KEYNOTE PANEL 1
The Presentation Transcription of Akawyan Pakawyan （Interviewer: Yuh-Fen Tseng)
Brief Introduction to Taiwan Aborigines
台灣的原住民屬南島語民族。雖然台灣的面積很小，但有著豐富的原住民文化。在經歷了 多年的殖民歷史之後，現在台灣存有 16 個官方承認的少數民族。
台灣大部分人口來自中國大陸，總人口以漢族閩南人、客家人以及二戰後的漢族新移民及
後代為主。原住民佔總人口的百分之二。
Interviewing Akawyan Pakawyan by Yuh-Fen Tseng
Tseng: You’ve been leading your people practicing traditional music and dance for so long, do you still have enough energy to attract the younger generation to learn those old ancestral songs that you collected in the past? What are some approaches that you apply to do that?
Akawyan: I think I still can. Today’s young people have a different way of thinking, but we can cooperate with that, for example, adding some elements they like into our music and dance. I often say that you can be creative, but the core of our tradition has to make up a larger portion than those newly created content. It is only in this way that we can gradually get young people’s attention. It will be really hard if we try to impose our elders’ mindset on young people.
Tseng: Can you make some examples?
Akaway: For example, we can use guitar, electronic instruments, or other instruments like samba drum. We can add some modern elements in our music and dance, but not too much. Then we can slowly attract young people to our traditions. It is not easy to do that. When I want to get
more young people, I will gather some people in their middle age first and they will start to cooperate with younger people.
Tseng: In the performance of the Taiwan High-Mountain Dance, Theatre, Culture and Art Service Troupe (hereafter the Troupe), we often hear the elements of electronic and synthesized music. I know this is closely related to your personal life history, particularly your story with your younger brother. Can you tell us a little about you and your brother? How come a person like you who has maintained the tradition for so long started to use synthesized music, which even became a main feature of the Troupe’s performance?
Akawyan: My brother is paralyzed. To let him listen to music from different indigenous groups, produce his own music, and put them into the Troup’s performance is a way to give him the courage to live. Because of his physical condition, it is hard for him to know what is happening in the outside world. The real strength for him to survive is his music. In our performance, he will play his own music on the stage while we are performing. Of course, we can sing without any music, but I really want to support him and give him hope. I want him to live like everybody else. When his music is being widely played, he will feel that he’s being alive in this world, that he has values. With his music, we can also save some energy when we dance, because singing and dancing at the same time is pretty tiring as well. In a word, I always live between tradition and modernity. I think this is how elders can fit into young people’s community.
Tseng: Is the music we just listened to made for a dance performed by 1500 people?
Akawyan: Not really. This music is an ancient tune sung by the Buyuma Age Group of teenage boys (少年組) . We have a traditional annual ceremony held in December. In our culture, teenage boys, often from the age of 12 to 15, have to go through very cruel training from every August to December to become a real man who can protect the tribe. After this training, they will have another three years of youth training. On the night before the big ceremony, they will have a combat training to boost the spirit. Before the training start, a person will climb to the rooftop and provoke other people with his loud and sonorous voice. The tune of his voice is the melodic theme of the music we just heard.
Tseng: If this is boys’ music, can you sing it as well? Can you sing for us a little bit?
Akawyan: Sure. But let me explain it first. People on the north side need to make the voice first, then people on the south will respond to them. After my brother remade the music, we often use it as our background music to symbolize the meaning of looking for our roots or ancestors.
Tseng: Does it mean that whoever has been through the teenage training can recognize the melody right away, even if it’s a recomposed version?
Akaway: yes, they can.
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KEYNOTE PANEL 2
José Jorge de Carvalho: Meeting Knowledge
Aaron Corn - Professor José Jorge de Carvalho, Ph.D., is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Brasília, where he is also Head of the National Research Council’s Institute for Inclusion in Higher Education and Research. He has been the main proponent of the inclusion of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous student in Brazilian universities. And over the past decade he has delivered a national transcultural program called The Meeting of Knowledges which engages master exponents of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous performance traditions as researchers and lecturers across fifteen institutions of higher education throughout Brazil. In this presentation, I interviewed Jorge about Indigenous music and dance in Brazil and about this important Meeting of Knowledges program.
It is a great privilege to have you on this panel and thank you for being here. So, I was intrigued by the abstract for your paper and in particular I quite liked your use of the term pluriepistemic, because I think it captures so much of the challenges that we face, not only within countries, but across countries talking about Indigeneity as a concept. But first of all, I want to ask you a few fairly rudimentary questions just to give the audience context. So, first of all, in the context where you work in Brazil, what Indigenous music and dance practices are there among the people with whom you work? What role do they play in that part of your world?
Jorge – Firstly, to clarify matters, Brazil is a multiracial and multiethnic country. There are 305 different Indigenous nations; and 170 languages, at least. I use a conservative figure; some people say 200, 220 languages even. As the difference between Portuguese and English, there are 170 different languages. When I say Indigenous peoples I mean they will be equivalent of, say, First Nations in Canada or in the United States. Because, with the word Indigenous in Portuguese, apart from the 305 Indigenous Nations, living in different areas, in different parts of the forests, we also have other traditional peoples that you could say are also Indigenous peoples; Afro-Brazilian communities, like the ones we call maroons, who are descendants of “runway slaves”, there are thousands of them; and others who live in different biomes, in different ecological niches, some of them near rivers, by the sea, in the marshlands, with traditional ways of economy, and so on. All of them are different from the Eurocentric dominant white population. In the case of the Indigenous groups, usually music and dance are the main symbols they use to present themselves as different from the others. It is a very complex situation because they are very different from each other. So, we have sometimes like what I call clusters of music and dance that is characteristic of one particular area.
Let’s say, one part of the Amazon near Colombia, in the Upper Black River (a tributary 支流of the Amazon river) there are around twenty Nations speaking different languages, but there are certain kinds of dances that are proper to them; and also flute ensembles that characterize that area – and also singing in different languages, but more or less the same genres in singing, in flute playing and in dancing. In another area that I am also familiar with, i.e., the Xingu National Park, dancing, singing and all kinds of flutes (flute being the main musical instrument of the Indigenous people). This situation makes it very difficult to assimilate, since their musics are all very different from Western music, and they are not taught anywhere in our schools. Brazilian people don’t have a clue of what are the Indigenous musical traditions.
Apart from that, we have the Afro-Brazilian communities, with other styles of music and dance, and practically with the same patterns, that is, music and dance is the way they present themselves externally to characterize their own styles of living. So, I could say it is a plurimusical and choreographic world that Schools of Music don’t really assimilate; they cannot provide a grammar to understand this plurimusicality. This is the basic, the general aspect: to face incredible diversity, ethnic diversity, plurality of music and dance traditions. In short, this is the most basic panorama that we have.
Aaron – So, just to ask a little bit more about the different regions where there are different clusters of Indigenous music and dance practice across clusters of languages. Within Brazil overall could you say that there is some underlying unity, even at the level of, say, where music comes from, in the minds of an Indigenous ontology. Is there any commonality at that level accross the nation, or is that different as well?
Jorge – It is a wonderful question. I am, at the moment trying to gather elements to produce a sketch of those clusters. As if, how many, although there are hundreds of genres, hundreds of languages, how many musical systems and dance systems we do have in the country? I am making a taxonomy of more or less seven or eight different musical systems of them. Yes, we could say that one instrument is really the only one musical noise, or sound instrument, that Western music does not accept, which is the maraca, the rattle made of a calabash with seeds of various plants inside. That sound you could say is a kind of Aboriginal sound. All those 305 Nations, they all use the calabash rattle. So, for me this calabash rattle is a kind of pan-Indigenous instrument. In Peru, Colombia, as well, Indigenous people use it in the entire Amazon area. This could be, ontologically, a kind of first sound, if you want, and underlying or primordial sound, the calabash sound. Usually shamans use it, there are various different types of shamanism, but they have in common this rattle sound. This is one underlying unity.
The other one is the importance of flutes. They are the main instrument, although there are other ones, like drums, and the body even as a sound instrument, like a drum beating on the floor, but the main musical instrument would be traditional flute, either single, in pairs, small, middle size, gigantic flutes; dry flutes, green flutes. This is, more or less, the answer: there is an underlying unity. Western musical language will have its own characteristics, as we all know; Afro-Brazilian traditions will be different, because drumming and drum ensembles are spread all over the country.
Aaron – That’s very interesting. The follow one question from there, I guess, trying to get to the heart of why is that people work so hard to keep their music and dance traditions alive. What is it about music and dance practices among Indigenous people in Brazil that make them so important to those people? So important that they prioritize their survival?
