi2008) and also in a later interview (Kepa 2010). What follow along with descriptions of the various roles are excerpts of some of his comments on the project, pointing out the importance of Islanders having input not only into the means of production but also the representations of their culture. The excerpts are useful because they provide personalised insights into the processes, underlying principles, benefits and challenges of Indigenising the documentation of cultural practices.
Audio Engineer
In the past few decades, technology has had a significant role in documenting and presenting Indigenous peoples’ music to wider audiences beyond the limited confines of academic research or archives (Scales 2005). ‘Field recordings’ are now only one aspect of academia’s engagement with music and music making and Indigenous peoples themselves are now also ‘wired for sound’ (Greene and Porcello 2005). Will Kepa is one of the few Islanders working professionally as an audio engineer, although there are numerous amateur home-recordists. This is partly because of his mentoring by several TAFE teachers who recognised his potential as an audio engineer and encouraged him to go beyond the valuable but limited role of a ‘roadie’.
Will was thrown into the role of main audio engineer for the TSRA project due to the unavailability of head audio engineer Nigel Pegrum for some of the on-location recordings. Consequently, on two of the islands Will had to record, produce and perform whilst also acting as cultural broker. On the two other islands he and Nigel shared the audio engineering. He also had to learn to use the recording equipment used on-location: digital multitrack TASCAM DAT recorders. They are not computer based and are a bit dated. However, they are very sturdy and also very reliable on the sometimes-inconsistent power output coming from local diesel generators. Learning to use microphones was also a challenge as they were somewhat limited compared to the choices available in the studio. Due to the climate and transport issues, the most sensitive and expensive microphones were not used on-location. Nonetheless the microphones used on-location were professional quality but might have to be used in several different applications, unlike in the studio where each application has a particular preferred microphone.
Recording spaces were also an on-going issue for Will as an audio engineer because each recording space was different. For example, in some situations a community meeting room would be used, in others a schoolroom. In such kinds of spaces numerous blankets were hung from ropes and rugs or mats were laid down to deaden the reverberant sound of a room. Also useful were acoustic reflection shields that meant the vocal sounds in particular were consistent from island to island and were not dependant on the sound of the rooms used. This lent sonic uniformity to the overall sound of the project, making post-production mixing much easier and more consistent.
Will dealt with two main recording situations: live and overdubbing. For live situations such as choirs doing sacred hymns or kores, it was important to get a good ensemble sound (see below) but each recording space itself was different. For example, a church often has lots of room but also very noisy acoustics, especially if it has mainly hard surfaces that reflect sound. There are also continual ambient noises from the community with vehicles, children and airplanes coming and going, and the very sensitive microphones picked them up. After all, the communities are lively places and it was impossible to expect the life of the community to halt while doing recordings. With accapella live situations there was also no possibility of combining different versions of a song as the pitch and tempo can vary widely between one ‘take’ and the next. Therefore the entire ‘take’ had to be useable and that could be a challenge because choirs are used to doing music as part of their worship, not as a premeditated performance. Having to repeat a song too many times – due either to technical issues or mistakes – usually leads to less enthusiastic versions as people get bored or tired. Thus the audio engineer had to be ready at all times because the first or second take were usually the best. However, sometimes an important song, such as the language hymn dedicated to the church, might be recorded again at another session if necessary.
For overdubbing situations such as contemporary secular songs or kores, the process was more sequential with each overdub done separately (see below). Because Will was playing many of the instruments, once he had recorded a basic ‘bed track’ (commonly made up of drums, bass and a chordal instrument) he could add to it when community members were not available, often during the day when they were working or looking after families. Instruments such as electric guitars, bass and keyboards were recorded via ‘line’ inputs directly into the mixing desk and could be repeated as many times as necessary. This meant not only more precision but also more time could be taken to get sounds and a level of production suitable for a particular song.
In his role as an audio engineer, Will (2008) noted there were challenges in recording traditional music, in particular “how to record traditional instruments such as microphone placements, [equalisation]” and also “learning about how my people react to the situation of singing with all these big microphones in front of them”. And with contemporary music he had to:
[Try] to teach people to play clean or in time or how to play their instrument [for recording purposes], not how they are used to playing it. A lot of the time I spent recording I had to teach the people on how to get a good product or how I can get a good product out of them.
