Diasporic Transpositions

Indigenous and Jewish Performances of Mourning in 20th-Century Australia

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9286240
AutoresGay Breyley, GJ Breyley (0000-0001-6146-347X, autor correspondente)
Ano2007
Volume16
Fascículo1
Páginas95-126
Data de publicação2007-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoBritish Journal of Ethnomusicology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0968-1221 • E-ISSN: 1741-1920
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17411910701276567
OpenAlexW4254719921
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas22

Twentieth-century Australia was the site of a range of diasporic encounters, as well as the continuing effects of colonization and simultaneous movements towards decolonization. Extensive mid-century immigration schemes saw hundreds of thousands of (selected) Europeans migrate to Australia, including Jewish Holocaust survivors, or displaced persons as they were known then. After Israel, Australia's population now has the highest proportion of Holocaust survivors in the world. Meanwhile, many of Australia's indigenous survivors of colonization were dispersed from their traditional lands, often working for rations in the pastoral industries. Only in the late 20th century was there sufficient popular interest in Australia for narratives of these displacements to enter such public spheres as popular music and literature. While there are clear and significant differences between Jewish and indigenous communities and their respective positions in Australia's history, both communities have been disproportionately afflicted with memories of loss and death. For both, mourning is a most significant practice. Through literary and musical sources, this article examines performances of mourning in Australia's Jewish and indigenous communities. It argues that these communities' practices do not represent cultures of hybridity, as is sometimes claimed. Rather, their performances of mourning may be read as complex transpositions, performed within dynamic cultures of survival. This is evident, for example, in a poetic adaptation of the Kaddish by Lily Brett, a child of Holocaust survivors and former rock journalist. In different ways, it is also evident in adaptations of country music by Bundjalung elder and bereaved mother Ruby Langford Ginibi and in adaptations of both Celtic folk and Baarkanji traditions by the late Baarkanji educator Evelyn Crawford. Keywords: DiasporaPostcolonial TheoryIndigenous AustraliansJewish AustraliansMourningMemory Acknowledgements Many thanks to Dr Ruby Langford Ginibi for her generosity and support. I am grateful to the anonymous readers and Tina K. Ramnarine for their helpful comments and to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong and the Faculty of Arts at Monash University for financial assistance. For permission to publish Figure 2, I thank the National Library of Australia. Notes 1. CitationMarianne Hirsch defines postmemory as 'the response of the second generation to the trauma of the first. ... Postmemory most specifically describes the relationship of children of survivors of cultural or collective trauma to the experiences of their parents, experiences that they "remember" only as the narratives and images with which they grew up, but that are so powerful, so monumental, as to constitute memories in their own right' (2001, 8, 9). For an ethnomusicological application of this concept, see Kabir (Citation2004). 2. During the 20th century, this annual figure was exceeded only twice: in 1919, as troops returned from the Second World War, and in 1988, when 172,794 people immigrated (Australian Government 2004). 3. In her words, Perera examines 'the positioning of the indigenous body within two related discourses that I term "multiculturalism" and "hybridity", or the discourses of happy hyphenation and happy hybridization, respectively. These discourses, I want to suggest, raise specific problems in an Australian historical context, where the effects of scientific racism are being confronted by indigenous peoples in relation to land rights claims and, more generally, the dominant culture's demands for an "authentic", visible and unproblematic Aboriginality that can be both clearly marked and contained' (1996). For a different, musicological approach, see van der Meer (Citation2004). 4. In Crawford's book, Over my tracks, the spelling of some indigenous language group names differs from standard spelling (for example, 'Baarkanji' is usually spelt 'Barkindji' or 'Paakantji'). I follow Crawford's spelling. 5. In her texts, Brett refers to her father's family name as 'Brajsztajn', but my research in Lodz would suggest the family name there was 'Brajtsztajn' (corresponding with the German 'Breitstein'). Similarly, Brett's mother's family name, 'Spindler' in Brett's texts, was spelt 'Szpindler' in Poland (reflecting Polish spelling of the Yiddish pronunciation). 