Jorge – Music and dance is practically what ties the communities together. They sometimes may start the day just dancing – one social dance to start with: depending on the day and depending on the time of the year there will be other dances for other activities that they will be together. Sometimes visiting, because all the time they are exchanging visits from one village to another. As I said earlier, they usually live like in ethnic clusters of different nations living in a certain area, they exchange through patterns of political exchange, familiar exchange, economic exchange. Usually, one group comes with a dance, a kind of social dance for the others; and the others may respond with their own dance. And sometimes this exchange pattern increases like a spiral for, say, important regional meetings. Like the one, absolutely extraordinary, called Kwaryp, a ceremony for the dead. For instance, one village of a Nation makes once a year a ceremony for the dead and invites the other nations to participate as guests in that one. So, sometimes, if the village has two hundred, three hundred people, there may be thousands of people dancing in circles that great Kwarup dance. Political distinctions, ethnic distinctions will appear in the way they will paint their bodies for dance. So, the signs are the musical signs, the choreographic signs and visual signs, and they all go together. And sometimes language comes in songs, so that some singing traditions may reproduce older languages, i.e., lost languages that they can only hear in ritual, only sacred languages that you can only listen to them in singing. So, it is like a big archive of their memory, in singing those particular songs in that old language.
Aaron – This is sounding very familiar. This happens in Australia as well. So, we are talking about trade network, diplomacy between groups, we are talking about marriage and family lineages. You mentioned funerals, I think, at one point. So, most of these regional cultures, there is an underlying set of Indigenous religious beliefs. Is it one part of what is going on as well?
Jorge – Yes, it is what I use to call the epistemology of the living cosmos. That is the essay I just wrote on this. Because the epistemology of the living cosmos means the entire cosmos is alive, that the elements of nature are all exchanging, and listening, and talking.
There is an extraordinary flute, the Jacuí flute, a sacred flute that women cannot see. So, they are usually kept inside the men’s house. For instance, the Indigenous master who came to the University of Brasília to teach that flute, he made another one of wood (while the sacred flute is made of bamboo). So, he made a wooden replica that women can see. So, as he left his Amazon village, takes the boat, then takes the bus and finally arrives at the university, and women will attend the class, he plays only the wooden flute, being the musical substitute to that Jacuí flute. Because women can only listen, but they cannot see that particular flute. That flute sometimes is a spirit in itself (of course, the original bamboo flute). So, the cosmological dimension is all the time implicit in all those traditions. For instance, in order to learn the Jacuí and becomes a great Jacuí player, around three and four in the morning there is a particular bird that sings in the forest. The young flutist has to go and listen, because that bird will teach him to play certain melodies in the flute. The music will be an exchange between the flute player and a particular bird. He has to go to the forest and find the bird. Only that bird will have the particular melody.
Aaron – Brazil and Australia have a lot in common, there is a lot that is familiar. There is a lot of secrecy in instruments, the idea of spirits of animals possessing songs, or melodies that can be taught. Many other things that will follow up, hopefully, in the discussion afterwards. So we can talk about the work of your Institute. firstly, I would like to ask in these regional communities throughout Brazil, in different parts, what kinds of strategies exist within those communities currently to keep Indigenous music and dance traditions alive?
Jorge – We have initiation practices. The girls will learn their own dancing through initiation, when they are eleven or twelve. After the first menarche they will be secluded, and older women will teach them that particular repertoire and those particular female style of dancing. Boys will do the same of that, taught by older men, through fishing, hunting, and so on, with all the association with dancing and singing. But they are all worried now about the transmission of these traditions. So, in a certain sense, I regard the Meeting of Knowledges as kind of spirit of the time, a Zeitgeist. The idea of bringing masters to the university is the right moment, because some of those initiations are very hard, and as they become more connected to the outside world, not all the young people are dedicating the amount of time necessary to learn and memorize because it is all orally transmitted traditions. Sometimes an entire repertoire, say, of hundreds and hundreds of songs the young will learn from the masters, who will demand a continued connection with them. If the young leave the village and go to town for a while, they miss the chance to learn the entire repertoire. So, the strategy we offer to connect with them is the Meeting of Knowledges: first, they come to the university to teach as temporary or visiting lecturers, because they are the only ones who can properly teach their own musical traditions. As I use to say, masters are unrepresentable. One cannot represent their knowledge; they have to come and represent their own traditions.
But what is happening in practically all the universities that opened the Meeting of Knowledges is that they are coming with a disciple. In the Meeting of Knowledge the master comes – a female or a male master comes – usually with a kind of senior disciple, someone who will later continue transmitting their tradition. So, he comes with a disciple, one or two sometimes, acting as translator, to speak to us, because some of them don’t really speak Portuguese. In those cases, they will speak their own language, with another person (the disciple) translating. And we have what we call the partner professor, the partner lecture in the classroom dialoguing, or helping him to dialogue. And we are registering in video recording all the classes, in all the universities – already there are fifteen universities in the network of the Meeting ok Knowledges.
And that is a part of our pedagogy: all the classes have to be videotaped because this is the first time it is happening, for it is also a pedagogical innovation. So much new information comes in a class of the masters that we will need a long time to really transcribe, analyze and think of all those issues presented by them. Then, the young Indigenous will do this task of translation and assistance to the master as part of the protocol. We have many protocols in the Meeting of Knowledges. One of them is that we pay them the same amount we pay for a visiting professor or a substitute professor, or a temporary lecturer, depending on each university. The second protocol is that we register, we videorecord the classes. The third, young Indigenous people come as disciples, and we give them a HD (Hard Drive) with a copy of all the classes the master gave. They bring the HDs to the villages. For instance, the jacuí flute repertoire is around 500 different melodies and pieces. When Master Arifirá came, the pieces he played we taped them and they are all back to the Matipu village. Sometimes when they come, they also dance, sing and we register that. So, we are helping them to organized archives of their repertories. They are feeling the necessity also to have these copies. Some villages now have computers. So, the idea is that we now replicate their repertoires, so that the different nations will have a copy of their repertoires, their own archives. And we also have a copy of all of them, just in case. In University of Brasília we have a lot, because the Institute is located here; but there is a lot in Minas Gerais, and so on, so we are all making the archives with the lectures of the Meeting of Knowledges nationwide. That is a strategy to keep the memory alive, some of them may die, so the great masters will somehow survive, as the young people will have the videorecording of their knowledges. This is all new.
Aaron – So, you said Meeting of Knowledges is across fifteen universities? That is extraordinary! That is wonderful!
Jorge – Extraordinary that happened in a few years, because in 2010 we started in Brasília, and that was a sort of pilot course. I invented this methodology of having the partner lecturer, and the course given in modules, because masters cannot stay with us for too long, because they live in their communities, so usually they teach a module of two or three weeks. The master will come and teach three times a week, and we will also have other dialogues with them. After that module, another master will come. In the first course we invited five masters, or sometimes four. We opened the course in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and then in 2014 we made a second agreement with the Ministry of Culture to expand the Meeting of Knowledges to five universities. We chose four more: Minas Gerais, Pará (which is in the Amazon region) and other areas. In 2015 it expanded even more, so that in this year we would reach 20, but we stopped, for we are completely closed with the quarantine, the Institute is closed since March 2020. Next year hopefully it will reach 20 universities. And we started now, which is quite extraordinary, in Vienna, at the MDW (University of Music and Performing Arts). I just gave the two initial lectures there with Ursula Hemetek three weeks ago. The Meeting of Knowledges is in Colombia also, and in Ecuador they may start soon. I think the necessity for it is worldwide. The traditional peoples, the Indigenous peoples worldwide have been excluded, silenced, as far as the academic world is concerned, as a voice with autonomy to teach. Of course, there will be interviews and many supports for them, but not allowing them to be in the place that we occupy, the place that Lacan defines as ‘the subject supposed to know’. We are the epistemic authorities, that is, we never accepted that Indigenous people can also be the epistemic authority, equivalent to ours.
Aaron – Yes, I think that is a very common challenge. I think that is something that we find in conflicts that we are talking accross this panel. So, in the time that you’ve been running your program and expanding it to different universities, you must also have developed an awful lot of trust from communities to become involved and feel that their cultural material is safe with the universities. Was that difficult in the beginning?
Jorge – No, not necessarily, because prior to the Meeting of Knowledges, as I say, we had first politics of inclusion. An incredibly difficult task was the opening of cuotas (affirmative action) that we started in the beginning of this century, in the first decade of this millennium. It was a long struggle to make sure that young Indigenous students could come to universities. Here we call them cuotas, I don’t know what system there is in Australia, what they call affirmative action in the U.S.A. But here in Brazil is a percentage, really: 20% of the places for Black students and a defined number for Indigenous. This will be the first type of inclusion – ethnic and racial inclusion. So, classes now in universities are multiethnic and multiracial: you have whites, you have Blacks, you have Indigenous, you have Maroons, and also poor students. So, a second type of inclusion will be the epistemic inclusion, because the curriculum is very Eurocentric. So, as the Indigenous students come to learn all about Western culture, they said: when are we going to discuss our own traditions? Lecturers were not prepared for that, the curriculum wasn’t prepared for that. So, the second move will be the epistemic inclusion. Luckily, the young Indigenous students were already present in the universities when the Meeting of Knowledges started. So, there is a link, you see. Now we have what I call a double inclusion: ethnic-racial, and epistemic. The young Indigenous come from their own communities to the universities; and now the masters, the senior knowledgeable people will come to teach them – and teach also the White and Black students. So, a second, complementary multiethnic conviviality, or coexistence will appear, which is the epistemic coexistence. To answer your question, I would say the trust is there, because we had already established a connection with them.