Asked if having an Islander as the audio engineer made a difference, Will commented:
I think just to have someone there in the middle to break the ice makes a lot of difference. It kind of eases them … because Islander people get shy and they don’t know how to act sometimes. They come into the room and they’re really quiet and they get outside and they’re totally different people.
Thus an on-going challenge for an audio engineer such as Will is to get credible performances from people from his own community who are not professional performers but rather community singers and musicians.
Musician
Having an innate sense of musicality is a definite bonus for an audio engineer (Neuenfeldt 2007b). Will is accomplished on bass, drums, guitars, keyboards and ukulele as well as singing and arranging. Due to the wishes of some soloist contemporary Islander musicians to have their songs presented with fuller production, Will ended up playing many instruments and each song presented a different challenge, as did other aspects of production.
Based on previous projects, it was learnt that it was important to use studio quality musical instruments. Taking the same instruments as used at Pegasus Studios had the advantage that no matter how simply a musician played it would sound good. Many Islanders play guitar and some play keyboards but because their instruments might not be in good shape, it had sometimes previously been a challenge to get useable results using local instruments. Technical expertise was not the issue because the Islander guitar playing style is part of the appeal of the music. The chords and keys might be straightforward and there might be a lack of instrumental virtuosity but the strength of Islander music has usually been in the singing and compositions and the passion of performance. Chordal accompaniment was all that was needed to provide a musical bed for the elaborate albeit often impromptu harmonies that characterise much Islander music.
Will’s role as a musician was to build on those stylistic traditions and musical beds to take the songs to a more elaborate level of production. Sometimes it was simply the addition of a capo-ed acoustic or electric guitar or a ukulele playing different chord shapes that provided more harmonic complexity. Other times the addition of an electric bass made what were very laid-back songs sound more contemporary and rhythmic. And at other times, simple keyboards, especially on the reggae-flavoured songs, added an offbeat pulse that complemented the singing and rhythmic styles. Because of the aforementioned eclecticism of Islander music, secular musicians and singers were generally willing to try something different. Will had the skills to help them develop their music, especially for the contemporary secular and sacred songs.
In his role as a musician Will said he was able to learn different technological approaches: “What I learned as a musician about the recording side of it is because I’m young and coming into the scene [now], it’s all Protools [recording platform] and computers. So it was good to learn the real way to record onto tape. Like, you ‘do it once’ and you’ve ‘got to do it right’ kind of thing.” As a Torres Strait Islander musician:
It was kind of a bit easy sometimes [because] I’ve played as a session musician on a lot of artists’ recording in the studio. And of course [there] you’ve got to try and play what the artist wants and give them what they need and [how] they’re hearing it, or give them different options. When I was doing the recording up there [In Torres Strait] and playing, it seemed like everything I was coming up with the artist liked it anyways. It was a lot easier [than in the studio sometimes], no one was saying ‘oh, I don’t like that’ or ‘try something else’. I knew I didn’t have the pressure of being produced by the artist. I had to think of what I could play that was appropriate enough, that wasn’t too over-the-top with what I really could have done but keep it in the limit of what they’d like it as well.
Because he is an Islander he could intuit: “what they’d like and what’s appropriate for them. I know what music they listen to and what styles they’re into. I know their point of reference.”
There was a major challenge for Will as a musician when putting the live drums on last in the studio, after all the other instruments had been recorded on-location: [It] was kind of fun because I’d never done it that way before ... [Usually we start] with the drums and build up on top of there but we did it the other way around [on-location] and it kind of worked. Everything was recorded to a click track so I was able to play drums to that later on and keep it all in time.” Nonetheless, there were challenging aspects:
…The hardest thing was playing bass to the click track that we’d set, but in a different groove to the [final] drum groove that I had in my head … I had to play to someone else’s drumming but [be] thinking about another style of drumming … I kind of had to split my mind a bit. The first thing I think of all the time when I hear a song is the groove, the foundation underneath, when someone brings a song. So everything I played up there [in Torres Strait] was all going to make sense later on when I put the drums down. I guess that’s another reason why it worked out okay in the studio, because I’d already planned all these grooves so when I got in I wasn’t searching for anything, I just laid it down.
On-location, Will did not get a lot of effusive comments from the artists or community but “everyone that I’ve seen [later] and who was on the recordings just loved it. I’ve had heaps of good, positive feedback from other people as well, even in and around Cairns … like people who go to my mum’s church. Anyone I’ve ever seen they’re always [saying] ‘we’ve got all the CDs now’ or ‘I’ve got three of them and I’m gonna buy the last one’ or ‘have you done anymore, are you doing any more?’ As a musician there were challenges but the general positive response of Islanders suggests that what Will played and arranged fit within the aesthetic and cultural boundaries of contemporary Islander sacred and secular music.