6. Brett and her husband David Rankin were featured as members of 'the Australian diaspora' in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's television documentary Another Sun: 'At any given time there are about a million Australians who are living or working abroad. That's a hefty five per cent of the population. We're now leaving the country in greater numbers than ever before in a phenomenon called the Australian diaspora' ( ). 7. For a more extensive analysis of related aspects of the texts of Crawford and Brett, see my chapter in Huff (2005) (CitationBreyley 2005a). 8. As I have suggested elsewhere (Citation2003), one way of considering these different forms of diaspora is writer Arnold Zable's adaptation of the Yiddish term Luftmensh—literally 'air person'—to apply to the displaced person in Australia (Zable, pers. comm., 2001). In the Yiddish world, a Luftmensh was a dispossessed but shrewd survivor, a wheeler and dealer, who moved about making something out of nothing. The process of 'becoming Australian' or of failing to become Australian, in its many different forms, can involve time as a Luftmensh, finding no homeland where 'Australian' discourse suggests there should be one or being dispossessed of that which was a homeland. Zable, whose family was left bereft by the Holocaust, points out that an indigenous person could be expected to be the Luftmensh's opposite—indigenous people have strong links to place and know their homelands intimately. However, Zable speaks of a shock of recognition when he encounters the 'hovering' indigenous narrator of CitationKim Scott's novel Benang (1999): all it takes is a generation of dispossession to render even the indigenous person a Luftmensh. Zable's adaptation of the term removes the derogatory connotation it had in Eastern Europe. Historian Mark Raphael Baker considers his Ukrainian-born mother's more traditional use: '"Luftmenshn," she likes to characterise those in my profession, idlers living off air' (Citation1997, 138). See also Paul Celan, 'Hüttenfenster'/'Tabernacle window': 'the wander-/East, the/Hovering Ones, the/Humans-and-Jews,/the Cloud Crowd [Volk-vom-Gewölk: literally "people-of-clouds"]' (2001, 197). Much of Celan's Holocaust-derived imagery of clouds, air, earth and smoke, as in his 'Todesfuge'/'Deathfugue' (Citation2001, 30–3), also evokes both the mourning and the denial (as in terra nullius) of indigenous Australian life. While the indigenous Luftmensh may leave tracks on local, familiar soil, dispossession repeatedly changes the course of those tracks and with it the languages and musical forms that may be used. 9. Massacres in New South Wales include one at Bathurst in 1824, which left around 100 indigenous people dead, the 1838 massacres of 28 people at Myall Creek and an unknown number of Camilleroi (Crawford's husband's people) at Waterloo Creek, and the 1864 massacre of around 100 people at Richmond River in Langford Ginibi's Bundjalung country (Commonwealth of Australia/Wilson 1997, available at ; Milliss Citation1992; Reynolds Citation1998, 4–6, 20, 40–1, 65–9, 120). See also Rose (Citation2001). On the question of genocide, CitationLarissa Behrendt writes: 'For Indigenous plaintiffs, it doesn't matter whether the crime of genocide was committed as it was defined by international law and it doesn't matter whether there was intention or not. What seems to be more important from the Indigenous perspectives are the effects of the actions of the government—these actions have amounted to damage to Indigenous people, families and communities and they choose to use the word "genocide" to describe it. This moves the discussion outside of the words of the statute to the side-effects and legacies of those sanctioned actions' (2001, 142, emphasis in original). 10. On a different level, an example of this concern was the theme of the 2006 Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) 51st annual conference: 'Decolonizing Ethnomusicology'. 