Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

The viola solo is a detailed transcription of the singing of Coorong man Clarence Long (Milerum), as recorded in the 1930s by NB Tindale. However, the song is Ramindjeri (from Encounter Bay, SA).

This is a song of historical times sung on Longkuwar (The Bluff at Victor Harbor) by a young man called Keinindjeri. He had the right to marry his brother's widow, but she delayed; so he looked west towards her spirit-home at King's Point opposite rocky Ngalaikorombar (West Island), and sang:

I wonder what holds her, holds that woman of Ngalaikeren.
Inside me I feel that someone is persuading her.
Those people of Ngarailkeili hold her in their camp with their talk.
I wait high up on the Bluff lookout, watching for her.

Sources:

NB Tindale recording 1937, Clarence Long series (SA) 1937-38, Disc 5, AA 338/11/12 (SA Museum).

NB Tindale 1941, 'Native Songs of the Southeast of SA, Part 2', Transactions of the Royal Society of SA 65(2): 241-2.

Work Details

Year: 2014

Instrumentation: 2 violins, viola, cello.

Duration: 2 min.

Difficulty: Medium — Viola solo (medium difficulty) with fairly easy other parts.

First performance: 31 May 14. Australian Chamber Orchestra string quartet workshop for teachers, 'Music + Colour', as part of their competition project for student composers, 'Indigenous Influences'.

The composer notes the following influences on this work:
Traditional Aboriginal chant (Ramindjeri, Encounter Bay, South Australia).

Permission to use, arrange, perform and publish Keinindjeri's Song was granted by Ramindjeri spokesman Lance Karno Walker in 2006.

'Ngartong: Encounter Bay Jubilee Music for 12 cellos' (containing the original version of Keinindjeri's Song) was commissioned by the University of Adelaide Cello Ensemble in 1986. However, this section was not performed at that time.