Producer
In music production practice, a producer acts variously in aesthetic, organisational or administrative roles as someone who is an intermediary between production and consumption (Hennion 1989). They may or may not be musicians themselves but often come out of some field within or allied to the music industry. Music production is a bit like trying to solve a conceptual puzzle. There are common steps taken but what distinguishes a ‘good’ production from a ‘not so good’ production is often in the realm of the ineffable: an unpredictable melange of melody, performance, poetry and technology. By describing how some of the songs recorded for the TSRA project were produced, a clearer picture emerges about Will role as producer.
After Will had done some pre-production with artists to choose what songs would be recorded, a key would be chosen and a basic arrangement outlined. Usually the next step, as noted above, was to establish a tempo by laying down a ‘click track’. Next the artist or Will did a simple acoustic guitar or keyboard track along with a ‘guide’ vocal track. Once a song’s ‘road map’ was finalised, all of those tracks were then re-recorded with more attention paid to the sounds and the performances. At that stage decisions were made about how much to add to a song given there might be time, technological or budgetary restraints. Not every song could be embellished, and some songs did not need that treatment. However, Islanders are very aware of contemporary music and production styles and also keen to learn not only the technological aspects of recording but also aesthetic aspects, such as what instruments work well together, what chord patterns lend themselves to different styles, what vocal combinations can enhance a song, etc. Some of the artists had no recording experience whatsoever but others were already conversant with recording because over the last years computer-based home recordings have increased in the Torres Strait region. Some Islander artists circulate their CDs and also garner local radio airplay.
An important musical aspect noted above is that by using studio quality guitars, bass and keyboards the final recordings have a professional sheen to them. However, the danger is that songs could sound similar unless care was taken to vary instrumentation or overdub selectively. Sometimes local drums and percussion were added as they all have different sounds and were part of the aesthetic and sonic ambience of that community. With kores in particular, there also were restrictions on what instruments could be overdubbed. For example, the bands in evangelical congregations usually do not use traditional warup drums but rather they often use a drum kit. However, along with instruments and amplifiers, drums kits may not be of professional quality due to the region’s high humidity and salt air. Therefore sometimes a drum machine was used and replaced later. Knowing what kinds of instruments or percussion are appropriate to what styles of music is the kind of cultural knowledge an Indigenous producer such as Will knows intuitively. Otherwise time – and community goodwill – can be wasted in the production and post-production stages. Mistakenly adding a traditional drum to an evangelical church’s kores would be decidedly inappropriate and would need to be fixed because those markers of religious differentiation are important to Islanders.
In his role as producer, the project was a steep learning curve for Will. The Islanders themselves did not necessarily differentiate the varied roles of audio engineer, musician, producer and cultural broker. However, he was asked about being a producer:
… I told them ‘a producer kind of makes a song into a song’. You come to me with something that you wrote in your living room and you just strum away on your guitar and you sing the song from start to end. But the producer turns that into an intro, a verse, a chorus, a verse, a bridge. [A producer helps provide] structure, and colours [a song]. And a [producer] can hear in [their] head what other instruments will flavour it to give it some texture.
Although Will has studio experience as a session musician, he commented that he still learnt a lot about the role of a producer: “It made me fully aware of what was going on [musically] and why my bass line would work with my drumming later on and just try to marry the two [and the other instruments] together ... I guess I learnt how to paint that picture or how to create that song.”
It was the first time he had the opportunity to do everything by himself. Subsequently,
It [has] made a lot of difference to everything else that I do now. In bands that I play in these days as well, I take more notice of what other members of the band are playing in any song. And I try to pull ‘em up and say ‘that’s not working with this’, etc. Just being in [the TSRA project] and that situation has really opened my ears up. Now I’ve got too much things going in one side of my ears and out the other!
Will felt there were expectations from the Islander communities:
I think they have a lot of expectations [of me as a producer]. But again, generally if I don’t know something I just ask straight up front – politely – and not assume they just have to take … what ever I do to their track. Just talk and share with them your ideas, what’s going through my head musically … I really try to explain and make them feel comfortable about what I’m doing to their song. And as soon as I [laid] something down they’d have a listen and they [said] ‘ya, ya we like that, keep going’.