Aaron – It sounds like you have developed a very good model in Brazil for sharing the academic space in Brazil and I think that is something that a lot of other countries can probably learn from. That’s very encouraging. I guess the final question, because we are probably near the twenty minutes mark now. The final question is that you know, obviously the world is not a perfect place and probably never will be, but what do you think are the main challenges right now to progress in your work further?
Jorge – The one challenge we have now is how to legitimize the program. We need the transformation of our institutions. The Humboldtian model of university will have to shift to something different. We will have to change the curriculum, and we have to legitimize their presence as lecturers. What we are doing now, which is quite revolutionary, is what we call Notório Saber in Portuguese: ‘Acknowledged Higher Knowledge’ will be a good translation. There is a movement in various universities, such as Brasília, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, in which the Academic Council will certify masters to have a title equivalent to a doctorate, so that he/she are fully certified to teach. This is quite a leap forward, because at some point you will give to someone who is illiterate the title of a doctor, of a Ph.D. But that is the challenge that is put to us: either you do it or you will never be able to decolonize academy. This is the impasse, as we say. It is an epistemic impasse. It is wonderful. We are just preparing now what we call the Memorial, which is a kind of biographical file with the story of the deeds of the masters – like a musical biography, or a choreographic biography of a master, and one professor will speak on behalf of him/her, i.e., will defend his/her biography in the Academic Council; and if it is accepted, the Council will vote: yes, such and such master can have the title of Notório Saber (Acknowledge Higher knowledge). Once we get this title for the masters, then we will have a good foundation for the Meeting of Knowledges, and their names can there in the syllabus.
Aaron – So, is that kind of recognition honorary or is it an examination process?
Jorge – It is honorary. It can’t be an examination as ours, I don’t think it makes sense. I don’t know what you mean exactly by honorary, but it is not like an Honoris Causa, which is honorary. The title we are asking to be given to the masters is a kind of certification, like a diploma, but not through a process of examination. A memorial is like a biography. For instance, when I became a full professor I had to present all my Curriculum Vitae for the Council. Notório Saber is as if you build an equivalent of a Curriculum Vitae for the master: he/she is an equivalent of a Ph.D. in a certain traditional ceremony, or a musical genre, etc.
Aaron – That is interesting, because I think we probably have slightly different systems for advancing people to academic ranks, but for me the final frontier is to be able to acknowledge that the training one undertakes to learn, let’s say, a repertoire of esoteric songs in an Indigenous tradition, the level of inquiry and awareness of what knowledge is, and how knowledge is created through songs is equivalent to writing a dissertation. To me, this is the final frontier: to recognize that as a real qualification.
Jorge – Yes, it is something of this sort, but it will always be a certification that works as a dialogue: that our academic world accepts and acknowledges that other epistemes can be equivalent to ours.
Aaron – We have a lot in common.
Jorge – Wonderful!
Aaron – My own approach is quite similar, our systems are obviously different, but I’ve attempted similar things and had some kind of success. I think what Brazil is showing us though is that the national network that you’ve developed is probably quite unique. A national network is something that I don’t know if exists in other countries, but it is the first time I’ve come across to something as coherent as that. And that’s very very exciting.
Jorge – Wonderful. We must continue the dialogue and exchange, between our Institutes, in Taiwan, Australia and Brazil, we must think of doing things in common.
Aaron – Well, this is getting into free discussion now and we’ll close up here. I often think that, like you, I’m sitting here in the Southern Hemisphere continent, with its own soil, its own stars and the night sky and I wonder why it is that we keep on looking to the Northern Hemisphere for direction, it’s the way that we think and the way that we see ourselves in the world. Because that’s not where we are.
Jorge – No.
Aaron – And I think that South America and Australia in particular have an awfully lot in common and certainly what we said tonight makes me think that there are commonalities there that I wasn’t really particularly aware of them before. So, thank you very much for your presentation and we hopefully pick up these present discussion questions afterwards. Thank you.
Aaron Corn ：José Jorge de Carvalho 是巴西利亞大學的人類學教授，同時也擔任該校國家研究委員會之高等教育暨研究的包容性研究所所長。他一直是巴西大學推動黑人及原住民學生平權行動的主要支持者。在過去的十年中，他策劃了名為「知識相遇」（Meeting of Knowledges）的國家級跨文化學程，在15 所巴西高等教育機構中將非裔巴西和原住民表演傳統藝師聘用為正規課程的講師和研究人員 。在今天的演講中，我將訪談 Jorge， 請他暢談巴西原住民樂舞現況以及他重要的「知識相遇」學習計畫。
非常榮幸能邀請你參加這個小組討論會，也謝謝你的參與。我深深受到您的演講摘要的啟發，並且特別喜歡你對於“pluriepistemic”（多重認知的）這個字的用法，因為這也表達出我們正在面臨的許多挑戰，不只侷限於任何一個國家，而是跨越國境去探討”Indigeneity”（原生性）這個概念。因此首先請問你，在你所工作的巴西這個環境以及你所共事的原住民族群中，有多少種原住民樂舞的實踐傳統，以及它們在你所生存的那個世界角落中扮演何種角色？
