Songlines Gigs 2011

Singing is great fun and a boon for physical and mental health, for morale and spirit and we prove that anyone can sing.  Many of us as young people are told we cannot and even should not sing. For some reason this is a powerful and personal message to the young psyche and it sticks. It doesn’t have to stick forever of course. Many times, Songlines has welcomed people to the choir who have a bit of an idea that they like singing in the shower and without audition, have joined the choir only to find that safety in numbers allows voices to follow and lead each other into remarkable sounds.  It is the common experience of us all and of many community choirs that words and melodies and even harmonies are not only possible but can be performed and enjoyed.

Members of Songlines believe that:

Human rights are central to our place in the world and the community at large. We believe that a community is best judged when we look at ourselves through the eyes of those on the margins; people whose voices are not privileged and are too often unheard in the mainstream. People who do not have English as a first language, people who experience disability, people who are younger than 25 and older than 40 and who are either not taken seriously or are dismissed on the basis of age. Here in Australia as in many other developed countries across the world, we have as a community-at-large confined the first peoples of this land into the margins of physical community, of resources and the broad economy. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have an ancient tenure to this land. Aboriginal culture is one of the world’s oldest. Consider – While we understand a change in epoch occurred two thousand years ago with the birth of Christ, Aboriginal people have lived according to their own traditions and laws for forty to sixty thousand years.  Consider – If we take a generation to be 20 years and we look at the number of generations any of our families might have been in Australia since settlement and colonisation in the late 18th century, we can count maybe 10 generations.  Aboriginal people have a known and living culture that has been here for 2000 generations. 10 generations 2000 generations.

Now, if we lived in a world in which reason and equality ruled, the great wisdom and knowledge of these peoples and their strong and sophisticated traditions would be given due recognition and respect. However, for reasons of fear and of prejudice we have allowed a situation to develop and to continue in which these same Indigenous peoples
• have been pushed from the land they believe has created them,
• have been killed and even massacred,
• have been infected and died as a result of introduced diseases,
• have been pushed into missions and
• as we have finally come to understand through a Prime Ministerial Apology, children taken from their parents… the Stolen Generations.

Whatever the intent of those responsible and assuming the best of intentions, it has become abundantly clear from the stories of those affected, that enormous grief and dislocation has been the experience of generation upon generation, of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people. These historical events are a part of the experience and heritage of our nation. They are difficult things to appreciate and comprehend. They raise difficult questions about what we can do and what we are doing to ensure these injustices are not maintained simply because they have been entrenched into our beliefs. These difficult questions are good and useful, they prompt and provoke us to not take things for granted, to not settle for apathy and disharmony as the norm. Now, what does this have to do with Songlines? Each of us in the choir has reasons or beliefs for being a part of the Songlines story. Mine extend back to my father’s mother’s people who 4 generations ago settled the south west corner of Queensland and whose family name was given to Cameron’s Corner at the boundary to NSW, Qld and SA. They brought their beliefs, cattle and law as they scratched and eked a living from a harsh, dusty, wide brown land about which
they knew so very little. In doing so they imposed upon and changed forever the lives of the Aboriginal people who lived and loved their country as a life force at very the centre of their being; and had done so for a very long time. Putting these pieces of the puzzle together brought to me a sense of great sadness. It personalises for me my place in this very evident series of injustices these past 200 years. While I am not responsible for the actions of my forebears but I am responsible for playing my part in ensuring my actions beliefs and laws are not used to impose upon, exploit or diminish such an ancient culture. And I cannot act according to my responsibilities if I do not first begin to understand the nature and extent of the drama, dislocation and death experienced by Aboriginal people. So, among other things, I discovered that I can place my love of singing in the shower alongside my desire to do my bit and here I am.

The journey taken by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people since colonisation has been as I have described it a very difficult and tragic one. We acknowledge this through one of our songs: Stolen Child.
Despite many attempts at disruption and destruction, language has not been lost and culture remains a strong link for and among Aboriginal people to the land from which they have come. The Dreaming for example includes a complex inter-relating of past, present and future. For this reason, the Songlines community choir, in acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet and sing, refers to the elders past, present and future.

As you may know, Aboriginal people have a long tradition of travelling along songlines given to them in their Dreaming. Singing as they walk across the land brings the hearts of Aboriginal people close to the landmarks and totems that represent their world and the spirit.  At Songlines we seek to honour this culture, even as we cannot begin to comprehend its great depth and virtue, by singing songs in language. You’ll hear this in our song Boorenba – Songlines.  Many traditional Aboriginal songs sung in language tie us to the experience of the singing of these words and melodies just as they have been sung for tens of thousands of years, an extraordinary opportunity and experience.
The Songlines Community Choir believes that together we can say with confidence… Join a choir… Brisbane is famous for them, there are many community choirs and if our experience is anything to go by, it’ll do you a power of good.

We hope you enjoy our singing… and we hope that as you do, you become more aware of the stories and the power of song.