Producing music, even for experienced producers, is always an inexact process, one that is open hopefully to serendipity and inspiration. For Will, being an Islander brought with it cultural insights but he still had to produce within the established yet malleable parameters of Islander culture and aesthetics.
Cultural Broker
In an anthropological sense, a cultural broker is someone who assists interaction between people from different cultural groups to lessen conflict or facilitate cooperation (Szasz 2001). They may be bi-cultural themselves or have linguistic skills, personality traits or cultural knowledge that are valued. Will Kepa brought aspects of those elements to the project as well as being the member of the production crew that the locally appointment cultural brokers could interact with comfortably. A brief anecdote illustrates a situation that arose in the pre-production phase in which, in retrospect, the skills of an Islander cultural broker would have been valuable.
At the behest of the TSRA, executive producer Karl Neuenfeldt had made preliminary visits by himself to several potential collaborating communities, which generally went well. However in one situation a community meeting brought out vociferous comments about another music recording project he had not been involved in (Neuenfeldt 2007a). Neuenfeldt was the only ‘whitefella’ at the meeting and was known to be involved with music production. Therefore an erroneous assumption was made that he was somehow culpable for what some members of the community considered a serious breach of protocols and etiquette by another music producer and Islanders from another community. He was not totally sure what was going on as much of the discussion was in Torres Strait Creole, which he does not speak but can understand a bit. Nonetheless it was obvious that recording on that island would be problematic because of grave concerns about music copyright issues in particular. Consequently, that community (and another one) chose not to participate in the pilot and two other communities were chosen. One lesson learnt in that situation was that Will would have had a valuable role to play as a cultural broker and translator, had he been part of the pre-production phase. Another lesson learnt was that even detailed pre-planning and well-intentioned liaising cannot predict how human participants will interact, especially when local, regional and national politics intersect with intra- and inter-cultural issues. As the above anecdote highlights, extra-musical issues can take precedence over musical ones because music is often a site for negotiating cultural and community politics.
However, during the production and post-production phases in other communities Will did play a major role as cultural broker. Because he is an Islander who knows cultural customs and speaks Torres Strait Creole he either intuited or was informed of things the other production-crew members only found out about later. For example, at one island we were accommodated in a comfortable house right on the beach, which was very nice compared to some of the much more basic accommodation we had stayed in elsewhere during other projects in remote North Queensland communities. Over the first few days or so it seemed a bit odd that Islanders would never come into the house or on to the veranda to chat but preferred rather to sit out in their vehicles. Islanders are usually very polite and enjoy chatting but the non-Indigenous production-crew members did not intuit what was going on.
A later incident helped clarify the situation. One evening the production crew came back from recording late at night and the door to the house was inexplicably wide open, although we were quite sure we had locked it up to safeguard equipment and personal possessions. Will in particular was taken aback. It was then he informed us that he had been told that a non-Indigenous workman had suicided in the house and it had to be cleaned up and even repainted. Given some Islanders’ discomfort with matters concerning death, especially a suicide, it then made sense firstly why we were accommodated in the house and secondly why Islanders avoided it. In such situations a culture broker has an important role to play in knowing or clarifying what is going on, although the non-Indigenous production crew was only told when they needed to know.
Another situation that arose where Will’s skills as a cultural broker were valuable was when we were recording a medium-sized community choir in a church. Because it is usually technologically desirable to seat choir members as close together as possible so one is not recording a lot of ‘air’ and ambient noises, we tried repeatedly to get people to sit closer together. People would move a bit but seemed reluctant to do so and politely ignored efforts to move particular people to particular places. Even after a bit of shuffling around, the choir remained far too spread out to record to the best effect.
Finally, Will let me know quietly that because of cultural protocols (e.g. kin or marital relatedness) some members of the choir could not talk to let alone sit next to other members. His solution was to explain to the choir (in Torres Strait Creole) our desire to get the best sound possible and then let the choir work out how best to balance our technical preferences with their cultural requirements. The recordings eventually came out fine but the situation showed that a cultural insider could solve a ‘problem’ that was somewhat inexplicable to a cultural outsider. As ‘whitefellas’, other production-crew members could be forgiven their ignorance (at least the first time) but Will was expected to know what the cultural protocols were and act as the bridging person. The role of cultural broker is a key component of any successful project because what is being documented – and possibly disseminated to other Islanders and non-Islanders – is in essence cultural knowledge that is at the core of Ailan Kastom. Thus it must be gathered and treated with respect at all stages of the production process.
