The Voyage to Marege' , captain's log stardate 200617

The music on my computer at the moment is in fact not so different from Rapsodia Nusantara, although it's much bigger. The Voyage To Marege' is a 25-minute orchestral piece, to be performed in Jakarta on August 31st this year, and in Darwin International Festival next June 2018. It is a joint project & commission by the Australian Embassy in Indonesia and the Darwin Festival, and some other organizations have shown interest in participating or programming this work .... scarily enough for me, with yet listening to one note of it. ............................................................................................................................................ My mission, should I choose to accept this (oh, so Mission Impossible-ish, eh) is to study the relationship between the Makassar (Sulawesi) sailors and the Aborigins in the 18th century, where the Makassians sailed for trading spices with teripang (a kind of sea creature). I accepted it this challenge with huge pleasure, since this is an opportunity for me to study the real indigenous music of the Aborigins to be used as a material in my music. Which is not so different to what I did with Indonesian traditional music in my Rapsodia Nusantara numbers. And these last few days I am remembering my late and highly inspirational friend, the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (1929-2014) and why and how he had been so successful in "stealing" instead of "borrowing" the indigenous musical materials. ............................................................................................................................................ The endeavours of Australian musicians in the 19th and 20th century prior to Peter Sculthorpe to make Aboriginal music accessible to the general public often displayed a kind of cultural imperialism: making corrections and rearrangements, and clothing melodies in European harmonies and rhythms, so that they "suit better with the ears" and easier to be adapted with western aesthetic sensibilities. In the book "Australian Aboriginal Music" edited by Jennifer Isaacs, Sculthorpe cites a fascinating example of this when he describes an item he found in the State Library of Tasmania entitled ‘Song of the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land’, ‘arranged by a Mrs Logan and Done by Mifs (sic.)’. Sculthorpe relates that ‘the naked innocence of the chant is clothed in Mendelssohn-like harmonies, supported by an Alberti bass, and crowned with, believe it or not, a Viennese Ländler’ . .............................................................................................................................................. I have heard and studied some Australian composers' works prior to Peter Sculthorpe such as Mirrie Hill's Arnhem Land Symphony, or John Antill's Corroborree where they used the indigenous Aboriginal melodies, and found these traits : 1. the derived material may be so abstracted from its original form as to lose its recognizable identity. 2. in an attempt to accommodate this fact, the composer may contrive the musical expression to the extent that the derived material is caricatured 3. the material may be allowed to retain its recognizable identity and is ‘framed’ by rather than integrated into the musical fabric. ............................................................................................................................................ What distinguishes Peter Sculthorpe from his predecessors is that he was (in the 1980's) indirectly influenced by Aboriginal music, even though they did not employ direct quotation. Curiously enough, for most of his early career Sculthorpe had consciously avoided the use of actual Aboriginal melodies, instead making deliberate use of Japanese and Balinese melodies and styles. Despite Sculthorpe's acknowledged debt to Asia, his music actually ends up sounding closer to that of the Australian Aborigines in many of its attributes, such as the reliance on drones, rhythmic ostinati, percussive sounds and a certain static, endless quality. In Sculthorpe's music, indigenous melodies sound like essential components of his idiom rather than foreign objects. .............................................................................................................................................. I believe Sculthorpe has been more successful than many of his predecessors in creating a smooth synthesis of western and indigenous musical material, for two reasons: firstly, Sculthorpe has carefully chosen melodies that would easily conform to his style and that, in some cases, echo motives previously occurring in his music; and, secondly, he has consciously moulded his style around particular indigenous melodies that he recycles. ............................................................................................................................................ To sum up: Sculthorpe's adoption of Aboriginal beliefs and values could be viewed in two ways. On the one hand, his identification with Aboriginal attitudes could again be viewed as subtle exploitation, using Aboriginal culture to position himself at the spiritual core of Australian identity. On the other hand, the depth and persistence of Sculthorpe's attachment to Indigenous values arguably demonstrates a respect for Aboriginal culture. His attention to Aboriginal melodies has placed Aboriginal music in the spotlight, creating greater public awareness of the richness of indigenous cultures.