11. CitationAlan Belkin defines the countersubject's role as that of 'a recurring counterpoint to the theme, often (but not always) adding its own motives. When present ... [the countersubject] enhances and sharpens the profile of the theme through contrast, filling in rhythmic gaps, enriching the harmony through suspensions' (2004). Through contrast with popular and/or national themes, countersubjects' discourses amplify discrepancies in those themes. Countersubjects enrich popular harmonies with suspension, 'a form of discord arising from the holding over of a note in one chord as a momentary (discordant) part of the combination which follows, it being then resolved by falling a degree to a note which forms a real part of the second chord' (Kennedy and Bourne Citation1996). When countersubjects maintain 'notes' from their 'first' or parental cultural knowledges into their respective 'second' sites of learning, those imposed on children by 'White Australia', they create dissonance. A general example of this in Brett's work is her preoccupation (deriving from the persistence of her parents' memories) with the ostensibly resolved story of the Holocaust. Brett suspends tones of inherited anguish in chords (her relations with fellow Australians) expected to be free of discord. As children and as adult authors, Crawford and Langford Ginibi enriched Australian harmonies by holding on to languages and practices that white authorities had planned to remove from their repertoires. These suspension techniques constituted interventions in dominant cultural practice. Their dissonance effected change and sometimes resolution in future encounters, as their 'notes' became audibly 'real parts' of 'major' cultural forms. Conversation with and between such 'countersubjects' thus enriches, diverts and alters popular themes. 12. CitationMark Slobin explains 'superculture' as an 'overarching structure', encompassing 'the statistically lopsided, the commercially successful, the statutory, the regulated, the most visible'. A superculture includes an industry, the 'state and its institutionalized rules and venues' and 'more insidious strands of hegemony' that 'define the everyday, and circumscribe the expressive' (1992, 15–18). 13. 'Counter-narratives of the nation that continually evoke and erase its totalizing boundaries—both actual and conceptual—disturb those ideological manoeuvres through which 'imagined communities' are given essentialist identities. For the political unity of the nation consists in a continual displacement of the anxiety of its irredeemably plural modern space' (Bhabha 2004, 213). CitationEdward W Said explains his theory of 'contrapuntal reading' as 'reading a text with an understanding of what is involved when an author shows, for instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is seen as important to the process of maintaining a particular style of life in England. ... contrapuntal reading must take account of both processes, that of imperialism and that of resistance to it, which can be done by extending our reading of the texts to include what was once forcibly excluded—in L'Etranger, for example, the whole previous history of France's colonialism and its destruction of the Algerian state, and the later emergence of an independent Algeria (which Camus opposed). ... Each text has its own particular genius, as does each geographical region of the world, with its own overlapping experiences and interdependent histories of conflict. ... In addition, one must connect the structures of a narrative to the ideas, concepts, experiences from which it draws support' (1993, 66–7). 14. These terms are used, respectively, in The Liquor (Amendment) Act 1905 (NSW) s 8(4), The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld) s 4, Aborigines Act Amendment Act 1936 (WA) s 2, The Liquor (Amendment) Act 1905 (NSW) s 8(4) and the Queensland Aboriginal Protection Acts. See De Plevitz and Croft (Citation2003). While early to mid 20th-century 'White Australia' made its idiosyncratic distinctions between different categories of European, for example, between 'Brit' and 'Balt' and between 'Australian' and 'Englishman', it remained largely ignorant of the diversity of the indigenous groups who lived in an area larger than Europe. At the time of colonization, it is estimated that more than 500 dialects were spoken, making up about 250 distinct languages (AIATSIS 1994, 279). However, settler authorities saw only 'full-bloods', who were expected to die out, and varieties of 'mixed-bloods', some of whom, like the chosen immigrants, were required to assimilate. 15. I use the term 'Anglo-Celtic' to refer to the 'major' part of Australia's population that is descended primarily from the first European (willing and unwilling) colonizers, although this term elides the significant differences between and within Anglo-Saxon and Celtic identities. This elision reflects that intended in such policies as 'White Australia'. Various policies and cultural change have contributed to an increasing forgetfulness of certain differences, as successive 'non-Anglo-Saxon/Celtic' groups have been assigned the role of 'other', effectively pushing 'Anglos' and 'Celts' together as 'central' and bringing the term 'Anglo-Celtic' into common usage in Australia. 16. 