Jorge ：首先，我必須釐清現狀。巴西是一個多民族多種族的國家，現存 305 個原住民族，操 170 多種語言（我使用的是保守估計，甚至有人主張有200, 220 種語言）。如果以葡萄牙語和英語這樣的差異性來看，大約有170種語言。當我提及“Indigenous peoples」（原住民族群）時，我指的是等同於加拿大和美國所謂的“First Nations” （最早居住的民族）；因為在葡萄牙語裡，“Indigenous”這個詞也同時代表在 305 個居住各地的原住民族群之外的其他族群，那就是非裔巴西人。比如我們所稱的馬龍人 (Maroons)，他們是從美國逃亡到南美的黑奴後裔，有數千人。還有其他居住在不同生物群落和生態區的非裔巴西人，有些臨河、有些在海邊、有些在沼澤地、具有傳統的經濟型態，這些族群都有別於歐洲中心的主體人口白人。在這樣的情況下，音樂和舞蹈通常是原住民族群用來表現他們有別於其他族群的主要象徵。由於它們都各不相同，所以情況其實很複雜。因此我們有時會用「樂舞集群」（clusters of music and dance）這個概念來描述具有相似樂舞特性的特定地區。
比方說，哥倫比亞附近的亞馬遜流域，在黑河上游（亞馬遜河的支流）有大約二十個民族說不同的語言，但卻有特定類型的舞蹈流通於其間；還有笛子合奏也是該地區的代表特色；此外，雖以不同語言歌唱，但在歌唱、長笛演奏和舞蹈方面或多或少呈現相似型態。還有另一個我也熟悉的地區，即新谷國家公園，跳舞、唱歌和各種笛子（笛子是巴西原住民族的主要樂器）情況也類似。 這種情況使得原住民音樂不易被全面理解，因為他們的音樂非常不同於西方音樂，而全國各地的學校都沒有教授這些音樂。 巴西人對於原住民音樂傳統毫無概念。
除此之外，我們還有非裔巴西社群，具有其他類型的音樂和舞蹈，而實務上也呈現相同模式，亦即，音樂和舞蹈是他們對外表達自身獨特生活型態的方式。所以，我可以說這是一個眾多音樂學校皆無法全面理解的多元音樂和舞蹈世界，他們無法提供能夠理解這種多元音樂性的法則。 這是基本、普遍的面向：面對令人難以置信的多樣性、種族多樣性、音樂和舞蹈傳統的多樣性。 簡而言之，這是我們所擁有最基本的一個全景。
Aaron：我想再多了解一些有關不同地區具有跨越語言群落的不同原住民樂舞傳統這件事，就整個巴西來說，你能否說他具有一些潛在的統一性呢？甚至在有關音樂起源的層級，亦即原住民本體論方面的歷史記憶？在各個族群之間是否存在著共通性？或是各自不同呢？
Jorge：好問題。我目前正試著整合種種要素去完成音樂群聚的草圖。比方說，有多少種？雖然有上百種的樂種、上百種的語言，到底在這個國家中有多少個樂舞系統？就我的研究來說，大致有七到八種音樂系統。是的，我們可以說有一種獨一無二的樂器（西方音樂不認為是樂器，而是種能夠發出音樂噪音或聲響的器具），maraca，一種由裝有各式植物種子的葫蘆所製成的嘎嘎器（譯者註：即一般所稱的沙鈴）。這種聲響可視為一種原住民的聲響。所有這305個族群都使用葫蘆沙鈴。這是第一個潛在的統一性。
另外一個是笛子的重要性。 它們是主要的樂器，雖然還有其他的，比如鼓、甚至身體作為一種聲響樂器，敲打地板猶如鼓一般，但主要的樂器是傳統笛，有單管笛、雙管笛、小的， 中等大小、及巨大的笛子； 也有乾燥的笛子，新鮮竹子做的的笛子。以上事實多多少少可以做為答案：潛在的統一性是存在的。正如我們都知道，西方音樂語言具有自己的特色。 而非裔巴西人的傳統則有所不同，因為鼓樂和鼓樂合奏團遍布全國。
Aaron：這很有趣。 接下來的一個問題，我想試圖深入了解為什麼人們如此努力去維護他們的音樂和舞蹈傳統的存續。 是什麼讓音樂和舞蹈實踐對巴西原住民來說如此重要？重要到他們會優先考慮樂舞文化的存續？
Jorge ：音樂和舞蹈將社區實際地聯結在一起。 他們有時可能會以跳舞開始新的一天：以一種社交舞蹈開始。而依據一年中的特定日子和節期，他們也有配合其他活動的其他舞蹈來讓大家聚在一起。有時會相互拜訪，因為他們的村落與村落之間總是不斷在互相交流。正如我先前所說，他們通常以不同部族各自居住在特定地區的族群型態生活著，並透過政治交流、家族交流、經濟交流等方式來互動。 通常，一個族群跳著一支舞，一種為其他人準備的社交舞； 而其他人可能會用自己的舞蹈回應。 有時，這種交流模式在重要的區域會議中會形成螺旋式的增長。例如有個村落就有一種非常精彩的舞蹈叫做 Kwaryp，一種為亡者舉辦的儀式。 例如，一個部族的某個村莊每年為亡者舉辦一次儀式，並邀請其他部族以客人的身分來參與這個儀式。所以有時候，如果村莊中有兩、三百位居民，那麼可能會有成千個人圍成圈跳著那偉大的Kwarup 舞。 政治上的區別，種族上的區別都會出現在他們為跳舞而彩繪自己身體的方式上。所以，符號包含音樂符號、舞蹈符號和視覺符號的整體結合。 而有時侯，歌曲是有歌詞的，因此某些歌唱傳統可能會沿用較古老的語言，亦即那些只能在儀式中聽到的失傳語言，或者是僅能在歌唱中聽到的宗教語言。 所以，以古老語言吟唱那些特別的歌曲，就像他們的一個巨大的記憶檔案。
Aaron：這聽起來很熟悉。 這也發生在澳洲。 所以，我們談論的是貿易網絡、族群之間的外交、我們談論的是婚姻和家族血統。 我記得你曾在某一個點提到過葬禮。 因此，大多是的區域文化中都有著一套潛在的原住民宗教信仰。在巴西也是這樣嗎？
Jorge ：有一種很特別的笛子，Jacuí笛，是一種女性不能看的神笛， 因此它們通常被放在在男人的房子裡。 例如，原住民藝師來到巴西利亞大學教授這種笛子時，他會用木頭製作另一支（神笛是用竹子製成的）， 於是，他製作了一個女性可以看的木製複製品。 所以當他離開他的亞馬遜村莊，乘船、轉搭公共汽車，最後終於到達大學，女人們也能一同上課，他只吹木笛，作為Jacuí笛的音樂替代品。 因為女人只能聆聽，卻不能直視那種特殊的長笛。 有時那支笛子本身就是一個靈（當然，指的是原本的竹笛）。是的，這就是我所說的活宇宙認識論， 我才剛寫完一篇關於這個的文章。 因為活宇宙認識論認為整個宇宙都是活的，自然的元素都是在交流、在聆聽、在說話。因此，宇宙的面向一直隱含在所有這些傳統中。 例如，為了學習 Jacuí 並成為一名出色的 Jacuí 演奏家，凌晨三四點左右，有一隻很特別的鳥在會森林裡唱歌。 年輕的長笛手必須前去聆聽，因為那隻鳥會教他用笛子演奏某些旋律。 音樂將是笛子演奏者和這隻特別的鳥之間的交流。 他必須去森林裡找到那隻鳥，只有那隻鳥才會有特殊的旋律。
Aaron：巴西和澳洲有很多共同點，也有很多相似處，如樂器的神祕性、動物的靈魂擁有可以被傳授的歌曲或旋律的想法等，希望在之後的討論中可以有更多其他事情湧現。 那麼現在我們可以談談你的研究中心的工作。首先，我想問問在巴西不同地區的這些區域社群，目前存在哪些策略去保持原住民音樂和舞蹈傳統的存續？
Jorge：我們有成人儀式。透過成人儀式，女孩們會在十一歲或十二歲時學習自己的舞蹈。在第一次月經初潮之後，她們將被隔離，由年長女性來教她們特定的曲目和女性特有的舞蹈風格。男孩的情況也類似，由年長男人透過釣魚、打獵等活動來教育他們，而這一切都與跳舞和唱歌緊密連結。但他們現在都擔心這些傳統的傳承。所以，在某種意義上，我將「知識相遇」視為一種Zeitgeist，亦即「時代精神」。將大師在正確的時機帶到大學的想法，是因為其中一些成人儀式非常困難，而且隨著他們與外界的聯繫越來越緊密，不是所有的年輕人都願意花足夠的時間去學習和記憶這些口耳相傳的傳統。有時，當年輕人從大師學習動輒上百首的一套完整曲目，大師會要求與他們持續的保持聯繫。如果年輕人離開村莊去鎮上一段時日，他們就會錯過學習完整曲目的機會。因此，「知識相遇」就是我們提供他們之間建立聯繫的一種策略：首先，他們作為短期或客座講師來大學任教，因為他們是唯一能夠正確教授自己的音樂傳統的人。正如我常說的，大師是無法替代的。沒有人可以代替他們傳授知識，他們必須親身前來代表自己的傳統。在所有開設「知識相遇」課程的大學中所發生的實際情況是，他們通常帶著弟子前來。 這些或男或女的大師們來參加「知識相遇」課程時通常會帶著一位資深弟子一起到來，後者之後將成為他們傳統傳習者。 所以，大師們會帶著一、或兩個門徒來擔任翻譯，好與我們溝通，因為他們有些人甚至不會說葡萄牙語。 在這些情況下，他們會說自己的語言，並由他們的弟子作翻譯。 我們有所謂的伙伴教授，專職在課堂中引導對話的進行，而我們也為所有在這些大學中實施的課程作影像紀錄——目前已經有 15 所大學加入「知識相遇」的課程網絡。
這是我們教學法的一部分：所有課程都必須被記錄，因為這些課程都是首創，也都是教學法的創新。 在大師的課堂裡有如此多的新資訊湧入，我們需要很長時間才能真正逐字紀錄、分析並思考他們所呈現的議題。而後，作為協議的一部分，這些年輕的原住民將擔任轉譯和協助大師的任務。我們在「知識相遇」計畫中有許多協議， 其中之一是我們支付給他們的薪資與支付給訪問教授、代理教授或客座講師的金額相同，依據每所大學各自的情況而定。第二個協議是我們授權並對課程進行錄影。第三，年輕原住民前來作為弟子，我們會給他們一個裝滿大師所傳授全部課程的硬碟，讓他們將此硬碟帶回村莊。例如，jacuí 笛大約有 500 種不同的旋律和曲目。當 Arifirá 大師來的時候，我們把他演奏的曲子錄了下來，於是它們都回到了馬蒂普村。有時當他們來的時候，他們也會跳舞、唱歌，我們都會記錄下來。就這樣，我們不斷在幫助他們整理他們自己的曲目檔案。他們也感到有必要擁有這些檔案。一些村莊現在有了電腦。所以，整個概念就是，我們現在先複製他們的曲目，以讓不同的部族擁有他們自己曲目的副本、他們自己的檔案。而我們也會保留所有這些副本，以防萬一。在巴西利亞大學我們有很多的檔案，因為研究中心就座落在這裡；但是米納斯. 吉拉斯州也有很多…等等，於是我們都在運用遍佈全國的「知識相遇」課程來製作檔案。這是一種保持記憶存續的策略，雖然大師們會漸漸凋零，但他們卻以某種方式生存下來，因為年輕人擁有他們技藝的影音紀錄。這一切都是全新的。
Aaron：所以你說知識相遇能夠跨越15個宇宙？那這是太神奇、太美妙了！
Jorge：神奇的是，這一切是在幾年之內發生的，因為 2010 年我們才從巴西利亞開始所謂的前導課程。我發明了合作講師以及模組授課的教學法，因為大師不能和我們在一起太久，他們習慣住在自己的社群，所以通常他們每次教二到三週的模組課程。大師們每週來教三次，我們同時也會和他們進行其他的對話。一個模組課程結束後，另一位大師會來。在第一門課程中，我們邀請了五位大師，有時是四位。我們在 2010 年、2011 年、2012 年、2013 年開設該課程，然後在 2014 年，我們與文化部簽訂第二份協議，將「知識相遇」計畫擴大到五所大學。我們又選擇了四個：米納斯. 吉拉斯州、帕拉州（位於亞馬遜地區）和其他地區。 2015 年它擴大得更多，而今年我們會達到 20 所，但我們停止了，因為我們因著防疫隔離而完全關閉，研究中心從 2020 年 3 月起關閉。希望明年能達到 20 所大學。非常奇妙地，我們現在正在維也納的 MDW（音樂與表演藝術大學）開始啟動。三週前，我才剛在 Ursula Hemetek 那裡做了兩個初步的講座。 「知識相遇」也在哥倫比亞舉辦，厄瓜多爾可能很快就會開始。 我認為它的必要性是全球性的。就學術界而言，傳統民族和原住民族群被排斥、被噤聲，去成為一種教學自主性的聲音。 當然，他們會受訪談，也接受許多支援，但不允許他們出現在被我們佔據的地方，一個拉康定義為「應該被知道的主體」的地方。 我們是認知的主體，也就是說，我們從未接受原住民也可以是認知主體，與我們相當。
Aaron：是的，我認為這是一個非常普遍的挑戰。 這是我們共同感受到的衝突點因此透過這個小組討論會來探討。所以，在你執行你的計畫並將它擴展到不同的大學的時候，你一定也和社群之間發展出驚人的信任度，他們開始參與進來，並覺得他們的文化素材在大學中是安全的。一開始有很困難嗎？
Jorge：不，不一定需要，因為在執行「知識相遇」計畫之前，正如我所說，我們有了第一個包容性的政策。我們在本世紀初展開的“ cuotas”（平權行動），一項極其艱鉅的任務，在本世紀的第一個十年。一場漫長的奮鬥以確保年輕原住民學生能夠進入大學。在這裡，我們稱之為 “cuotas”（配額），我不知道澳洲有什麼制度，在美國他們稱之為平權行動。但在巴西這裡是一個百分比，真的：黑人學生佔 20% 的名額，而原住民學生也有一定數量的配額。這將是第一種類型的包容行動—民族和種族的包容。所以，現在大學裡的課程是多民族和多種族的：有白人，有黑人，有原住民，有馬龍人，還有貧困學生。因此，第二種的包容將是認知包容，因為課程設計是非常歐洲中心的。所以當原住民學生來學習所有的西方文化時，他們說：我們什麼時候可以討論我們自己的傳統呢？講師沒有為此做好準備，課程設計也沒有為此做好準備。因此，第二步驟將是認知包容。幸運的是，當「知識相遇」計畫開始時，年輕的原住民學生已經在大學裡了。 所以你看，其間是有鏈接的。 現在我們具有了我稱之為雙重的包容：民族-種族的，以及認知的。 年輕的原住民從自己的社區來到大學，而現在大師們，知識淵博的資深人士，會來教他們，也教白人與黑人學生。 因此，第二種互補的、多元族群的歡樂或共存將會出現，這就是認知共存。 回應你的問題，我會說信任是存在的，因為我們已經與他們建立了聯繫。
