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The Groote Eylandt Field Project, 1969.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2019
There have been many new developments in the production of moving film with synchronous sound track. In this all too familiar medium, developments are usually taken for granted and are not generally noticed. Areas of technology which have combined to produce ‘sync-sound’ have at the same time offered to a field of study, which some may prefer to call ethnochoreology, others ethnomusicology, a research facility the efficacy of which has not yet, in this writer's opinion, been fully explored. Because of this, the full impact of this facility on the practice and study of folk music and dance can not yet be properly gauged.
2. Members of the expedition were Alice Moyle, A.I.A.S. Research Fellow, Music Dept., Monash University; Elphine Allen, choreologist with the Australian Ballet School and Company; E.C. Snell, D. Hauser and G. Ivey, Audio Visual Aids Section, Monash University; R. Power, Victorian Film Laboratories. The expedition received grants from the Australian Council for the Arts, the Federal Office for Aboriginal Affairs and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
3. Elphine Allen is at present preparing movement notations according to the Benesh method. See Samples on pages 111–114.Google Scholar
4. O'Grady, G.N. and C.F. and F.M. Voegelin, “Languages of the World; Indo-Pacific Fascicle Six”', Anthropoligical Linguistics, 8:2, 1966.Google Scholar
5. Judith Stokes, Angurugu, Groote Eylandt, and Earl Hughes, Numbulwar, Rose River, have provided songwords and translations for the dance songs on the sound film, No. 8.3.Google Scholar
6. This ‘pilot project', initiated by Stefan Haag, was sponsored by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust for obtaining Benesh movement notations to be read, learned and performed by students at the Australian Ballet School, Melbourne. Directed by Elphine Allen, a speical demonstration, danced by students to the tape-recorded Aboriginal music, was given at the School in October, 1968. After the demonstration, these same students, who up to this time had seen only the Benesh notations, viewed the dance films for the first time.Google Scholar
7. Nunggubuyu singers beat together two small sticks, one held in each hand; Wanindilyaugwa singers hold one small stick, bringing it into contact with a larger stick lying on the ground.Google Scholar
8. The word ‘didjeridu’ appears to have been coined by English-speaking people in Australia in imitation of the sounds produced, by Aborigines in north western regions of the Northern Territory of Australia, by means of this wind instrument, a hollowed branch or length of bamboo (diaru didaru etc.). In the Anindilyaugwa language, the word for the instrument is yiraga, in Nunggubuyu, Ihambilbilg.Google Scholar
9. For disc redordings, and references to the music collected from this region by the writer, see Songs from the Northern Territory (Discs Nos 2 and 4), and the companion booklet (pp. 11–20; 41–52; 65–67;), issued by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Box 553, Qty P.O., Canberra, Australia.Google Scholar
10. For an earlier reference to the song “break” see page 20 in Moyle, A.M., “Bara and Mamariga Songs on Groote Eylandt”, Musicology I (Proceedings of the Musicological Society of Australia, University of Sydney, New South Wales), 1964.Google Scholar