'Stolen generations' songs in English include Bob Randall's 'Brown skin baby' (EMI 1987) and Archie Roach's 'Took the children away' (Festival 1990). Songs around deaths in custody include Richard Frankland's 'Malcolm Smith' (Polygram 1993), Paul Kelly's 'Bicentennial' (Chaos Music, 1987) and Mac Silver's 'Malabar mansion', referring to Sydney's Long Bay Jail in the beachside suburb of Malabar (Enrec 1988). Stolen land songs include Kev Carmody's 'Thou shalt not steal' (Larrikin 1990), Jimmy Chi's 'Nothing I would rather be (than to be an Aborigine)' (Polygram 1994), Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly's 'From little things big things grow' (Larrikin, Universal and Song Cycles, 1992) and Midnight Oil's 'Beds are burning' (Columbia/Sony, 1988). Official documents include Bringing Them Home (Commonwealth of Australia Citation1997) (see also 'Bringing Them Home Inquiry', Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, available at ) and CitationAustralian Institute of Criminology (1992–6). Political responses include Apology Australia, 'Paul Keating's Redfern Speech [1992]', available at: , and Barunga Statement [1988], available at . 17. Wild (2006, 348) refers to the 'pioneers of Australian ethnomusicology', Trevor A. Jones, Catherine Ellis and Alice Moyle, as well as the 'second generation', Margaret J. Kartomi, Richard Moyle, Jill Stubington, Allan Marett, Linda Barwick and Wild himself. 18. All these texts contain references to notions of hybridity. Magowan's article addresses political and cultural aspects of the commodification of 'traditional' music. 19. See Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Regional Report of Inquiry in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, chapter 15: 'The historical background, NSW' 23, 'The policy of concentration': 'Enforced concentration began in 1934 and continued until 1939, but it was implemented only unevenly across the State. Most dramatically affected were Aboriginals living where the rural economy appeared to be undergoing the greatest restructuring, in the western and north coast pastoral industry areas where the largest properties were again being broken up. Whole communities of Aboriginals were moved hundreds of miles by cattle truck and dumped on Protection Board stations at Menindee, Brewarrina, Toomelah and Burnt Bridge. Aboriginals protested bitterly but they had been made even more vulnerable by the legislative changes of 1936, which they called the "Dog Act", because it allowed them to be carted around and penned up like animals. In reality they had few choices, particularly if they had young children. Nevertheless, many were transported only at gunpoint, like the Murries moved from Angledool to Brewarrina in 1936. Others stayed in the new "concentration" stations only so long as economic conditions forced them into dependence on Board rations, like the Wangkumarra [Crawford's father's Wankamurrah people] of the Comer Country, who were forced to Brewarrina in 1938 but left in 1940, 80 strong despite the deaths of many of their old people, to walk the 190 miles back to their country.' 20. For a useful analysis of gumleaf music, see Ryan (Citation2003). 21. I present a similar but more extensive analysis of music in Don't take your love to town in my article (Citation2005b). 22. English, Yiddish and Polish all belong to the Indo-European language tree. English and Yiddish stem from the Germanic branch, while Polish stems from the Slavic branch. 23. There is a large body of memoir written and recorded by survivors in Australia. For a sample, see Australian memories of the Holocaust, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, available at: ; Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre, Melbourne, available at: ; Australian Holocaust memoirs collection, Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University, and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (Steven Spielberg's project, which includes many Australians), available at: . 24. CitationGershom Scholem reflects on 'the Hebrew prose and poetry of medieval Jewry—the language of the great halakhists and of the "mosaic style," the poetic prose in which linguistic scraps of sacred texts are whirled around kaleidoscopelike and are journalistically, polemically, descriptively, and even erotically profaned' (2003, 131). Additional informationNotes on contributorsGay Breyley Gay Breyley is Faculty of Arts Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Music – Conservatorium at Monash University, Australia. Her current project is a study of selected musical and poetic texts of Persian-speakers in Australia. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Australian Studies, Borderlands and Altitude, and chapters in Cynthia Huff, ed. Women's life writing and imagined communities (London and New York, 2005) and Sue Williams et al., eds, The regenerative spirit: Australian post-colonial reflections (Adelaide, 2004)

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