Aaron：聽起來你在巴西已開發了一個很好的模式來分享學術空間，我認為這可能是許多其他國家可以學習的東西。 這非常令人鼓舞。 我想我再問最後一個問題，因為我們現在可能已經接近二十分鐘了。 最後一個問題是，您知道，顯然世界不是一個完美的地方，而且可能永遠不會是，但您認為目前在進一步推動您未來工作的主要挑戰是什麼？
Jorge：我們現在面臨的一個挑戰是如何使這個學系計畫合法化。 我們需要改革我們的機構。 洪堡式的大學模式的運用將會有助轉向。 我們必須改變課程設計，我們必須合法化他們的講師身分。我們現在正在做的事情是非常具有革命性的，就是我們在葡萄牙語中所說的Notório Saber：「受認可的高層知識」會是一個不錯的翻譯。 在巴西利亞、米納斯. 吉拉斯州、里約熱內盧等各所大學已經展開了一項運動，學術委員會將認證這些大師等同於博士學位的頭銜，以便他/她們能夠完全合法地進行教學。 這是一個相當大的躍進，因為在某些時候，你會給一個不識字的人一個博士、或是哲學博士的頭銜。 但這就是我們面臨的挑戰：你要不就做下去，要不你就永遠無法使學院去殖民化。正如我們所說，這就是僵局。 這是一個認知僵局。 這真是棒極了。 我們現在正在準備我們所謂的「紀念文」（Memorial），這是一種傳記文件，記錄大師們的事蹟——就像一份大師的音樂傳記、或者舞蹈傳記，而一位教授將代表他/她發言，亦即，將在學術委員會中為他/她的傳記作辯護； 如果被接受，委員會將投票：是的，某某大師可以擁有Notório Saber（認可為更高的知識）的頭銜。 一旦我們為大師們爭取到這個稱號，那麼我們將為「知識相遇」學習計畫打下良好的基礎，而他們的名字也可以在教學大綱中出現。
Aaron：那麼，這是一種種榮譽認證，還是一種考試過程？
Jorge：這是榮譽認證。 這不可能像我們的考試，我認為這沒有意義。 我不知道你所說的榮譽具體指的是什麼，但它不像 Honoris Causa，它是榮譽制的。 我們要求授予大師的稱號是一種認證，就像文憑一樣，但不是通過考試的過程。 「紀念文」就像傳記。 例如，當我成為一名正教授時，我必須向學術委員會發表我一生所有的經歷（Curriculum Vitae）。 Notório Saber 就好像你為大師建立了一份學術經歷：他/她等同於一位在某個傳統儀式或音樂流派等等領域中的哲學博士。
Aaron：這很有趣，我想，因為我們在提升學術等級的系統方面可能略有不同，但對我來說，最後的底線是必須能夠承認一個人所接受的培訓。比如說，原住民傳統中的深奧歌曲，其探究的層級、所具備知識的認知、以及知識如何透過歌曲被創造，就相當於寫一篇博士論文。 對我來說，這是最後的邊界：認可這是真正合格的。
Jorge：是的，它就是這樣的東西，但它始終是一種可以作為對話的證明：我們的學術界接受並承認其他認識論可以與我們的認識論有相同價值。
Aaron：我們有很多相同之處。
Jorge：太棒了！
Aaron：我自己的方法非常相似，我們的系統顯然不同，但我嘗試過類似的事情並取得了某種成功。 我認為巴西向我們展示的是，您創建的全國性網絡，我認為可能是非常獨特的。 我不知道其他國家是否存在全國性網絡，但這是我第一次遇到像你們如此一致性的東西。 這非常非常令人興奮。
Jorge：太美好了。 我們必須繼續對話交流，在台灣、澳洲和巴西的研究機構之間，我們必須考慮共同做一些事情。
Aaron：好的，現在進入自由討論時間，我們將在這裡結束。 我經常想，和你一樣，我坐在南半球大陸，有自己的土壤，自己的星星和夜空，我很好奇為什麼我們一直向著北半球在尋找方向？這是我們思考的方式以及我們在世界上看待自己的方式。 因為那不是我們所存在的地方。
Jorge：不是的。
Aaron：我認為南美和澳洲尤其有很多共同點，當然我們今晚所說的讓我想到有一些過去並沒有特別意識到的共同點。 所以，非常感謝你的演講，希望接下來的討論能夠延續我們正在探討的這些問題。 謝謝你。
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KEYNOTE PANEL 3 : Macia Lanton
Song and Steps of the Ancestors
I acknowledge the traditional peoples of the lands on which we work, and pay respect to elders, past and present. Please be advised that this presentation names and depicts people who are deceased, though not recently. Thank-you to everyone involved in making this session possible.
This is the living continent known as Australia. It is one vast great landmass that before the British occupation of 1788 was populated by upwards of 250 different Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with different languages.
It’s important not to generalize too much about different Indigenous cultures and histories in Australia. It can nonetheless be said that song and dance traditions are typically central to the law, beliefs and identities of Indigenous peoples in Australia, and carry with them a profound sense of belonging and connectedness to country, all of its natural features, and the eternal ancestors who dwell within them. This sense of belonging and connectedness also binds people into vast sprawling family networks through shared ceremonial practices that span and connect vast regions. These ceremonial practices traditionally hinge on song and dance performances that have provided indigenous people and societies with durable ways of living on the Australian continent and adapting to change for scores of millennia. In many ceremonial contexts, songs are understood to emanate from the voices of the original ancestors, while accompanying dances embody their steps and actions.
Due to the greatly varied histories different Indigenous peoples with colonisation across Australia, some Indigenous Australian traditional song and dance styles are well known to their Indigenous owners, and in some cases, researchers who work with them, while others were largely undocumented before they fell out of continuous practice. For example, the first Aboriginal songs ever recorded were sung by Fanny Cochrane Smith in the southeast island state of Tasmania. She was recorded by Horace Watson at the Royal Society in Hobart, Tasmania, on a wax cylinder device between 1899 and 1903, less than a decade after the technology arrived in Australia. These are the only recordings of Tasmanian Aboriginal songs or of any Tasmanian Aboriginal language. Fanny recorded all of the Tasmanian songs she knew; some in Aboriginal languages, others in English, and in one of the recordings, she talks about being the last of the Tasmanians. … She then sings in both English and her own language. Copies are kept in a number of archives, including the National Film and Sound Archive, and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra. This is how it sounds.
In other parts of Australia such as here in North East Arnhem Land on the north coast of Australia, Indigenous song and dance traditions are well known to their Indigenous owners and, in some cases, well documented by researchers. In this recording session produced by Aaron Corn, the Yolngu leader, Joe Gumbula, is leading his close relatives in a planned archival recording of the specific song series for their ancestral forest homeland nearby. Among many Indigenous Australian peoples, specific series of integrated songs, dances and designs are passed down through inheritance. They connect different families to their specific ancestral homelands and the sacred ancestral beings who originally created them, and form the basis of all ceremonial practice through which sacred ancestral law is enacted. Here, Joe and his family are performing forest songs created by the eternal ghost ancestor, Murayana, that recount his foundational observations of the forest’s species and living ecology. In this song item, they sing the iconic flightless Australian bird, the emu.
