• Sung musical chants of the first peoples of Sydney were transcribed phonetically⁴⁰⁰ and notated as music notation⁴⁰¹ in the late 18th century.

As Peter Dunbar Hall has stated above, Indigenous music is inextricably linked ‘to place’. It is widely known and experienced that the indigenous song cycle maps a place, and stores information about the place, its seasons, its landmarks, its people, its animals, etc. Jazz musician Paul Grabowsky collaborates in cross-cultural music projects with the Waligah Singers in Australia’s Northern Territory, where he experiences first hand their connection to land in their song cycles. The cultural information in their songs has been continually handed down through family lines for many generations, in the Ngukurr area of South Eastern Arhnem Land. The grand father of the Waligah , Djambo Burra Burra walked out of his Indigenous bush land life style, his family’s homelands, into township community as recently as the 1960s.⁴⁰² In collaborating with the Waligah Singers, Grabowsky has developed a special musical and cultural connection with them. He describes the profound expressions he has found in the Waligah music-

‘ the sense that creation is ever present,…..
images are sung into existence, …….
that the infinite past is implicit in the present,⁴⁰³

The composer Dr Christopher Sainsbury a Sydney Darug man, describes his practice of composition as being informed by his Aboriginality and his life experiences in his region. He describes his music as being regionalist, pertaining to how the region he lives influences his music language and serves to create imagery in his imagination, sometimes the occurrence of events in the region long ago. Environmental aspects, specific bird calls, bush sounds, language of the area, and specific water flows are only a portion of his regionalist material for composition. He too describes a concept of time that whilst engaged in the composing or performing the music, the past comes to the present.

…..upon hearing my music one journeys to my region and shares in the re-enacting of the stories of my region. In so doing, according to a widely acknowledged Aboriginal worldview, and something I hold to, via performance these stories transpire as current events, as ‘in the present.⁴⁰⁴

language of Sydney based on the notebooks of William Dawes of 1790-91, Macquarie University, Sydney
⁴⁰⁰ William Dawes, (1791), ‘Vocabulary of the language of N.S. Wales in the neighbourhood of Sydney.’ Native and English, by — Dawes’, Notebook B, MS 4165 (b) (London: Marsden Collection, SOAS 1791) ;3 Collins.
⁴⁰¹ EdwardJones, (1811), Musical Curiosities (London: Printed for the Author in Lord Steward’s Courtyard, 1811), 15. Found in the British Library, London.
Edward Jones, a Welsh harpist and bard to the Prince of Wales (later George IV); ii)
Pierre Bernier,Voyage de decouvertes aux Terres Australes : historique, atlas par,(Paris: MM. Lesueur et Petit, seconde edition, Paris:1824)
; iii) Barron Field, Journal of excursion across the Blue Mountains, 1822, Barron Field.Published in the London Magazine, vol. 8 (November ,1823), 461.
⁴⁰² http://www.personally-selected-aboriginal-art.com/Sambo-Burra-Burra.html
Renaissance on the Roper (blog),April 30 2009 http://www.news.com.au/national/renaissance-on-the-roper/story-e6frfkp9-1225705191868; http://www.aao.com.au AAO Crossing Roper Bar performer profiles.
^{403     3} Grabowsky.
⁴⁰⁴Christopher Sainsbury, C. (2012). “Working as a Regionalist Composer—The Music of Christopher Sainsbury” (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2012): 36 note: Sainsbury is the first Indigenous PhD of the Sydney ium of Music.

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