Flesh with Country: Juxtaposition and Minimal Contrast in the Construction and Melodic Treatment of Jadmi Song Texts

Abstract

For some time researchers of Centralian-style songs have found that compositional and performance practices that guide the construction and musical treatment of song texts have a broader social function. Most recently, Barwick has identified an 'aesthetics of parataxis or juxtaposition' in the design of Warumungu song texts and musical organisation (as well as visual arts and dances), that mirrors social values (such as the skin system) and forms 'inductive space' in which relationships between distinct classes of being, places, and groups of persons are established. Here I set out how juxtaposition and minimal contrast in the construction and melodic treatment of jadmi-type junba texts from the north and north-central Kimberley region similarly create 'inductive space' within which living performers, ancestral beings, and the country to which they are attached, are drawn into dynamic, contiguous relationships.

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