In his role as a cultural broker, at 25 years of age Will acknowledged he was a junior member of the wider Islander community. Consequently, there were some socio-cultural, religious and political matters to consider in his liaising role. Especially important – both for himself and the communities – was to locate him within extended kinship networks:
On the islands that we visited I had relatives or people I could relate to. I think you go anywhere in the Torres Strait, and even if you’re a Torres Strait Islander from the Mainland, if you go up there people ask who your mum and dad is and that sort of thing … Once I passed that barrier, told them who I am, where I’m from … it gets a bit easier and people relate to you a lot better and it kind of takes the tension off.
It was also important for him to demonstrate an awareness of generational protocols:
It depended on who it was. If it was someone around my age you get to know each other real quick. You hang out and relate to each other, you joke around, whatever. And I guess it’s just smooth and comfortable. For the older uncles and aunties, you sort of have to tread lightly a bit and acknowledge cultural protocols. Just simple life rules I guess, or what I was brought up on ... basically, respect your elders. Once they see you respect them they show a lot of respect back to you.
However, there were also moments of hesitation in learning new roles: “A lot of times I felt I didn’t know what to say because I had to think a lot about things I had to say or to translate. [I had to] say it in a way that I would not offend anyone or hope that no one would get the wrong message about what we were trying to do”. Overall, in his role as cultural broker Will could draw upon his cultural knowledge. Nonetheless, how actually to assert his authority as a member of the production crew had to be negotiated locally because of his junior status as a member of the Islander community.
Conclusion
Documenting cultural practices was a key aim of the TSRA when it initiated the recording and filming pilot project. Arguably, Will Kepa’s involvement as an Indigenous audio engineer, musician, producer and cultural broker was an important component in its eventual success – socio-culturally, aesthetically and commercially – with Islanders. By recording and filming music and dance and doing oral histories, the TSRA project has not only contributed to contemporary Islander notions of Ailan Kastom embedded in cultural practices. It has also helped train an Indigenous person to contribute to future documentation projects and improve documentation practices. The limited accessibility of previous documentation projects for Islanders has meant that songs from those projects, for example, have not been readily circulated. However, the TSRA CDs/DVDs have sold well and the music has circulated widely within regional and mainland communities. They have demonstrated that documentation is not only technologically more feasible nowadays but also having crucial Indigenous input into the project can enhance its outcomes.
In general terms concerning the use of technology to document Indigenous cultural practices, Will Kepa commented: “I guess every culture around the world needs to be documented at some stage. Especially nowadays with the world and technology moving so fast, People are getting more and more distracted with the world and forgetting about their home and what they have right here – where they come from.” As to one significant long-term value of the CDs/DVDs, he said: “By doing [the TSRA project] and documenting [cultural practices]… it’s always going to be there. For that next generation … Or even kids in the city who don’t have the chance like the kids here [on Iama/Yam Island] to learn about culture and about where they’re from … So [the CDs/DVDs are] always going to be there for that generation to learn – if they want to.” Thus technology – and the expertise to use it in culturally appropriate ways – can readily serve Indigenous peoples’ broader agendas.
Finally, in addition to performing multiple roles in documenting cultural practices, for Will there was arguably another key, and personalised, component that is at the core of Ailan Kastom: a sense of belonging not only to a place but also to a cultural space. His concluding comment in the Iama/Yam Island DVD interview (Iama Wakai Tusi 2008) encapsulates Beckett’s (1987, 209) observation that “to be an Islander, one must have an island”. Will stated: “It’s good to come home”.
Bibliography
Australian Bureau of Statistics. Population Distribution, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians 2006. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 2007.
Barney, Katelyn. “Sending a Message: How Indigenous Australian Women Use Contemporary Music Recording Technologies to Provide a Space for Agency, Viewpoints and Agendas,” The World of Music 49(1) (2008): 105-125.
Barney, Katelyn and Solomon, Lexine. “Looking into the Trochus Shell: Autoethnographic Reflections on a Cross-cultural Collaborative Music Research Project.” In Music Autoethnographies: Making Autoethnography Sing / Making Music Personal, edited by Brydie-Leigh Bartlett and Carolyn Ellis (Bowen Hills: Australian Academic Press, 2009) 208-224.
Beckett, Jeremy. Traditional Music of Torres Strait. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1972.
