iDIDJ Australia Didgeridoo Cultural Hub

[eliotstone]

Dear all,

I am once again applying for a Fulbright grant to Australia. I was contacted by my advisors at my alma mater who were very enthusiastic about this project from its inception, and we have started making contacts in Australia. This year I would like to open my proposal back up to the forum and create a fine tuned project.

My first question for everyone involves obtaining a university affiliation in Australia. I have contacted CDU Darwin and am in contact with the appropriate staff; however, I am interested in contacting ANU as well. Does anyone have names of professors at ANU that would likely be interested in supporting and or advising a Yolngu focused ethnomusicology project?

With everyone's help, I am sure that this year we can get funding for a project that would ultimately benefit all involved.

Best,

Eliot Stone

[danielsaan]

Contact Mike Christie and John Greatorex at the CDU and ask them, they ought to know, really! Thems the boys!!!

Lots of luck Eliot. Gotta say mate, I am envious as hell of what you're doing and applaud you massively.

Dan

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Danyu

[eliotstone]

Thank you for the information. I will continue my correspondence with CDU and find the neccessary contacts at ANU. Thanks for your support; Please contribute all you can to my proposal and we will win this thing together!

Eliot

[kdidj]

It's an interesting proposal Eliot and I hope that you get the Fulbright Scholarship in this instance. Of course you'll have to provide us with a copy of your work should this happen!

Not to be touchy, but there are a few spelling issues in your proposal document. Arnhem Land is officially two words and Groote Eylandt has a 't' on the end. Maybe also you could refer to iDIDJ as a business, not solely as a website. Hope this helps.

Kyle

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[flyangler18]

I question an assertion you make in your proposal:

Quote:

Creating records of traditional technique will ensure that these phonetic systems are never lost. Recently, a master didgeridoo player living in Yirrkala passed away unexpectedly. His name was Milkay Mununggurr. His ancestral knowledge of playing this instrument would have died with him if it were not for the combined efforts of Graves and Mununggurr. Because of the CD Mununggurr and Graves created together, generations of aboriginal players will always have a record to consult when learning to play didgeridoo. My project will broaden the scope of these resources to all regions in northern Australia in a more complete form of documentation.

I doubt there is any measurable connection between Yolngu youth learning proper yidaki techique and the Hard Tongue CD. That is just an initial impression, I'm sure I'll have more once I have some time to gather some thoughts and chew on this awhile.

Jason

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[mahoran]

I think this is good point made by Jason,

m.

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no matter how thin you chop, it has always two faces!!!

[eliotstone]

Thank you all for reading and commenting on my proposal. Let's keep this up.

Kyle,

Thanks for the spelling corrections. I am not the type to get upset about grammatical or spelling corrections. I do not have any overly swollen ego when it comes to my writing; just don't say anything negative about my "Dup"!

Why do you think I should lable IDIDJ specifically as a business. I am not opposed to the idea, I was just curious as to your reasoning.

Jason,

Valid point. I also see this as a weak point in my proposal in some ways; however, I see it as weak for reasons other than Yolngu youth not likely using the recordings for instruction. If we look at the future value of records like the Hard Tounge CD, my argumentation certainly becomes more powerful. I can best demonstrate this by way of a personal anecdote:

My great grandfather immigrated to Texas from the Czech Republic in the late 1800s. He established a township with several hundred inhabitants, all of which were Czech immigrants. The immigrant generation maintained its cultural tradtions and language easily in such a homogeneous community. The children born of my great grandfather, however, completely rejected Czech culture and language in order to assimilate into the rapidly developing American culture.

Fast forward to my generation. I have visited the Czech Republic, I am writing a geneology of my family's history with my father. We should publish it in a year or two. I wish I spoke Czech, I wish I knew the dances and songs, I wish I knew the recepies! All of these wishes are not outside the realm of possiblity for me as 1) Czech language is still vibrant and solid 2) There is no immediate threat of change or deterioration to modern Czech culture ( although membership in the EU has certainly changed things in the homeland in the past few years) and 3) There are still many Czech people alive in the world. I am blessed to have this cultural record available to me, and to know that so much of Czech culture has been archived in digital media that can be accessed easily by future generations of my family from all parts of the globe.

For many peoples around the world, this is not the current state of affairs. Many Native American languages are spoken by fewer than 50 people, all in their 90s. Their children do not speak the language of their ancestors and neither do their children's children. The only record available of these languages will shortly be lost. Future generations of these peoples who are curious about their cultural origins will have NO record of their cultural identity. I do not even understand the full implications and effects this sort of cultural homelessness can have on humans, but I do recognize the import and value of creating records to obviate the total loss of cultural heritage and identity.

We have seen this loss occur with Australian aboriginal people as well. My personal friend, Jeremy Donovan, is a prime example. He has spent his life reconstructing an image of his cultural past by way of visiting tribes in Northern Queensland and creating a broad concept of what his ancestory and their traditions may have been like. Fortunately, Yolngu culture in many regions is intact enough to create records that may allow future generations who gain an interest in their ancestors access to their voices, teachings and wisdom.

The weaknesses I do see in my proposal relating to this discussion lies in my audience. The Fulbright commitee is not necessarily made up of individuals who have been exposed to Yolngu culture. Many may still harbor images of aboriginal men sitting in loin cloths staring into some mystical dream world that we mere mortals lack access to. Hardly an image congruent with the idea of an aboriginal youth in modern clothing, listening to yidaki instruction on an I Pod. I certainly must add language to my proposal that explains the access modern Yolngu have to recording equipment and the ability to play back records and DVDs, if I decide to continue to develop the instructional recordings proposal.

