'Without a Song You Are Nothing': Songwriters' Perspectives on Indigenising Tertiary Music and Sound Curriculum

Abstract

‘W in indigenous spirituality. Mackinlay, a non-indigenous academic, recognises the importance that song plays in traditional Aboriginal custom and tradition. Speaking for and about country and spirituality for country are inherited and lcarncd components of Aboriginal identity and relationships LO land and kin, story and song. As a songwriter, this triggered a wave of personal philosophical and phenomenological thought. The implications of this in relation to my understanding of the relationships between sound and society and the power of song to communicate, store and reference important cultural knowledge was profound. At Queensland Univcrsity of Technology (QUT) where I work as an academic doing research and teaching music and music education, part of my role has been to ‘indigenise’ the music and sound curriculum. My colleague Jim Chapman has spent many years teaching and studying crosscultural musicianship in Australia, Africa and South America and is primarily a songwriter. In this article we provide two songwriters’ perspectives, which appear in case study vignette form. These vignettes are personal journeys of understanding that have led us both to develop dynamic indigenous per. spectives. We examine the processes and outcomes of ‘indigenising’ a tertiary music and sound curriculum and notions of Australian indigenous knowledge. We explore points of intersection and understanding and divergence and the role of music and sound as knowledge. This article combines these perspectives and proposes ‘rules of thumb’ for developing culturally inclusive tertiary music and sound curriculum.

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