Singing to the Ancestors

It’s a damp, misty day on Sydney’s lower North Shore, and the young singers of The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge are having a spiritual encounter with the oldest living culture on earth. King’s College was founded by Henry VI in 1441, a mere six centuries ago. The Cammeraigal people of Sydney, by comparison, have lived on their land for some 50,000 years.

One might say these two cultures are worlds apart. But, as people of all lands have done when they meet, they sing. The excursion to Georges Heights – near Mosman, overlooking Sydney Harbour – has been organised by Musica Viva Australia to give the King’s Choristers and Scholars an understanding of the ancient and continuing story of Australia’s First Nations people.

Artist, curator and writer Djon Mundine, a member of the Bundjalung people of northern NSW, offers the Choir a welcome to Country, and invokes through song the spirit-ancestors who lived and worked on this land. A small fire is lit for a smoking ceremony.

“The thing to remember is that this Country, this continent, is all Aboriginal land,” he says.

“People like you are very important cultural visitors, and we give you a welcome to Country from the traditional owners. I don’t know if you would have King Charles come to welcome you – but it’s the equivalent of that.”

The young men of the Choir respond with the beautiful Irish ballad, The Last Rose of Summer, and their unaccompanied voices swirl with the eucalyptus smoke and the raindrops falling from tree-ferns.

The Choir’s concerts featured a new work by Sydney composer Damian Barbeler and poet Judith Nangala Crispin, who traces her heritage to the Bpangerang people of Victoria. Called Charlotte, the piece was commissioned by Musica Viva Australia with generous support from Richard Wilkins.

Crispin’s poem, On Finding Charlotte in the Anthropological Record, and Barbeler’s musical setting of it, concerns Crispin’s search for her Aboriginal forebear, “grandmother of my grandfather”. It speaks of the historic injury done to Aboriginal people, the massacre sites, dispossession and attempted erasure of culture.

Paul Kildea, Artistic Director of Musica Viva Australia, and Daniel Hyde, Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, were determined that the first performances of this important new choral work should not be a one-way transaction – a premiere without cultural exchange or learning.

This damp Saturday at Georges Heights, a rest day in the Choir’s hectic tour schedule, is an attempt to form that bridge of understanding.

Jack Harris, 22, is a lay clerk with the Choir and in his final year with the group. He says that while the Choir had studied the text of Charlotte, today’s outing is an opportunity to learn more of the history of Aboriginal Australia.

“We don’t have a huge amount of connection with the culture, which is why it’s so great to be here,” he says.

“Obviously, there is a sense of reflection, knowing what the history is, and being given the opportunity to perform it is strange and slightly uncomfortable, but in a way it’s a positive challenge.”

Barbeler says his musical setting of Charlotte was inspired, in part, by walking on Country north of Wangaratta, Victoria – Charlotte’s ancestral land. While the Choir couldn’t be taken there on this trip, Barbeler was keen that the singers at least have an opportunity to walk on Country in Sydney, guided by an Aboriginal elder.

“I felt that the Choir needed to walk on Country as well – walking in the Australian landscape is such a creative experience in itself,” Barbeler says, referring to lessons he’d learned from Indigenous mentors. “Even a short walk would give them, I hoped, some understanding of where the piece has come from.”

He says he regards Country, meaning Aboriginal land, as the 'third part' of the extraordinary historical elements that have come together in the making of Charlotte: the others being the Choir of King’s College, and Crispin’s poetic reaching back through time.

“Walking on Country was a way to introduce the Choir to the local spirits, our joint history, and to acknowledge the dark and disturbing things that went on – and respectfully move towards something more hopeful,” Barbeler says. “Making music together is a pathway to a positive future, after coming through this dark and complex history.”

A second Reconciliation Action Plan, under review with Reconciliation Australia, requires Musica Viva Australia to take proactive steps to redress the hurt, discrimination and trauma experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples due to colonisation.

There is much to do. Part of the work involves creative collaborations with First Nations artists such as Wyniss, a four-member group from Moa Island in the Torres Strait. In a show developed by Musica Viva Australia in Schools and NAISDA Indigenous dance college, Wyniss demonstrates the sharing of culture through singing, dancing and games.

First Nations artists also appear in Musica Viva Australia’s national concert season, including didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton with Ensemble Q. Projects with other First Nations artists can be anticipated in future seasons.

After the Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony, the Choir begins its short walk on Cammeraigal land. At a vantage point looking towards Sydney Heads, Mundine tells stories of whales, and of the eels that swim upriver to their breeding ground at Parramatta.

Crispin reads more of her poems: Voyage to Katherine via Andromeda, a true story about a night-drive through the desert to find a vet for her stricken dog, Moon. (The poem has been selected for a time capsule, to be deposited by NASA on the Moon’s surface.) And in Watersnake, she describes Charlotte’s life as it was in the old days: her possum-skin cloak, her goanna kinship scars, her death by snakebite, and her burial “in the river’s arms”.

King’s choral scholar Tom Pickard, 23, reflects that the Choir’s singing of Charlotte and the walk on Country have been powerful experiences – and quite different from the Choir’s usual work in its centuries-old chapel.

Crispin says that she, too, has been moved by hearing the Choir sing of her ancestor, in a poem that acknowledges the tragic past of Australia’s race relations.

“I don’t know of another time in history when you would have heard those voices singing that text,” she says.

“There has been not only denial of colonial violence, but also a refusal to engage with the echoes of that time. To hear (the text) coming from these beautiful children is so courageous, it’s lovely. It gives me hope for the future.”

A music commission such as Charlotte makes a lasting contribution to Australian culture. To discuss how you can help Musica Viva Australia commission new Australian music, please contact Matthew Westwood, Individual Giving Manager, at mwestwood@musicaviva.com.au or on 0416 286 588.