Forging a new way forward for Aboriginal music traditions

Dr Crismani explains that ‘Songlines’ is an umbrella term used to describe a range of music traditions across Indigenous nations. A better way to understand them, he says, is to think of them as epics. 

‘These epics contain all kinds of knowledge and lessons. They’re not just songs, they’re educational tools. 

In cultures where the written word is not the primary means of documentation; music is an important vessel for passing down important information. For Aboriginal peoples, Songlines encode complex knowledges about history and spiritual law. They also describe travel and trade routes, the locations of waterholes and the presence of food, allowing people to navigate vast distances. For example, the Seven Sisters Songline covers more than half the width of the continent. 

One of the project’s key challenges is how to faithfully represent Indigenous musical tuning systems within Western frameworks. Dr Crismani says conventional Western tuning systems – the system used to define pitches when playing music – cannot capture the complexity of Indigenous musical traditions. He recalls an attempt to transcribe a zebra finch songline from archival recordings during his Honours year: 

‘Trying to notate it on the five-line staff was like converting a 4K video into 8-bit. You lose so much nuance.’ 

The dominant tuning system in Western music is called twelve tone equal temperament (12-TET). 

‘It is, at present, the globally dominant tuning system, but this has only been the case for around 100 to 200 years’ says Dr Crismani.

In equal temperament, the octave is divided into twelve equal parts, making the interval between each half step identical and allowing the music to be transposed between all twelve keys. Aboriginal tuning systems, however, are not built in uniform step sizes. 

‘This is just so different from the Indigenous music that we're working with, where one song from one community is completely different to one in the neighbouring community. And the tuning systems are also completely unique from one song to the next.’

Traditionally, Indigenous and Western musics had completely different goals. This is often still the case, and necessitates different tuning systems.

To overcome the limitations of Western tuning systems, Dr Crismani and his team are working to gain a deeper understanding of how Aboriginal tuning systems are organised, so they can be applied by Arabana and APY musicians in contemporary ensembles. One of the key outputs following these efforts will be newly composed works, made in collaboration with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. 

‘It is a way to access intangible cultural heritage in a new context.’ 

To realise the goals of this project, a sizeable team is collaborating across community engagement, cultural repatriation, creative development, and research. Dr Gabriella Smart leads work with APY and Titjikala communities, while Dr Jesse Budel, Dr Connor Fogarty, and Dr Iran Sanadzadeh contribute in developing cutting-edge audio technology, supporting orchestration, and conducting a survey of Indigenous Art Music in the 21^st century. Professor Veronica Arbon, Anthony Pak Poy, Doug Petherick, and Eleanor McCall support repatriation, archival digitisation, and community partnerships.

Asked about how he got to this position, Dr Crismani says that he didn’t grow up with a formal music education. 

‘I taught myself to read music when I was about twelve and that led to very patchy knowledge that I needed to spend a long time addressing’ 

When he decided to pursue music at university, he found himself competing against people who had been receiving formal music education from a very young age. 

‘I came into it myself as a 12-year-old wondering ‘how do I do this?’ and ‘how do I make sense of this’ and took it from there.'

‘I also experienced what many musicians describe from a young age – hearing notes that couldn’t be played at the keyboard – leading me to eventually pursue studies in microtonality’. 

‘In my first attempt at the university studies, I backed out before the census date. I had enrolled in classical piano and said, ‘This is way too intense, way too hard’,’ he reflects.

Dr Crismani went on to do a chef’s apprenticeship and returned to university 4 years later to become a composer. His PhD focused on microtonal music and its orchestral realisation, brings a unique skill set to the project. He says it was during his PhD that he got equipped with the tool set that he is now drawing on. 

‘I realised these obscure skills aren’t that obscure. They can actually translate into meaningful contributions to society.’

For Dr Crismani, this ARC project has been a way to use the skills mastered in his doctoral studies to make a contribution that he hopes will be meaningful to Australian society. 

 ‘Being an Indigenous Australian myself, I find that working with Indigenous communities to realise shared goals an immensely rewarding pursuit.’