Classical song traditions of contemporary Western Arnhem Land in their multilingual context

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide for the documentation of endangered languages and knowledge. Grantees create audiovisual collections with transcription and translations of endangered languages and practices. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR).

The classical song traditions of Western Arnhem Land are amongst the foremost examples of verbal art in the nine endangered languages of the region, but few people are now competent to perform or comment on them. Typically performed in multi-lingual social contexts, song texts demonstrate unusual linguistic features such as mixtures of languages and a high proportion of esoteric and intimate vocabulary. The project team will collect, transcribe, translate and analyse songs by contemporary performers, and where relevant repatriate and document archival recordings, making the research results available to communities via a network of local digital repositories. Primary investigator: Linda Barwick

Project Details


Location: Australia, Australia and New Zealand, Oceania Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of Sydney Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £120,670.00 Commencement Date: 01/2002 Project Status: Completed
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