Beckett, Jeremy. Modern Music of Torres Strait. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1981.
Beckett, Jeremy. Torres Strait Islanders: Custom and Colonialism. London: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Beckett, Jeremy. "‘This Music Crept on Me by Water’: Recollections of Researching Torres Strait Islander Music, 1958-1961." Perfect Beat 5(3) (2001): 75-99.
Costigan, Lyn and Neuenfeldt, Karl. "‘Doing the Torres Strait Hula’: Adopting and Adapting ‘Hula’ within Torres Strait Islander Performance Culture". In Oceanic Music Encounters: the Print Resource and the Human Resource, Essays in Honour of Mervyn McLean, edited by Richard Moyle, 97-121. Auckland, Department of Anthropology University of Auckland, 2007.
Diamond, Beverly. "Native American Contemporary Music: the Women." The World of Music 44(1) (2002): 11-40.
Dunbar-Hall, Peter and Gibson, Chris. Deadly Sounds, Deadly Places: Contemporary Aboriginal Music in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004.
Fuary, Maureen. "Reading and Riding the Waves: The Sea as Known Universe in Torres Strait." Historic Environment22(1) (2009): 32-37.
Frith, Simon. (1996). "Music and Identity." Questions of Identity. edited by Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay, 108-127. London: Sage 1996.
Ganter, Regina. The Pearl Shellers of Torres Strait: Resource Use, Development and Decline 1860s-1960s. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994.
Greene, Paul and Porcello, Tom. eds Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures. Middleton: Wesleyan University Press 2005.
Haddon, Alfred Cort. ed Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait. 6 Volumes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901-1935.
Hennion, Antoine. "An Intermediary between Production and Consumption: the Producer of Popular Music." Science, Technology and Human Values 14(4) (1989): 400-424.
Iama Wakai Tusi / Voices of Iama: Traditional and Contemporary Music and Dance of Iama/Yam Island, Torres Strait. Thursday Island: Torres Strait Regional Authority, 2008. TSRA002.
Kidd, Roslyn. The Way We Civilise: Aboriginal Affairs, the Untold Story. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1997.
Kepa, Will. Telephone Interview with Karl Neuenfeldt 22 January 2010.
Laade, Wolfgang. Traditional Songs of Western Torres Straits, South Pacific. Folkways Recordings FE4025, 1977.
Lake, Marilyn and Reynolds, Henry. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the Question of Racial Equality. Carleton: Melbourne University Press, 2008.
Langton, Marcia. Well, I Heard it on the Radio and I saw it on the Television: an Essay for the Australian Film Commission on the Politics and Aesthetics of Filmmaking by and about Aboriginal People and Things. Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 1993.
Lawrence, Helen. "‘Bethlehem’ in Torres Strait: Music, Dance and Christianity in Erub (Darnley Island)." Australian Aboriginal Studies 2 (1998a): 51-63.
Lawrence, Helen. "Dance and Music in the Torres Strait: the Coming of the Light." In Ilan Pasin, edited by Brian Robinson and Tom Mosby. 53-60 Cairns: Cairns Regional Gallery, [1998b].
Lawrence, Helen. "Mipla Preize Nem Blo Yu: Contemporary Christian Songs of Eastern Torres Strait." In Changing Sounds: New Directions and Configurations in Popular Music, edited by Tony Mitchell, Peter Doyle and Bruce Johnson, 35-41. Sydney: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Technology, 2000.
Lawrence, Helen. "‘The Great Traffic in Tunes’: Agents of Religious and Musical Change in Eastern Torres Strait." In Woven Histories, Dancing Lives: Torres Strait Islander Identity, Culture and History, edited by Richard Davis, 46-72. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004.
Lawrie, Margaret. Myths and Legends of Torres Strait. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1970.
Lawrie, Margaret. Sound Recordings Collected by Margaret Lawrie, 1968. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 2006.
Mabo, Eddie Koiki. "Music of the Torres Strait." In Landscapes of Indigenous Performance: Music, Song and Dance of the Torres Strait and Arnhem Land, edited by Fiona Magowan and Karl Neuenfeldt, 46-50. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005.
Mullins, Steve. Torres Strait: a History of Colonial Occupation and Culture Contact 1864-1897. Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 1995.
Mullins, Steve and Neuenfeldt, Karl. "‘The Saving Grace of Social Culture’: Early Popular Music and Performance Culture of Thursday Island, Torres Strait, Queensland." Queensland Review 8(2) (2001): 1-20.
