Crossing Roper Bar
The Roper River is a magnificent waterway flowing from Mataranka, 100 kms south of Katherine, and out across the land of the Mangarayi and Yungman people. Before it reaches the Gulf of Carpentaria it passes the remote town of Ngukurr which is isolated by the Wet for several months of each year (November to Easter) when the Roper engulfs all but the highest land. At other times, Roper Bar is the point where it's possible to cross the river and go on to Ngukurr. The crossing over seems not only a poetic but also a fitting metaphor for our collaboration, Crossing Roper Bar.
In 2004, the artistic director of the AAO, Paul Grabowsky, made the journey across Roper Bar with Stephen Teakle who had lived in Ngukurr for several months while he was with Charles Darwin University's Remote Music Delivery Unit. In the AAO's mission statement written in 1993, Paul spoke of the desire to work with indigenous Australians and here there seemed to be a chance of finally achieving that goal as Paul outlined his ideas to Kevin Rogers, community leader, former school Principal and Vice-President of the Yugul Mangi Community Government Council.
Ngukurr is an ideal place to learn about Aboriginal music because it is the cultural gathering point for outlying peoples of the Wagilak, Ngalmi, Murrungun, Nunthirrbala, Mungurra, Lalara and Wurramurra nations, who come together under the name Yugul Mangi. At Ngukurr there is a widespread concern about the loss of traditional cultural material and the decline in activities associated with it such as the bungguls (ceremonies) that have always been an integral part of important community events. Nothing in the traditional way of life exists in isolation but is part of an intricate social system which has been the inheritance of Aboriginal people for well over 40,000 years. The music is not played, the stories are not told and the dances are not danced if the social system has broken down too far and this is a real cause for alarm: the effects are wide ranging including the chance of words used only in ceremonies slipping from the community memory to be lost forever and the locking-up of aspects of men's and women's business which should be infusing the community with knowledge. As Kevin sees it Maintenance of Culture is a key element in his people going forward. The other aspect is the loss of cultural material, about which the wider world knows nothing.
Crossing Roper Bar is a collaboration based on an equal exchange of knowledge through a dialogue centred on music. It also soon came to extend to social interconnectedness as ways of organising how to work together became clearer. An important part of Crossing Roper Bar is that the crossing is both ways and exchange visits between Ngukurr and Melbourne are a feature of the project. There are no preconceived ideas about how the work should go and from the beginning it has been a case of sitting down, learning the Manikay (songs) and working things through.
Going to Ngukurr is a major undertaking and so the very first workshops of the collaboration took place off the back of a Playing Australia grant to tour Ruby's Story, an AAO project featuring Ruby Hunter and Archie Roach, to Queensland and the Northern Territory. Once arrived in Ngukurr the AAO set up a tent camp in the middle of town for a week and got to know the community. 
A group of musicians under the leadership of Benjamin Wilfred, a young Wagilak man, was formed and Benajmin and Julien Wilson, saxophone player from the AAO, ran the workshops over several days. The result of those workshops was put up for public performance on the last night in Ngukurr where it received a lot of attention. It was an auspicious beginning which has maintained its momentum through to the most recent performances.
"It's happened organically and, well, almost magically, that things have fallen together, that the right people have become friends at the right places and the right time; it couldn't have worked out better if we had tried to plan it." Dr Aaron Corn Ethnomusicologist, Sydney Conservatorium.
Visits to Melbourne by Kevin and Benjamin followed--both drew intrigued crowds when they took to the local dance floors. The first visit was to return the hospitality shown in Ngukurr by staying at the homes and meeting the families of the AAO members, to continue the music work and go to the footy.
Apart from the social interactions occurring between black and white Australians engendered by the project there is the renewed interest of the youth in the new musical instruments they are coming in touch with. Many of these don't require electrical hardware to run, a problem in Aboriginal communities with equipment constantly breaking down, filling up with dust and no-one to repair it, or transporting it to where it's needed. There is the new range of sounds being introduced. There is the revived interest in traditional music aroused by the fact that white Australian musicians are coming a long way to learn the Manikay. The people already in bands, whether it be country and western, reggae, hip hop or rap also have the benefit of improving their skills as musicians and discovering ways of musical expression more aligned with their own traditions; the other forms of popular music don't really allow this. As Professor Adrian Walter from Charles Darwin University puts it, "the traditional music is about eight rungs higher up the ladder than the popular music most of the bands are playing", so it's not just a cultural thing it's also about the intrinsic musical qualities inherent to the traditional forms which all comes back to the AAO's reasons for wanting to collaborate. Improvising musicians have a reputation for breaking rules and pushing into new areas to expand their musical vocabulary; it's a never ending quest which leads to new knowledge. 
