Description
According to the beliefs of the Indigenous Australians, the whole world is marked by a system of paths across the land and the sky. They mark the routes followed by a totemic “creator being” who walks over rocks and waterholes singing the world into existence. This system was given the name “songlines” but in fact every tribe has had its own way of dancing, singing, and communicating with the spirit. Thus there are several ways of following the footprints of the ancestors. Wandering on their own particular “songlines,” people adjust themselves to the existi ng world and to the cosmos. When mentioning a recently deceased member of their tribe, the Warlpiri hope to minimalize the influence of evil spirits and never speak of him by using his real name but call him “Kumanyayi” [i.e. “somebody”].
With these ideas in mind, the composer invented a modern sort of “songline” using the Western flute and a player who is able to sing and dance while playing the instrument. He or she is challenged to act with the whole body when performing “Kumanyayi” by enhancing the noise of the foot stomp with some ratt les fi xed to the ankle and singing and making percussive noises with the hands, lips and tongue. The coherence of the various sounds is attained by following a system used by the composer used when writing the piece (see the composer’s drawing in the German version). Moreover, the atmosphere of a ritual can be evoked by using the CD enclosed. In order to get an opti mal blending of the CD with the flute, the latter might run over an amplificati on and reverb system.