Mullins, Steve and Neuenfeldt, Karl. "Grand Concerts, Anzac Days and Evening Entertainments: Glimpses of Music Culture on Thursday Island, Queensland 1900-1945." In Landscapes of Indigenous Performance: Music, Song and Dance of the Torres Strait and Arnhem Land, edited by Fiona Magowan and Karl Neuenfeldt, 96-117. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005.
Nakata, Martin. "Commonsense, Colonialism and Government." In Woven Histories, Dancing Lives: Torres Strait Islander Identity, Culture and History, edited by Richard Davis, 154-173. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004.
Nakata, Martin. Disciplining the Savages, Savaging the Disciplines. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007.
Nakata, Martin and Neuenfeldt, Karl "From 'Navajo' to 'Taba Naba': Unravelling the Travels and Metamorphosis of a Popular Torres Strait Islander Song." In Landscapes of Indigenous Performance: Music, Song and Dance of the Torres Strait and Arnhem Land, edited by Fiona Magowan and Karl Neuenfeldt, 12-28. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005.
Neuenfeldt, Karl. "Cultural Politics and a Music Recording Project: Producing Strike Em!: Contemporary Voices from the Torres Strait." Journal of Intercultural Studies 22(2) (2001): 133-145.
Neuenfeldt, Karl. "Some Historical and Contemporary Asian Elements in the Music and Performance Culture of Torres Strait." In Navigating Boundaries: the Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait. edited by Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata. 265-275, Canberra: Pandanus Publishing, 2004.
Neuenfeldt, Karl “Nigel Pegrum, ‘Didjeridu-Friendly Sections’, and What Constitutes an 'Indigenous' CD: an Australian Case Study of Producing 'World Music' Recordings.” In Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures, edited by Paul Greene and Tom Porcello, 84-102. Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.
Neuenfeldt, Karl. "Notes on the Engagement of Indigenous Peoples with Recording Technology." The World of Music49(1) (2007): 7-21.
Neuenfeldt, Karl. "‘Ailan Style’: an Overview of the Contemporary Music of Torres Strait Islanders." In Sounds of Then, Sounds of Now: Australian Popular Music. edited by Tony Mitchell and Shane Homan,167-180. Hobart: Australian Clearing House for Youth Studies, 2008.
Neuenfeldt, Karl "Learning to Listen When There is Too Much to Hear: Music Producing and Audio Engineering as 'Engaged Hearing'". Media International Australia: Culture and Policy 123 150-161, 2007.
Osborne, Elizabeth Throwing off the Cloak: Reclaiming Self-Reliance in Torres Strait. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2009.
Ottosson, Ase. "'We're Just Bush Mob': Producing Aboriginal Music and Maleness in a Central Australian Recording Studio." The World of Music 49(1) (2007): 49-64.
Scales, Christopher. Recording Culture in/and Ethnomusicology. Paper Presented at Society of Ethnomusicology Conference Atlanta Georgia, 2005.
Scales, Christopher. "The Politics and Aesthetics of Recording: A Comparative Canadian Case Study of Powwow and Contemporary Native American Music." The World of Music 44(1) (2002): 41-60.
Szasz, Margaret Connell. Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker. Norman: Red River Press, 2001.
Scott, Colin and Mulrennan, Monica "Land and Sea Tenure at Erub, Torres Strait: Property, Sovereignty and the Adjudication of Cultural Continuity." Oceania 70 (1999): 146-176.
Sharp, Noni. Stars of Tagai: the Torres Strait Islanders. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1993.
Sherinian, Zoe. "Musical Style and the Changing Social Identity of Tamil Christians." Ethnomusicology 51(2) (2007): 238-280.
Shnukal, Anna. "Language Diversity, Pan-Islander Identity and ‘National’ Identity in Torres Strait." In Woven Histories, Dancing Lives: Torres Strait Islander Identity, Culture and History, edited by Richard Davis, 107-123. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004.
Wolffram, Paul. Review of Badu Nawul, Iama Wakai Tusi, Mabuygiw Awgadhaw Nawul, Warraber Au Bunyg WakaiCommunity CDs/DVDs. Yearbook for Traditional Music 41 (2009): 252-254.
York, Frank. "Torres Strait Islander music." In Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. edited by Sylvia Kleinert and Margo Neale, 340-344. London: Oxford University Press, 2000.
No comments:
Post a Comment