I haven't been blogging lately, almost as though I've felt inhibited about commenting on events or things seen here in Australia. Yet there are constant eye-openers.
I met up with my mate, Warren Williams, down from Alice Springs a few weeks ago. He was here promoting his CD Winanjjara, his arrangement (orchestrations virtually) of traditional Warumungu Song, song material from the Tennant Creek area that he is entitled-to through his mother's father. One of Warren's geat-grandfathers, Hesekiel, was mentioned in Journey to Horseshoe Bend, the symphonic cantata Andrew Schultz and I wrote based on Ted Strehlow's novel. As usual, the conversation turned to the Arrernte worldview - who is related to whom, who can speak for what, whose country is whose...
I was reminded of this yesterday as I watched excerpts on YouTube from the Metropolitan Opera's Ring cycle. At the beginning of Act III of Siegfried, Wotan, king of the gods is now wandering the world. Still his voice is thunder (to borrow one of Homer's epithets for Wotan's Greek equivalent, Zeus). And in Robert Lepage's Met production, Wotan's staff actually flashes like lightning.
Warren told me that the great-grandfather of another great-grandfather, Johannes Ntjalka, was Kanjira, 'the thunder god'. I had read about Kanjira in Carl Strehlow's Die Aranda und Loritja-Stamme. 'But,' I said to Warren, 'you mean a reincarnation of Kanjira?' 'No', said Warren, 'the actual thunder god'. I was aware that people say that the Altjira (usually translated as Dreamtime) is maybe only a few generations back (or well, really, since I think of the 'altjira' as the eternally creative substratum of reality, it's ever-present). But commissioners in Aboriginal Land Claims have commented on their difficulty in working out sometimes whether a witness is citing a forebear or a mythological figure. Warren's information was a graphic example to me that Central Australia really is 'the land of Altjira', eternity, as Ted Strehlow once said.
And a graphic example to me also, that there really is a lot to comment on in Australia.
If you liked this blog, others of mine on Central Australia are:
Opera in a land of Song, 20 July 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Virginia in the Desert, 10 Sep 2012
Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow’s The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
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| reproduced by courtesy Warren H. Williams |
I met up with my mate, Warren Williams, down from Alice Springs a few weeks ago. He was here promoting his CD Winanjjara, his arrangement (orchestrations virtually) of traditional Warumungu Song, song material from the Tennant Creek area that he is entitled-to through his mother's father. One of Warren's geat-grandfathers, Hesekiel, was mentioned in Journey to Horseshoe Bend, the symphonic cantata Andrew Schultz and I wrote based on Ted Strehlow's novel. As usual, the conversation turned to the Arrernte worldview - who is related to whom, who can speak for what, whose country is whose...
I was reminded of this yesterday as I watched excerpts on YouTube from the Metropolitan Opera's Ring cycle. At the beginning of Act III of Siegfried, Wotan, king of the gods is now wandering the world. Still his voice is thunder (to borrow one of Homer's epithets for Wotan's Greek equivalent, Zeus). And in Robert Lepage's Met production, Wotan's staff actually flashes like lightning.
Warren told me that the great-grandfather of another great-grandfather, Johannes Ntjalka, was Kanjira, 'the thunder god'. I had read about Kanjira in Carl Strehlow's Die Aranda und Loritja-Stamme. 'But,' I said to Warren, 'you mean a reincarnation of Kanjira?' 'No', said Warren, 'the actual thunder god'. I was aware that people say that the Altjira (usually translated as Dreamtime) is maybe only a few generations back (or well, really, since I think of the 'altjira' as the eternally creative substratum of reality, it's ever-present). But commissioners in Aboriginal Land Claims have commented on their difficulty in working out sometimes whether a witness is citing a forebear or a mythological figure. Warren's information was a graphic example to me that Central Australia really is 'the land of Altjira', eternity, as Ted Strehlow once said.
And a graphic example to me also, that there really is a lot to comment on in Australia.
If you liked this blog, others of mine on Central Australia are:
Opera in a land of Song, 20 July 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Virginia in the Desert, 10 Sep 2012
Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow’s The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
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