I have been toying with the idea of jetisoning the instructional recording idea from my proposal and simply propose to create recordings in all communities visited by Alice Moyle in order to show continuity and change in the new generations of players. This may be a line of argumentation more acceptable to the academic powers that be. Any instructional use of my recordings can be written in my proposal as an ancillary benefit to their creation, if of course, I have room in my two page limit.

Thanks for your comments. Keep discussing!

Onward and upward,

Eliot Stone

[kdidj]

Hey Eliot,

Simply, iDIDJ as an entity (being a business or institution etc) sells much better in an application of this manner than listing it as a website.

I do hope that they (the Fulbright committee) do not feel that this is simply an add-on to Randy's work. I'm not insinuating that this is the case, only that we know much more of this than they do and it may not seem an original idea. Of course I'm not aware of the criteria upon which the judge the applicants so this might not be an issue at all. Best of luck my man.

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[eliotstone]

Kyle,

I tried specifically to describe my project as a continuance of Randy's work. Development of ideas and the broaden of the scope of records is the aim of most fields of study. If Moyle was the only one who ever recorded Yolngu music, we would have a very limited archive from which to gain any real insight into Yolngu culture. I think that proposing this project as a further development of an already funded project and idea could only further my chances of getting funded.

I see the counterpoint. My project is not an original idea, but that is not always the aim of research, in fact, rarely have I come across research that is not founded on the ideas of others in any field. If you buy into the idea of progress, then original ideas must only be a starting point on which to build a complete view of the subject of study.

The Djalu CDs were the first instance I had ever seen of any mouth sound records. Later I hear many early recordings with mouth sounds present. If you look at their development from the early field recordings in the 50s to the Hard Tounge CD, you can see that the idea of instructional record has developed over many generations. So really, Randy's idea, although original in the format he presented it (no one ever created a specifically technically instructional cd before) was based on concepts presented in earlier recordings. I would just be continuing this lineage.

Best,

Eliot

[kdidj]

Hey Eliot,

I'm not knocking your proposal as I'm sure you know, just voicing concerns that might be shared by the Fulbright committee. I hope you do get awarded the scholarship and begin the project. Believe me, there's not one member of this forum who wouldn't want to be out there helping you out!

There was an instructional CD of sorts published by Trevor Jones in the 1960's titled 'The Art of the Didjeridu' which you may have come across. I believe Guan has a copy or two for sale.

Please keep us posted of your progress.

Kyle

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www.myspace.com/kylemaplesden

[ididjaustralia]

Hi Eliot,

The proposal needs to be refined but at this early stage as a draft it is just that I guess. You need to get your ideas clearer too, the rationale for doing something like what you're proposing has to be water-tight and has to be expressed in the right way. Just very quickly, I would dispute why instructional material (in the form of audio and video recordings) is needed by Aboriginal people when they haven't had a need for them for thousands of years. Why would they need them now? Some details also need to be corrected for factual accuracy.

Good luck, I'm sure we all here will be giving our full support!!

Guan

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[eliotstone]

Kyle,

Once again, I do not feel you are knocking my project and I welcome all comments. Thank you for your responses. If I am somehow coming off defensive, I apologize, as that is not what I want to project. I need all the help I can get! All that you contribute will be given all due consideration. My responses so far have been only my thoughts on your responses so we can understand eachother and work toward improving my proposal.

Guan,

Yup, its pretty rough still. There are many concepts I am trying to get my own mind around, work out the kinks, and try to make my proposal as polished as possible.

The point you bring up is the most common criticism of my project, and it tears the entire proposal apart. I guess the way to resolve the question you pose is to show that Yolngu youth are not showing much interest, or atleast diminished interest, in their own culture and its traditions, thus future generations who do become interested in their heritage would benefit from recordings. This would then set up the need for more accurate records in order to preserve the traditions for Yolngu down the line who become interested in their ancestry. This point, though, seems to take the focus off of instructional recordings being made for use currently, and rather have them made as simply an archive of a cultural tradition.

This may be a better way to go about my proposal as mentioned above. If I simply propose to make recordings of music and technique in areas visited by Moyle in order to show continuity and change in the yidaki players over time, it may prove to be a stronger selling point than trying to frame the records I am making as some sort of instructional tool for the Yolngu themselves to use along side an oral tradition. This way I don't focus so much on the possible didactic element of mouth sound recordings, but write it in as a possible future ancillary benefit.

I'll re-write the draft to lean more towards the goal of creating updated records of today's generation of players and see how it looks. I'll post that version as soon as it is complete.

Thanks,

Eliot

[ididjaustralia]

Hi Eliot,

I'm away from the office at the moment so please excuse the brevity of this post. Another quick reply to get the discussion going... I understand your point but still when it comes to audio and video recordings, the thing is that Yolngu and Ngapaki' learn differently, and I think the project if it were to focus on mouth sounds and instructional material that the main benefit would be to Ngapaki'. Let's start at the beginning... the what, why and how. What do you want to do, why do you want to do it, and how will you do it?

Guan

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[ididjaustralia]

The other thing to consider Eliot is that it might be worth your while to self-fund a first visit to Australia to do some preliminary research. That will provide you with insights and experiences that will be essential to writing up a good proposal. Also, as far as funding goes, it is not so common for funding sources to provide support to a project that is entirely new. If they can see that you have personally invested financially or otherwise in a project, it will stand you in better stead when it comes to reviewing which projects have more merit. Come to Djalu's Masterclass

Guan

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