Voices from the past: songs from dying languages (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

*Voices from the past: songs from dying languages*

DateFebruary 21, 2014
Saffron Howden
Reporter
AUS


Fewer than a dozen people in the world speak the language in which Thomas
Kungiung belts out the mournful lyrics to "Truwu".


Kungiung, who passed away in the early 1990s, was a songman from Wadeye in
the Daly region to the southwest of Darwin.


His voice and his song - "The waves are crashing on them Truwu! My dear
country! Walakandha!" - reach through the decades in a recording made in
1988 at the genesis of a project to save the traditional Aboriginal
performance, wangga, from extinction.


Performed by one or two men to the accompaniment of a didgeridoo and
dancers with clap sticks, wangga is the subject of a new book, For the Sake
of a Song: Wangga Songmen and their Repertories.

Access full article below:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/voices-from-the-past-songs-from-dying-languages-20140221-335qa.html#ixzz2uGISHCHJ
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