The Mulka Project in the town of Yirrkala in North East Arnhem Land partners on various cultural research projects with the University of Melbourne. It is heavily involved in this kind of archiving work and provides local community access to new and repatriated cultural heritage collections. This next video shows Joe’s brother-in-law, Wilson Ganambarr, leading an archival recording for the Mulka Project of the song series for his coastal clan homeland here, which is called Rorruwuy.
All indigenous song and dance traditions, and the unique languages that they performed in, are by one measure another endangered in Australia today. Over the past two decades, I’ve worked closely with Indigenous communities, as well as a wide array of established and upcoming researchers in ethnomusicology, ethnochoreology, linguistics and anthropology, to find and implement new ways of ensuring the survival and revitalization of Australia’s Indigenous song and dance traditions in the Digital Age. In 2002, I convened the Inaugural Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance at the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land with the ethnomusicologist Allan Marett and the renowned Yolngu musician, Mandawuy Yunupingu. Aaron Corn was our inaugural Secretary. Other colleagues who I’ve met and worked with at this event are far too many fully name here, but others who will be familiar to ICTM members include Linda Barwick, Sally Treloyn, Steven Patrick, Clint Bracknell and Reuben Brown. This annual event has grown and endured, going from strength to strength over the past 18 years, and this year, the final day of this ICTM Symposium will be shared and overlap with Australia’s 19th Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance to be hosted by our Wilin Centre for for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development here at the University of Melbourne. Learning about Indigenous Australian ways of knowing through participation in performance has always been a key feature of these meetings, as classical Indigenous knowledge in Australia has always been primarily held and conveyed through song, dance and design traditions.
Indeed, through the relationships of collaboration and trust that we have built with Indigenous cultural practitioners over the past 18 years, some of our Symposia have become ceremonial experiences in their own right. Here, you are seeing a Smoking Ceremony we hosted on campus at the University of Melbourne in 2017 for family and colleagues who worked with the late Joe Gumbula, which commenced a memorial day of presentations in his honour at the 16th Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance.
Our Symposium has also always endeavoured to engage in international dialogues, so that Indigenous Australians from widely different parts of Australia can not only exchange ideas and solutions with each other, but also with Indigenous people who face similar cultural survival challenges worldwide. Here, we can see a ceremonial engagement at the 2005 Garma Festival between local ceremonial leaders at this event and Makassan performers from Indonesia with whom they held extensive historical trade and intermarriage relations for hundreds of years.
Today, our network has grown to embrace work that is focused not only on maintaining and strengthening traditional music and dance, but also revitalizing these traditions in parts of Australia where they have lapsed, as well as work that engages with promoting and understanding the creation of all kinds of new approaches to Indigenous Australian music and dance making. In this photo taken at the 18th Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance last year, you can see the Minister for indigenous Australians, the Honourable Ken Wyatt, … as well as Indigenous performers and thought leaders from throughout Australia including Arnhem Land, the Central Desert, Southwest Australia, North Queensland, and regional New South Wales.
Promoting and understanding the creation of all kinds of new approaches to Indigenous Australian cultural production is something that I will leave you with as my presentation now draws to a close. Here, I’ll share with you the groundbreaking research of a brilliant Aboriginal musician with ancestral links to the Torres Strait Islands and Palm Island in North Queensland, Jesse Lloyd, who has worked through her Mission Songs Project to unearth songs that were created, but have now been all but forgotten …, from the various Indigenous settlements that existed all throughout Australia in the 20th century. This song, “The Irex”, captures the immense sadness of the deplorable removal of Indigenous people from their families and original communities by government authorities for much of the 20th century. …
Finally, I should mention that the rich and diverse histories and cultures of indigenous Australians still aren’t widely known and understood by many Australians today. While public awareness about this in Australia continues to improve, I’ve worked hard over the past couple of years to ensure that appropriate materials for teaching about Indigenous Australian histories and cultures exist for use by students and teachers in our national Australian Curriculum for schools. Here, you can see covers for the school and youth versions of my book, Welcome to Country, published by HardieGrant.
In this brief presentation, I’ve only time to scratch the surface of the great depth and diversity of traditional and new Indigenous music and dance practices in Australia. But I hope I’ve been able to convey some of the breath and richness of Australia’s Indigenous cultures, as well as some of the strategies presently in play towards ensuring stronger futures for Indigenous Australian music and dance. This work is far from over, and indeed in many ways, it has only just begun. The first Symposium of this ICTM Study Group in the Making provides a very welcome and timely forum for discussing and strategizing these important issues on a global network scale. I encourage you all to remain with us online for the 19th Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance at the University of Melbourne once this first ICTM Indigenous Symposium draws to a close, and I hope that you’ll be able to join here us in Australia for future symposia in years to come. There is so much for us to share and learn from each other. Thank you.
祖先的歌與腳步
我想向在我們勞動的土地上生存的原住⺠族以及過去和現在的⻑老們表達敬意致敬。請注意，本發言所涉及的所有人都早已過世。感謝大家對於這一議程所給予的幫助。
這是澳洲大陸。在1788年被英軍佔領之前，曾有250多個操不同語言的原 住⺠與托雷斯海峽島⺠族群曾在這片廣博的大陸上共居。
重要的是，不能對澳洲不同原住文化的歷史一概而論。 但是我們可以說，歌 曲和舞蹈傳統往往對於澳洲原住⺠的法律、信仰以及身分認同來說至關重要， 它們蘊含著對於國家、自然以及在那裡紮根的不朽祖先深厚的歸屬感和連結 性。這種歸屬感和連結性也通過跨越並連結廣闊地區的共有儀式實踐使人們 結合為零散而廣大的家族網絡。對於傳統的儀式實踐來說，歌與舞蹈表演尤為 關鍵。它們為原住⺠與原住社會提供了在澳洲大陸⻑久生存的方式，並經歷了 幾千年的變化。在許多儀式語境中，歌被認為是遠祖的聲音，而與之相伴的舞 蹈則是他們的步伐和行動。
在澳洲，不同的原住⺠族群有著不同殖⺠歷史，因此，有些澳洲原住⺠傳統歌 舞風格被它們的原住⺠持有者所熟知，在某些情況下也被與原住⺠共事的研究 者熟知，但是其他的風格直到消失前都顯有記錄。例如，歷史上第一首被錄製 的原住⺠歌曲是由來自塔斯馬尼亞島東南島國的Fanny Cochrane Smith演唱的。 為她錄音的是塔斯馬尼亞島霍巴特皇家協會的Horace Watson。這首歌在1899至 1903年間由蠟筒留聲機進行錄製，當時這項技術在澳大利亞的出現還不足十 年。而它也成為了有關塔斯馬尼亞島原住歌曲或塔斯馬尼亞島原住語言的唯一
錄音。 Fanny錄製了所有她知道的塔斯馬尼亞島歌曲，有些用原住語言演唱，其他則 用英語演唱。在其中一首歌中，她談到自己是最後一個塔斯馬尼亞島 人。。。。 之後，她用英語和她自己的語言進行了演唱。這次錄音的拷貝被
保存在許多檔案館中，例如國家電影聲音檔案館以及位於堪培拉的澳洲原住⺠ 與塔斯馬尼亞島⺠研究中心(AIATSIS) 。
在其他地方，例如澳洲北岸阿納姆地東北部，那裡的原住⺠歌舞傳統被原住⺠ 持有者熟知，有些也被研究者很好地記錄了下來。在Aaron Corn組織的一次錄
音中，雍古族(Yolngu)的領頭人Joe Gumbula帶領他的近親在一個檔案館錄製了 獻給祖先森林家園的一系列歌曲。在許多澳洲原住⺠族群中，具體的綜合性
歌曲、舞蹈以及圖案設計都是通過傳承來延續的。他們將不同的家族與具體的 祖先家園和創造他們的神聖祖先相關聯，並通過頒演神聖的祖先法律而建立所 有儀式的基礎。在照片中，Joe 和他的家人正在表演由不朽的祖先⻤魂 Murayana創作的森林之歌。這首歌講述了他對於森林中萬物和生存生態的重要 觀察。在這首歌中，他們唱的是澳洲標誌性的不會飛的鸸鹋鳥。
阿納姆地東北部Yirrkala鎮的Mulka計畫與墨爾本大學不同的文化研究項目合 作。這個計畫著眼於此類建檔工作，為當地社群提供了接觸新的以及被歸還 的文化遺產的機會。下一個視頻所展現的是Joe的姐夫 Wilson Ganambarr在領 導Mulka計畫中的一次建檔錄音，錄製的是獻給他海岸宗族家園Rorruwuy的 歌曲系列。
在如今的澳洲，所有原住⺠歌舞傳統以及表演它們所用的獨特語言都瀕臨 消 失。在過去的二十年中，我與原住⺠社群以及很多已有建樹或新進的⺠族音