The imperative for Crossing Roper Bar has been to keep the workshops going at a steady pace and a second trip was made to Ngukurr in November 2005.
More recently the work has been given its first public airing amongst the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land. In August 2006 the Australian Art Orchestra attended the Garma Festival which celebrates the cultural inheritance of the Yolngu People, the indigenous Australians of North East Arnhem Land. The festival is held at Gulkula, near Yirrkala. Gulkula is a place of profound importance to the Yolngu as it is where the ancestor, Ganbulabula brought the Yidaki (didjeridu) into being among the Gumatj clan, traditional owners of the region.
The Yolngu word Garma means 'both ways learning' and so it was a fitting place for the AAO to join up with its collaborators from Ngukurr to show the work in progress. At the Performance Symposium, run by Dr Aaron Corn, several Manikay were played followed by discussion and ringing endorsements for the work from:
• Neparrnga Gumbula, a Yolngu elder who holds the Liya-Naarra'mirri Visiting Fellowship at the University of Melbourne and a project leader of the National Recording Project. • Professor Adrian Walter, Dean Faculty of Business, Law and Arts, Charles Darwin University • Dr Aaron Corn, formerly lecturer in Anthropology and Australian Indigenous Studies at University of Melbourne who was awarded a Post Doctoral Fellowship by the Australian Research Council and is now in the Department of Music at the University of Sydney. Dr Corn is also a project leader of the National Recording Project.
The National Recording Project (NRP). seeks to 'systematically record and document the unique and endangered performance traditions of Indigenous Australia'. [See Garma Statement of Indigenous Performance in Australia: www.gama.telstra.com/statement-music02.htm] Crossing Roper Bar, has chanced upon a connection of significance to the NRP in that the songs of the Wagilak people were considered endangered if not gone forever. It was therefore a revelation for Benjamin Wilfred to arrive at Garma to perform Wagilak Manikay and yet another aspect of the value of the collaboration.
The work does not stop however at the learning of Manikay. As Scott Tinkler, trumpeter puts it: "There are a couple of different angles the is project is going to take. Some music may come out of this that does not have traditional aspects to it so it will have the freedom; it can go different places and develop".
Aaron Corn Let's put it this way, with my music hat on, as a person with a Phd in music, these people have achieved something that no Australian composer has ever achieved before; they have never achieved a real collaboration where two groups of people with two musical backgrounds get together and really collaborate other than the normal ripping off and recycling of recorded material that goes on.
These guys have actually done it and in many ways are the future of musical collaboration with indigenous Australians, in my humble opinion. The collaborations that have been out there, usually in popular music, usually with new age stuff, let's face it aren't really that great. The musicians who have come to that they are often very good musicians but they do not have the skill, the artistry and virtuosity which deserves to be paired with what is an amazing world heritage musical tradition in Manikay.
Adrian Walter What we've heard here today is something which is a very exciting beginning.
What really impressed me is the organic way it's happening. There's no preconceived idea about what's got to come out of it; just letting the whole thing develop. I notice they are very gentle the way they were making themselves a delicate texture; they weren't dominating, just letting themselves supply a line within the music which is a very nice thing to see.
Aaron's point is so true, you have so many awful things happening like flamenco guitar and didj, really cheap and nasty, and I think he's absolutely right, to do the indigenous music justice you do have to bring the finest musicians together, not second rate ones which is too often the case.
With the highly affirmative experience of Garma behind it the project will now push on with the work with the next public performance scheduled for Queensland Music Festival 2007 followed by a tour to Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Press for Crossing Roper Bar
- Earth, wind and song cycles performing in concert
- Australian Art Orchestra: Crossing Roper Bar The Age, 22 march 2007 (Jessica Nicholas)
- bridging the gap between contemporary music and ancient indigenous music.
- ABC Darwin http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2008/08/18/2338107.htm
