On the Poetic Imagery of Smoke in Warlpiri Songs

ABSTRACT

Smoke, an ever-present source of comfort in day-to-day Warlpiri lives, is also a powerful ritual symbol and theme in the poetic language of Warlpiri songs. Rather than signalling these soothing qualities, in this more formalised sung context, smoke symbolically alludes to tension, uncertainty and unknown liminal states of transition. Here, I analyse examples from Warlpiri song texts to argue that, rather than being a semantic paradox, the cultural symbolism surrounding smoke has a functional poetic purpose in that it flags circumstances of discomfort or unknown states within the Dreaming narratives upon which Warlpiri songs are centred. To illustrate this point, I analyse song imagery in which smoke and other visually similar phenomena are focal.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural symbolism
• song language
• poetics
• Warlpiri songs
• Indigenous Australian ritual

Acknowledgements

This article was written as part of the Australian Research Council Linkage project (LP). The author also acknowledges the Australian Government’s Indigenous Languages and Arts program which generously supported the publication of the book (with accompanying DVD) and CD set Yurntumu-wardingki juju-ngaliya-kurlangu yawulyu: Warlpiri women’s songs from Yuendumu (Batchelor Institute Press 2017). Thank you also to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments on previous drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The songs can also be heard in a set of four CDs (Warlpiri Women from Yuendumu [Produced by G.Curran] 2017). The examples I present here have for the most part been published in the books Yurntumu-wardingki juju-ngaliya-kurlangu yawulyu: Warlpiri women’s songs from Yuendumu (Warlpiri Women from Yuendumu 2017) and Jardiwanpa yawulyu: Warlpiri women’s songs from Yuendumu (Gallagher et al. 2014). The songs and stories are the traditional knowledge of senior Warlpiri women from Yuendumu, including Judy Nampijinpa Granites, Dolly Nampijinpa Daniels, Lucky Nampijinpa Langdon, Lorraine Nungarrayi Granites, Peggy Nampijinpa Brown, Coral Napangardi Gallagher, Barbara Napanangka Martin and other custodians of yawulyu – Warlpiri women’s ritual. The songs have been published with their consent. The recordings upon which the song texts are based were all made by Georgia Curran and Jeannie Nungarrayi Egan as part of the Australian Research Council Linkage project Warlpiri Songlines: Anthropological, linguistic and Indigenous perspectives (LP0560567) (2005–2007).

2 Magowan (2007, 78–84) also gives examples of smoke being used for purification purposes in mortuary ceremonies at Galiwin’ku (Elcho Island) just off the north coast of Arnhem Land.

3 For further discussion on Warlpiri song language, see Curran (2010a, 2010b).

4 See Dussart (2000) for details of the social and political context surrounding the performance of songs linked to jukurrpa in Yuendumu.

5 This visual imagery, grounded in shared cultural symbolism, also has the effect of arousing other sensory associations, particularly that of smell in the case of smoke – a phenomenon which is not so tangibly experienced through the other sensory mediums of touch, hearing and taste. As the singers, particularly the owners for a particular song series, share their identity with the ancestral beings – the sensory responses evoked by these visual images often cause strong emotional responses in singers and other participants. Warlpiri songs are frequently sung using the first-person singular pronoun, indicating that the singers identify with the Dreaming ancestral beings who sang these songs in an ongoing creative moment.

6 See Glowczewski (1991) for further discussion of burning the pubic hair of widows.

7 ‘The yellow ones’ in this song text refers to the line of female dancers who are adorned with yellow ochre body paintings.

8 Nampijinpa and Napurrurla refer to two female Warlpiri subsection terms that indicate a mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship to each other.

9 Versions of the Minamina story are presented in detail in Glowczewski (1991).

10 Reference to country through characteristic trees is common in song texts and often associated with particular groups of people in Warlpiri speech.

11 Warlpiri people emphasise the importance of controlled fire which is necessary for rejuvenation of life, against the dangers of creating a big bushfire which is not properly managed.

12 Liddy Nelson Nakmarra provides details of this story in ‘Wapurtarlikirli: The Battle at Yumurrpa’ in Rockman and Cataldi (1993, 105–118).

13 Turpin and Ross (2013) also describe the ways in which a mirage can lift up dancers or country in the distance and bring them closer. Morton (in Turpin and Ross 2013, 32) describe a song which includes imagery of a shimmering horizon as one which ‘ … pulls [the dancers] from backstage’.

14 The difference between the two words miraranggana and mirawarri may be because the word is being sung.

15 Thus julyurl-wanti can mean both ‘fall into water’ and ‘fall into fire’.

16 The jiliwirri principle of antonymy is more obvious examples: to say ‘I am tall’ one would say ‘You are short’. For less obvious words, a jiliwirri ‘opposite’ derives from a closely related word within the same semantic domain, for example, the jiliwirri for a ‘galah’ is a ‘cockatoo’ (Hale 1971, 477).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council (LP160100743) and the Australian Government's Indigenous Languages and Arts Program (ILAO00048).