Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Members of the Inarma Choir (L-R): Pantjiti Lewis, Diane Mastasia, Alison Tjulapi Carroll  

Cath Ellis once observed that the most knowledgeable person in an Aboriginal community is the one "knowing most songs", the one who embraces the knowledge and wisdom of their people.¹ Epistemology has underscored Aboriginal understanding of Country for over 60,000 years as they listen, respond to and sing its stories, comprehending the seen and unseen in equal measure; and nurturing their profound and deeply rooted understanding of the land.

The 2025 Soundstream Emerging Composers Forum (ECF) inverts the existing status quo of emerging composer workshops as it is purely process-oriented, underpinned by tjunguringkula kulintjaku, a Pitjantjatjara term meaning "getting together to listen". Tjunguringkula means coming together, while kulintjaku translates as listening and understanding. In this process of coming together to listen, cultural and spiritual foundations are distilled through kanyini (spiritual communication), trust and ngapartji ngapartji, the Pitjantjatjara concept of reciprocity, respect and exchange. During the Emerging Composers Forum, space is provided to allow sharing of knowledge between the mentees and resident artists the Inarma Choir, ten senior and young song women from Central Australia, and leading site-specific mentors Cheryl Leonard and Jesse Budel. A unique opportunity is thus provided for intercultural dialogue for emerging composers to an experience they may otherwise not have access to, expanding their knowledge of music beyond the Western canon and beyond the written score in an intimate setting on Kaurna Country.

The ECF builds on a 50-year close family relationship between Soundstream Artistic Director Gabriella Smart and Elders from the Inarma Choir (Titjikala Community, NT). Through their relationship with Smart, the Choir holds close ties to Aldinga Beach (SA), where the Forum takes place. The Choir are closely related and originate from the remote communities of Pipalyatjara, Pukatja (SA), Mutitjulu and Titijikala (NT) sharing Tjukuṟpa and songlines that span the Mann Ranges, Petermann Ranges and Uluru. These women sing in language, steeped in the Lutheran choral tradition of Central Australia, "an intrinsic and unspoken duality of central desert identity, rarely explored and even less often understood".² Workshops that have taken place since 2021 have seen the revivification of the choir to now include three generations of women from these communities.

This celebration of Country is extended through site-specific music making, featuring leading site-specific mentors Jesse Budel (AUS) and Cheryl Leonard (USA). A 2024 Arts South Australia Fellow, Jesse is a prominent soundscape composer and Secretary of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, with many of his creative works responding to South Australian ecosystems and soundscapes. In 2024 he was a visiting research fellow at the Universities of York and Birmingham, leading institutions in higher-order ambisonics. Cheryl is an internationally renowned, San Francisco-based sound artist, known for her performances with amplified found natural objects. Her recent work focuses on environmental issues, especially climate change in the polar regions and California and the extinction of species. Cheryl and Jesse's collective knowledge will support the mentees to explore the acoustic environment of the Aldinga Scrub. The mentees will garner knowledge of the unique ecosystem of the scrub with biodiversity experts from local organisation Friends of Aldinga Scrub, in a ceremonial process that begins with a Kaurna Elder.

The five-day Forum fosters the sharing of ideas, collaboration, cultural knowledge exchange, and space to expand ideas against the stunning backdrop of the Aldinga Beach Conservation Park (Aldinga Scrub), an extraordinary landscape that inspires experimentation. The Aldinga Scrub is home to a diverse range of rare plants and animals and is recognised as a significant area for the conservation and protection of the Fleurieu Peninsula's flora and fauna. Exposing the mentees to acoustic ecology, site-specific music making and Indigenous epistemologies on Country opens the door for the mentees to explore artistic practice as a form of activism. At the conclusion of the Forum, the five mentees will each receive a $2,000 commission to each write a new work inspired by their experience, if they choose to do so.

Leading composer Elizabeth Jigalin gives the following testimony of her experience as a mentee in the 2019 ECF, which also took place in the Aldinga Scrub:

"I am deeply grateful to have participated in Soundstream's 2019 Emerging Composers Forum, an experience that served as a pivotal stepping stone for my music. ECF provided a rich (and rare!) time, space, and environment that truly encouraged experimentation in music. The mentors [Erik Griswold, Cathy Milliken, Gabriella Smart and Vanessa Tomlinson] and fellow composers in my cohort [Luke Cuerel, Olivia Davies and Chris Williams] were extraordinarily creative, generous, and curious, and it was a privilege to work together and learn from them throughout the program. I came away from the ECF feeling energised and full of ideas. Moreover, I feel lucky that some of my ECF colleagues continue to be collaborators and friends - to this day, I'm greatly inspired and encouraged by their incredible work. ECF is a vital experience for emerging creative music makers to be challenged and invigorated in their practice through collaboration and exploration."

The 2025 ECF builds on Elizabeth's experience and more; it provides an extraordinary opportunity for five mentees to be steeped in a rich choral tradition whose spiritual roots span thousands of years, in addition to contemporary site-specific compositional practices.

The mentees will immerse themselves in the unique harmonic language of the Choir, facilitated by the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM) through the Australia Research Council Project Fine Tuning: A Reconciliation of Indigenous and Western Musical Traditions at the University of Adelaide. The team at CASM are researching the hybridized and variable harmony practiced by the Inarma Choir to create a pragmatic framework enabling collaboration between the Choir and contemporary music ensembles. The Choir's unique, microtonal harmonic system will be recorded, coded and implemented through Ableton onto an electric keyboard, providing a compositional tool that allows Indigenous composers to access their intangible cultural heritage in new music contexts.

CASM is developing a practical framework designed to facilitate implementation of Indigenous tuning systems. Ensembles such as the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra can work towards more fair and equitable dialogues when collaborating with Indigenous artists, by playing their tuning systems and moving away from Western harmony. An exciting outcome of this project is a collaborative commission by composer and Inarma Choir member Makinti Minitjukur (Pukatja SA) with the Choir, to write a new work in their own tuning system that they will perform with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in early 2026. This framework is a profound step towards equity in cross-cultural music making, and one that the 2025 mentees will have the opportunity to explore through the ECF.

As Soundstream enters its third decade, and the ECF its fifth iteration, we're excited to continue our collaborations with the Inarma Choir, and with new music practitioners. This process is underpinned by an ongoing commitment to practices of deep listening and cultural exchange.

Applications are open for the 2025 Soundstream Emerging Composers Forum to emerging Australian composers. The deadline is 3 February 2025. For more details on how to apply, please visit soundstream.org.au, or email Hen Vaughan (Administrator), at info@soundstream.org.au. The ECF is supported by Creative Australia, Arts South Australia and our generous donors.

Soundstream respectfully acknowledges the traditional Country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and pays respect to Elders past and present. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land, and acknowledge that they are of continuing importance to the Kaurna people living today.

References

1. ELLIS, C. J. 1985. Aboriginal music, education for living : cross-cultural experiences from South Australia, St. Lucia, Qld, University of Queensland Press.

2. ABC Breakfast 2018, Naina Sen, director, 'The Songkeepers'.