peter mumme

I was becoming increasingly aware of our indigenous presence; whilst this was largely ignored (by mainstream) and certainly an unknown aspect of ‘Australia’, I was finding that, with all the nature recordings and resultant music being made, the links between my small time activity - and (my awareness of) the huge relationship culture that formed the base of our Indigenous world view - was emerging, big time

 

We discover that traditional song is 'also' about birds and also about country .. but goes way beyond the tacit representation of these aspects in 'second-hand' technique .. they are (parts of) a broader dynamic experiencing of life as being everyday life

 

Much allied musical and collage work - and increasing social engagement - continued through this time

A series of ‘dawn chorus soundscapes’ was made thru’ 1993 for ABC radio Melbourne; these created a big ‘arc’ of recorded enviro sounds - made at dawn - sweeping across and around the city 

Installation sound and music production include the Cairns international airport in 1997; 

2001 Scar Tree Melbourne city square; Healesville sanctuary exhibit spaces

 

We made a submission to the ABC about their creating a new radio network (RN) in about 1990 .. we were calling it ‘an accessible australia wide radio service that reflects the broadest views of australian life back to the whole country’

Greater engagement with traditional culture had emerged by late 1980s; we made a soundtrack for an exhibition of (most) expensive leather coats that had been hand painted with (Arnhemland) motifs of bird and animal totems .. the artists were in attendance, seemed puzzled - and cold, the venue was a posh French restaurant in Melbourne

This same soundtrack was released along with another video soundtrack on 'Island' cd, 1990

 

'Coranderrk' is an aboriginal settlement near Healesville near the wildlife sanctuary in Victoria, a cd of new music and sounds from here - also called ‘Coranderrk’ - was also made thry' 1990-1 too; this received radio play, sales, talks .. we did a broadcast on ABC FM that drew ‘a record listener response' 

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Actor David Gulpilil was visiting both Coranderrk and the Montsalvat artists centre in Eltham thru’ late 1989-92, he  began arriving at my in-house studio (located half-way between these places) wanting to record traditional songs with his group This became an ongoing event for the next few years and eventually introduced a couple of traditional song-men from mid arnhemland in 1993 .. Bobby (Bunnunggurr)  and Jimmy (Djamunba), this meeting blossomed

 

We record traditional songs, start to hear about the songs 'at source', song stories about birds, places, language, relationships .. we all visited Darwin and Arnhemland - Yolngu nations - in 1993, taking a couple of 'mixes' of trad songs (sung in language) and (pretty rough) contemporary instrumentations of them .. they seemed to work ok, they elicited an unexpected response, the Yolngu loved them, white fellas were technically impressed, but puzzled and  generally not very interested

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My first visits to Ramingining in 1993 were a puzzle for me; I recognised the environmental sounds, the birds, the colours, the light .. but felt as though I was visiting a different planet, one operating within an ‘alien’ (to me) world view 

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There were a couple of ‘overviews’ afforded that pointed to reasons for this feeling  .. 

One was the spontaneous community joy generated by impromptu social event and ‘celebration’

a second was of seeing arnhemland from the air .. winding rivers, age old escarpment, horizons, creation spirits .. images invoking feelings quite unlike the usual rationales .. here were the visual manifestations of the songs we were still singing .. big picture stuff, timeless, hints of all kinds of (usually hidden) spirit) connections being revealed

 

(this is being written now 25 years after this event .. there has been a great deal of thought and consideration occurring between then and now!)

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Darwin festivals, more (privately subsidised) recording, tours, a couple of new songs followed .. 

The ‘Waak waak jungi' cd was released by Festival records in 1997; a 'shared mixing of cultures’ Djamunba called it ..

it worked pretty well, was recognised as worthy but flopped as a selling product .. there was almost nil interest from mainstream, a lot from Yolngu (the cd was bootlegged big time !) - and a lot from the Ainu community in Japan .. 

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We had met Oki Kano (touring Ainu musician with Tonkori) whilst travelling, he set up a 1998 tour for waakwaak to go to Japan 1998 - this was wonderful

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