This book brings together a wide range of contemporary explorations of Indigenous music and dance in the Torres Strait and the tropical regions of the Northern Territory. This collection shows how traditional music and dance have responded to colonial control in the past and more recently to other external forces beyond local control. It looks at musical pasts and presents as a continuum of creativity; at contemporary cultural performance as a contested domain; and at cross-cultural issues of recording and teaching music and dance as experienced by Indigenous leaders and educators, and non-Indigenous researchers and scholars.Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors demonstrate how local music and dance genres have been subject to missionary, institutional, popular and global influences. They offer an understanding of the cultural background and history of Torres Strait music; discuss how contemporary Christian music and dance in Arnhem Land incorporate traditional ritual; unpack the complex form and structure of an Australian Aboriginal song series; and examine the transformation of a nineteenth-century American popular song into a 'traditional' anthem of the Torres Strait. The book also examines the interface between Aboriginal ritual, movement and the environment as portrayed on film, and explores the issues raised by the presence of Aboriginal performers in the non-Indigenous university classroom. The book is of critical importance for those involved in the fields of music, dance and performance in general.

Table of Contents

From 'Navajo' to 'Taba Naba': Unravelling the travels and metamorphosis of a popular Torres Strait Islander song; Home Among the Gum Trees: An ethnography of Yolngu musical performance in mainstream contexts; Music of the Torres Strait; Mabo, Music and Culture; Dancing, into Film: Exploring Yolngu motion, ritual and cosmology in the Yirrkala Film Project; A Rally at Ramingining: The 'uniting' force of music and dance in a Yolngu Christian context; Grand Concerts, Anzac Days and Evening Entertainments: Glimpses of musical culture on Thursday Island, Queensland, 1900-1945; Making the Journey In: Opening up spaces for performing, teaching and learning Aboriginal performance traditions; Musical Times: The interplay between metrical time and real time in a Central Arnhem Land clan song series; Index.