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Abstract
Kaddikkaddik ‘oyster catcher’ songs are an endangered set of individually owned, didjeridu-accompanied songs, sung predominantly in Kun-barlang, a Gunwinjguan language from Western Arnhem Land. Performances of Kaddikkaddik ‘oyster catcher’ songs display considerable textual and musical variation. Berndt suggests that despite this variation there is a distinctive ‘sound’ that allows listeners to identify the songs, but admits that further musicological analysis is needed. In this paper I seek to address this need, and to evaluate the idea of a distinctive sound, by providing a musical and linguistic analysis of recorded Kaddikkaddik song performances. I outline variations that occur in the songs and note features of the songs that are distinctive within the wider musical and linguistic context of Western Arnhem Land.
Acknowledgements
The research on which this article is based was funded partly by the postgraduate fieldwork fund, University of Melbourne, and partly by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Documentation Project Classical Song Traditions of Contemporary Western Arnhem Land in their Multilingual Context for which I am a student researcher. I wish to especially thank Kaddikkaddik singer and composer Frank Ambidjambidj. I also wish to thank Mary Gurden-gurden (d.2007), Margaret Marrangu, Mary Mundanmari, Margaret Marlingarr, Sandra Makurlngu, Paul Naragoidj and Shirley Mawuli, who discussed the songs with me and helped me to transcribe and translate the texts. I am grateful to Linda Barwick, Jean Mulder, Stephen Morey and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. All errors or omissions are, of course, my own.
Notes
1Kun-barlang consultants rarely use the term kun-borrk spontaneously, and some said that this word is not a Kun-barlang word but a word borrowed from Kunwinjku, a neighbouring dialect of the Gunwinjguan Bininj Gun-wok dialect chain. The Kun-barlang term manyardi (cognate with Iwaidja and Mawng manyardi) is generally used, but this word can refer to all songs, not just those of the kun-borrk genre.
2This is similar in other kun-borrk songs (Garde 2006). There are also other song genres with song texts entirely in spirit song language, for example Inyjalarrku (Apted 2010).
3Three elderly Kun-barlang, Kunwinjku and Mawng women I worked with were able to demonstrate some of the dance movements (for both women and men), however these dances have not been performed since the early 1980s.
4The status of Kun-barlang in the Gunwinjguan family is not yet entirely clear (see Evans 2003). Coleman points out that while Kun-barlang has much of its grammar and vocabulary in common with Gunwinjguan languages (such as the various dialects of Bininj Gun-wok) it also ‘has patterns of grammar in common with Mawng, spoken to the west and also to Ndjébbana, Gurrgoni, Nakkára and other central Arnhem languages spoken to the east’ (Coleman n.d.).
5See discussion of the Inyjalarrku song-set in relation to Mawng, the language of the current owners, by Apted (2010).
6Kun-barlang speakers at Maningrida speak the lingua franca Ndjébbana. Coleman writes that ‘very few young Kinbadda-barlang people are “full” Kun-barlang speakers’ (Coleman n.d.).
7While it is difficult to adequately translate or paraphrase the term djang, Berndt and Berndt (1970) provide some insightful discussion. I am grateful to Murray Garde for his suggestions for glossing the term djang and for pointing out useful literature on the topic.
8The island is known as Kabálko in Ndjébbana (McKay 2000).
9Each song text is referred to with a unique title (a word from the text) and a reference code ID (e.g. ‘KK01’) used in the ELAR archive. Each song item occurs only once on the recording unless marked (e.g. ‘two items’).
10In 2006 I recorded Ambidjambidj recounting one of his well-known performances with his uncle: performing in a pub in Darwin to celebrate the granting of ‘drinking rights’ to Aboriginal people in Darwin.
11 Man-berlnginj is cognate with the Kunwinjku word. Some Kun-barlang speakers use this word, whereas others insist that the ‘proper’ Kun-barlang word is djungurl. This may reflect differences in speakers’ Kun-barlang dialects, or speakers’ degrees of acceptance of Kunwinjku loan words.
14These words at the start of the line are unclear. In one version of KK10 these words do not appear and in another version the word ki-rnanj ‘You see’ (2sg-see.NP) occurs instead.
12Other criteria, such as repetition of groups of syllable strings, are used in determining text phrases in untranslatable language song texts.
13Abbreviations used in this paper are: 1, 2, 3, 1st, 2nd and 3rd person; dat, Dative; fut, Future; hith, Hither directional; ia, Inanimate noun class; incl, Inclusive; indef, Indefinite pronoun; KB, Kun-barlang; KK, Kaddikkaddik song; med, Medial demonstrative; np, Non-past; o, Object; pl, plural; p, Past; redup, Reduplicated; rr, Reflexive/Reciprocal; sg, singular; sw, Song word; veg, Vegetable noun class.
15My use of the term ‘rhythmic mode’ follows the analysis of wangga and lirrga songs from the Daly region by Marett and Barwick (Barwick Citation2003, 2006; Marett 2005) and the extension of this analysis to Jurtbirrk songs by Barwick et al. (2007).
16In the fast simple rhythmic mode version of KK10, the final text phrase is different: Marnilikarrng ka-nganj-rlohwanj (Morning.star 3sg-HITH-fly/rise.NP) ‘The Morning star is rising’; however it mirrors the other KK10 versions by changing rhythmic mode from fast simple to fast compound.
17Further investigation is planned to examine the melodic variation of Kaddikkaddik songs and the relationship of their melodies to other Kun-barlang and Western Arnhem Land songs, which is beyond the scope of this paper.
18There is some evidence that the ideophone kaddikkaddik also occurs in some Ndjébbana Midjarn songs, but this requires further investigation.
19This seems to be similar to what Marett describes for Walakandha wangga: ‘singers often reproduce the calls of Walakandha [ghosts] during instrumental sections’ (2005: 93).
20Marett (2000: 18) discusses a similar kind of ambiguity for wangga songs of the Daly region: ‘[t]he expression “ghostly voices” … refers both to the voices of ghosts as they sing to a sleeping songman within his dreams, and to the voices of living songmen as they reproduce in ceremony what the ghosts taught them in dream’.