樂學家、⺠族舞蹈學家、語言學家以及人類學家緊密合作，試圖尋找並運用新 的方式來保證澳洲原住⺠歌舞傳統能夠在數字化時代得以生存並復興。 在 2002年，我在澳洲阿納姆地的珈瑪節(Garma Festival)同⺠族音樂學家Allan Marett以及著名的雍古音樂人Mandawuy Yunupingu一起組織了原住⺠音樂與舞 蹈開幕論壇。Aaron Corn是我們當時的秘書⻑。有太多在那次活動和我相 遇並一起工作的同事，在這裏沒辦法提到他們所有人的名字，但是ICTM的會員 們會感到熟悉的有Linda Barwick、Sally Treloyn、 Steven Patrick、 Clint Bracknell 和Reuben Brown。在過去的十八年中，這個每年一度的活動在不斷地延續和成 ⻑，並越來越成功。今年ICTM論壇的最後一天也將會是由墨爾本大學Wilin原住 ⺠藝術文化發展中心舉辦的澳洲第十九屆原住⺠樂舞論壇。一直以來，通過對 表演的參與而學習澳洲原住⺠認知的視⻆都是這些會議的一個重要特性，正如
同澳洲傳統的原住⺠知識一直也都是通過歌曲、舞蹈以及圖案設計傳統來進 行傳達和延續的。
的確，通過我們與原住⺠文化實踐者在過去十八年來所建立的合作關係與信 任，我們的一些論壇對於他們來說已經成為了一種儀式體驗。在這張圖片 中，你看到的是2017年我們在墨爾本大學校園裡為與晚年Joe Gumbula合作過 的同事和家人舉行的煙燻儀式(smoking ceremony)。那年的第十六屆原住 ⺠樂舞論壇由為了紀念他所進行的一日紀念發言開始。
我們的論壇也致力於國際對話，如此一來，澳洲不同地區的原住⺠不僅可 以 交換想法和解決方案，還能夠與世界範圍內面臨相似文化生存挑戰的原住⺠
族群進行交流。在這張圖片中，我們可以看到在2005年珈瑪節中不同儀式領頭 人之間，以及從印尼而來的瑪卡薩(Makassan)表演者和與他們有著百年貿易往 來和通婚歷史的族群間的交流。
如今，我們所面對的工作不再只是傳統樂舞的延續和加強，而進一步包括在澳 洲的一些地區對這些曾經衰退的傳統進行復興，同時對各種澳洲原住⺠歌舞創 造的新方式進行了解和宣傳。這張照片拍攝於去年的第十八屆原住⺠樂舞論 壇，你可以在其中看到澳洲原住⺠部⻑，尊敬的Ken Wyatt以及澳洲包括阿納姆 地、中心沙漠地帶、澳洲⻄南部、昆士蘭北部和新南威爾士等地的原住⺠表演 者以及思想領袖。
在我的發言接近尾聲的時候，我會談談對澳洲原住⺠歌舞創造的新方式進行的 解和宣傳。我將和大家分享一項由一位傑出的原住⺠音樂人Jesse
Lloyd所以進行的開創性研究。Jesse Lloyd的祖先連結到昆士蘭北部的托雷斯海 峽群島和棕櫚島。一直以來，他通過宣教歌曲計畫(Mission Songs Project)在20 世紀澳洲的各原住⺠居住地發掘那些已經被人遺忘的歌曲。這首歌《The Irex》捕捉到了原住⺠在20世紀被政府權威無情地從家庭和原來族群切除的那 份無盡的悲傷。
最後，我應該說的是，直到今天，許多澳洲人仍舊對原住⺠豐富多元的歷史和 文化全然不知。隨著這一問題的公共意識在澳洲不斷加強，我在過去幾年也在 很努力地去保證學生和老師在澳洲學校課程中能得到恰當的有關澳洲原住⺠歷 史和文化的材料。這是我為學校和⻘少年撰寫的《Welcome to Country》一書 的不同封面，由HardieGrant出版。
在我短短的發言中，我只有時間提到在當下澳洲傳統與新原住⺠樂舞實踐深度 與多元程度的皮毛。但我希望我傳達出了澳洲原住⺠文化的豐富性，也談到了 為保證澳洲原住⺠樂舞光明的未來所施行的一些策略。這些工作遠未結束，從 許多方面來說，這些工作其實剛剛開始。第一屆ICTM研究小組的論壇對於這些 問題在全球範圍中的存在提供了非常及時的討論與擬定策略的機會。我希望大 家在第一屆ICTM原住⺠論壇之後繼續與我們一起參與第十九屆原住⺠樂舞論 壇。我也希望大家可以在以後加入我們在澳洲的會議，我們都有太多值得互相 分享和學習的地方。謝謝大家!
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KEYNOTE PANEL 4
Jean Kidula: From Lullaby to National Anthem
Kenya’s functional, educational, and national supplication
Jean Kidula
Professor, University of Georgia
Yale Institute of Sacred Music Fellow/Faculty 2020-21
Preamble
Presenter position (ad lib)
Presenter is originally from Kenya, village of Goibei, that has always been multicultural, multi ethnic, cosmopolitan yet provincial. This kind of mix is an apt backdrop and metaphor for contemporary national Kenyan population ethos. By this I mean there were more than one ethnic and language group in the village, but in addition, there was a Christian mission station with a group of schools (educational institutions) that were until the 1970s administrated by Canadian missionaries, but had a revolving group of missionaries and other non-African colonists and tourists passing through it that included, US, British, German (East/West), Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Brazilians , among others; and other African nationals from Uganda, Tanganyika (Tanzania), Congo, South Africa, Sudan, Ethiopia that visited both the mission and the school. While these institutions were treated as outside village life, villagers attended the schools, were members of the church and worked casually or permanently in the mission or the school. Arab and South Asian traders were also presenced in the village and its environs through the sound of the nearby mosque with its call for prayer, general trading in the village, and the adoption of foodstuffs such as Indian curries, chapati and roti, rice, mandazi and other foods that were understood to be Asian(Endnote 1).
Introduction
Most modern African nations have a complicated relationship with colonialism and religion. By this I mean, external political, social, economic and religious imaginations that seek to cohere the composition and identity of any African nation. It is not just about westernization and Christianity – as with much of the narrative, Islam as a religion that was birthed in the same area and Christianity is part of that equation. In any case, economics and material wealth have always driven political and social control. And for many black Africans, the question of racism has also been part of that package.
Most Africa nations began to acquire self-rule from the late 1950s and by the end of the 1960s, many of them had attained independence – that is, politically they were not directly politically governed from Europe, even if they were still held hostage economically, socially, religiously by Europe and other ancient or newly emerging super powers.
In the processing of national identity, one of the most definitive distinctions for any independent state was a national anthem, separate from that of the colonizer. Kenya’s situation was rather unique. Instead of composing a military sounding piece with sonic hallmarks of Europe, or adopting a European sounding hymn as was the case with Neighboring Tanzania and other South Eastern countries that adapted a South African anthem set to lyrics in their national or dominant languages, Kenya’s national language was adapted from a lullaby derived from one of the smaller indigenous groups in the country.
I would like to begin to describe the complex layers of national identity that have been ruminating in the African landscape that were exacerbated with the imprint of European modernism and are becoming more visible on the global stage – not as purely African problems, but the 21st century has exposed the underbelly of the politics of modernist European national and empire construction that cannot be contained in an era of increasing fluidity and dynamism of identity construction. I will highlight a few of these dynamics using the Kenyan national anthem.
The making of the anthem
The Kenyan national anthem was adapted from a lullaby sourced from the Pokomo people of coastal Kenya. (PPT slide 1) has a map of Kenya, the lyrics of Bee Mdondo Bee, two YouTube clips and an audio. I will use these to locate the Pokomo in Kenya, and to introduce the transformation of the folk tune into a national anthem). The text of the original text was as follows:
Bee Mdondo , bee x2
Akudo bee ni gani?
Huenda hukawabige watu wamakonea.
Mwezi uyawa, ni nani
Oh insect bitter (the insect that bites?)
Who is disturbing (you) the child?
Let us go and fight (beat up) those disturbing you
The moon is clear, we shall see it clearly (who is it?)(Endnote 2)
The piece was collected as part of an educational enterprise intended to gentrify indigenous songs by relocating them onto a different stage – recasting their original function, in essence repatriating it to represent the kaleidoscope of nations within the Kenyan state both to showcase diversity but also to set them onto a trajectory of resource material for the grander academic mission of music schools, where ‘folk’ resources would be elevated into high art – as defined by Europe. Essentially, they were cast into a role similar to what happened to other raw materials in the country – mined, exported, then reimported and consumed as if they were originally European products.
Of interest is also the fact that the piece’s authorship as a national anthem is ascribed to a group of five men, three Kenyans, one Ugandan and one Briton: Thomas Kalume, Peter Kibukosya, Washington Omondi, George Senoga-Zake, and Graham Hyslop. It is obvious that the starting point for constructing the anthem was the melody (Endnote 3).
Analysis of the concept
From the musical perspective, what did this look like?
The melody of Bee Mdondo bee has a pentatonic feel to it, but also a modal feel. When we learned the melody in solfege, we could either intone it at rrrdsll, or lllsrmm. In order to gentrify it, its lyrics were adapted linguistically to the two most widespread by colonizing languages – English and Kiswahili. Then it was harmonized using European common practice procedures. It was problematic. While the first phrase seemed to suggest a major tonality, subsequent phrases tended towards a phrygian mode. So it provides an interesting reading onthe rules of common practice that were originally intended to bring Africa into Europe’s most basic harmonic system.
