Muyngarnbi - Songs from Walking With Spirits

Balang Lewis and the four senior Wagalak, Rembarrnga and Dalabon Songmen on this landmark Australian album are all sadly passed since its original, strictly limited release in August 2007. But their songs, as captured in an inspired collaboration with some of the most respected and inventive contemporary musicians in Australia, will live forever.

Beswick or Wugularr community has long been a meeting place for Songmen from all over Arnhem Land. From as early as the 1940s, ethnomusicologists have recorded the gathering of these Cardinals of indigenous tradition, though the music predates the vinyl by thousands of years. The Songmen are the keepers of the codes that unlock the map - the map of kin, country, culture. When Muyngarnbi (Roy Ashley) sings Yolgnu Man, he is describing the journey of an ancestral being who walked from the sunrise to the sunset, laying down the palm leaves which became the languages, the languages which became the tribes, from Rittharngu to Rembarrnga to Dalabon. Since 2002, for the Walking with Spirits festival, Songmen have gathered from as far as Numbulwar in the South-East Gulf country to Maningrida in West Arnhem to maintain the ancient campfires. This CD was recorded to celebrate the potency of this vocal tradition, a testament to the songs and their singers, to their power, longevity, and relevance, even in a changing world.

It was the late actor, singer, musician and Beswick elder Balang T. E. Lewis (The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, The Shadow King) who brought Roy Ashley, Micky Hall, Victor Hood and Jimmy Wesan together with revered Daddy Cool guitarist Ross Hannaford, Gurrumul bassist Michael Hohnen and select other rock/ jazz/ contemporary musicians to help these ancient songs of country resonate anew.

What at first glance might seem like an odd pairing of musical cultures, in retrospect can be seen as a unique experiment in Australian genre-bending and blending.

The results are unlike anything heard before in Indigenous or western music: a breathtaking sound and energy that brings progressive dialogue to timeless concepts in an era when the promise of First Nations recognition has returned to the forefront of national awareness.