There have been several attempts to change the tune of the anthem so it sounds more like military sounding anthems around the world because usually the police or army brass bands performed them for state rituals and other government functions. There have been no attempts to change the text.
The lyrics are also a point of interest. First, there is a transfer of text and transfer of language. None of the original text is retained, but the ‘spirit’ of the lullaby is retained – some kind of a plea. The anthem is framed as a prayer to God. This is usually interpreted as a prayer to the Christian God because the main architects of the anthem subscribed to the Christian faith. The lyrics read as follows(Endnote 4).
Ee Mungu nguvu yetu
Ilete baraka kwetu
Haki iwe ngao na mlinzi
Natukae na udugu(Endnotw 5), amani na uhuru
Raha tupate na ustawi
Amkeni ndugu zetu
Tufanye sote bidi
Nasi tujitoe kwa nguvu
Nchi yetu ya Kenya tunayoipenda
Tuwe tayari kuilinda
Natujenge taifa letu
Ee, ndio wajibu wetu
Kenya istahili heshima
Tuungane mikono pamoja kazini
Kila siku tuwe na shukrani
Oh God of All creation
Bless this our land and nation
Justice be our shield and defender
May we dwell in unity, peace and liberty
Plenty be found within our borders
Let one and all arise
With hearts both strong and true
Service be our earnest endeavor
And our homeland of Kenya, Heritage of splendor
Firm may we stand to defend
Let all with one accord
In common bond united
Built this out nation together
And the glory of Kenya the fruit of our labour
Fill every heart with thanksgiving
While the original lyrics were discarded, new ones were created for a new purpose. That practice was also not unusual in church music history. Often hymn tunes could be sung to a different text with the same poetic meter. Therefore in terms of Christian religious practice, such a transfer of text was not unusual. At least four of the five players, Kalume, Hyslop, Zake and Kibukosya worked in the church already. Omondi who was very young at the time also subscribed to Christianity and was a pianist. All of them were trained in Western aesthetics whose basic music theory was founded and propagated by Christianity and its surrogates or patrons. Therefore the 4 part chordal harmony in which the piece is set, was not surprising. However this was also a gentrification project a la British. Those familiar with folk song collectors like Briton Cecil Sharp are aware of these kinds of projects that were both a way to ascribe authenticity of belonging and a resource for ‘elite’ composers to draw on to underline national heritage.
In Kenya, the colonial music and drama Officer Graham Hyslop (Hyslop 1958) exported this practice to the continent for the purpose of refashioning the presentational styles and function of indigenous Kenyan musics. To consolidate the body of repertoire, Hyslop travelled around the country, held specialized workshops for music teachers and choral directors, or even asked for such songs to be presented at the music festivals that had been originally set up in Kenya by colonists for their own purposes but began to include African presenters and eventually African pieces, most notably, recontextualized and rephrased ‘folk’ songs. Pokomo school teachers among others, therefore ‘collected’ from their villages or from their students, and reworked the songs, sometimes adding stanzas so that song could last 3 minutes, or created a suite of songs from the corpus of the function they sought to represent. There were prescribed ways to present these songs on stage (Hyslop 1964), that led to ‘standardized’ versions especially when choir masters and students from other parts of the country learned the presented version, and re-presented them in their schools and in music festivals and other events elsewhere and in subsequent years. The history of Bee Mdondo Bee bears that mark. It was collected by teachers, performed for either the collectors or at festivals and earmarked for adaptation and arrangement. In this particular case, it resurfaced as the national anthem.
Ownership of the text and tune caused an interesting scuffle in the age of copyright and intellectual property. IN the case of Bee Mdondo Bee, the teacher who ‘collected’ and adjusted the song Mzee Menza Morowa Galana claimed to have composed it (Mzee, 2015). He also said he had collected it from his grandmother (see YouTube interview). However, the general government narrative has been that it was composed by the 5 men commissioned to compose the national anthem, Washington Omondi, Peter Kibukosya, George Senoga-Zake, Graham Hyslop and Reverend Thomas Kalume (Senoga-Zake 1986). With such differing views and the general British assignment of ‘folk’ song into public domain. There is no question that the song is Kenyan – because the original melody was drawn from a song by an indigenous group residing in Kenya.
Some alternative considerations regarding the history of indigenous song.
There is so much more to unpack from this analysis but let me conclude here by stating that The composition of the Kenyan national anthem demonstrates the confluence of the Western European colonial agenda, a political mission with an economic underbelly, coated and fueled by European understandings of the Christianity and education – leading to the reordering of African political, social and religious systems – meeting these new identifying orders in the name of nations – usually read as anglophone or francophone or lusophone, or as Christian or Muslim – really outside ordering. This begs an inquiry into what happens when self-governing nations begin to reconfigure and reorder their internal structures on the global stage in the quest for political capital and alignment. That analysis is beyond this presentation.
However from the musical side, I want to underline another angle that informs the continuing complexity that resulted from the colonial project. Usually analyses of the African situation in Western scholarship draws from European or American or Asian trajectories – it depends on who wants to assert supremacy in reading the African project. So various terms with layered implications are adopted in the quest for political, economic and academic prerogative; such terms as post modernism, postcolonialism, orientalism, subculturalism, transnationalism, coloniality and a host of other prisms through which the African condition is presented, represented, interpreted – subjugated etc. Of course we know there is a whole bunch of power
play that underlies these interpretations. As a music historian, I have long advocated for looking at some of these issues not through the lens of a European history, but from an African music history: What the various trajectories developments that African indigenous songs have undergone – giving voice, agency, potency to the impact and historical sinew to song/music/traditions and their owners
ENDNOTE
1. For more on this relationship please see Kidula 2013.
2. Text from Gathogo 2015. There are several versions of the last line but most of the rest of the text is the same. My translations of the text are bracketed.
3. According to Gathogo (2015, 5), the words of the Anthem were penned by Kalume. While interviews with the only living member of the committee, Washington Omondi are pending, I assume that the other members of the committee edited both the text and the subsequent arrangement.
4. Contrary to popular belief, the Kiswahili version was not a translation of the English. Neither was the English version a translation of the Kiswahili. Each version was crafted to display its particular sentiment, thanks to the excellent skills of the committee and the people they consulted (by the way, Mr. Hyslop was fluent in Kiswahili, and the labor of Kalume cannot be underestimated in the Kiswahili version [see Gathogo 2016 for more detail]) nor in framing the piece as a prayer because he was a Christian clergyman.
5. Some writers substitute this word with undugu. Dr. Omondi was very emphatic that the word is udugu.
6. I selected only a few of the numerous articles that rehash the story of the national anthem and the various stakeholders that have emerged in the era of copyright and ownership. There are also numerous renditions of the national anthem that have appeared on Youtube especially in the last 10 years. Prior to that, one had to obtain permission to record the anthem for any reason, although it was sung at least once a week in every school and at government functions.
PRELIMINARY REFERENCES Academic books and articles
Blacking, John. 1967. Venda Children’s Song: A Study In Ethnomusicological Analysis. University of Chicago Press (Reprint 1995).
Gathogo, Julius: 2015. Ecclesiastical and Political Leadership in One Armpit: Celebrating the Life of Thomas Kalume (1925-75). Studia Historia Ecclesiasticae 41 (3). DOI: 10.25159/2412- 4265/451. Reprinted in Religion and Development I Africa edited by Ezra Chitando, Masilwa Ragies Gunda and Lovemore Togarasei (2020); University of Bamberg Press as “Religion and Civic participation in Post-colonial Kenya” pg. 281-304.
Hyslop Graham. 1964. Since Singing is So Good a Thing: A Handbook for Teachers and Choirmasters. Oxford University Press.
Hyslop Graham. 1958. Kenya’s Colony Music and Drama officer. African Music 2 (1): 37-39 Kidula, Jean. 2013. Music in Kenyan Christianity: Logooli Religious Song. Indiana University Press
Senoga-Zake, George. 1986. Folk Music of Kenya. Nairobi: Uzima Publishing House.
Newspaper articles(Endnote 6)
Standardmedia.co.ke. 2018. The Untold Story of the Man who Gave Us the National Anthem.
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/entertainment/lifestyle/2001286716/the-untold-story-of- the-man-who-gave-us-the-national-anthem
Mzee, Fatma. 2015. National Anthem Composer Passes Away. https://nation.africa/kenya/news/national-anthem-composer-passes-away-1144636, November 12
YouTube Sites and Audio clips
Citizen TV. 2013. Unsung Heroes: Mzee Meza Morowa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEe4KVVvpvI
Omondi Gabriel and Mkawasi Mcharo Hall. Pumatheplay.com. posted 2016. Mdondo Mdondo excerpt. From performance at Mkawasi Mcharo Hall in the play Puma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sugHdTL9nq4
Oduor, Annette. 2011 Kenya national anthem rendition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI7V324e1zg
Audio Clips
Oduor Annette. 2011, National Anthem. By permission of the artist November 9, 2020.
