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and there is little time to translate before they go to air. While
everything does fall into place and the performance receives
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and Hohnen played in the singer’s career, particularly in terms
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international touring schedule. The documentary also focuses
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when translating or translocating these songs and stories for
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languages of the surrounding communities. In the same way that
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language used by Yunupingu, these hymns are shaped into
songlines by themembers of the Central Australian Aboriginal
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hymns andstories. If songs allow these women to preserve and
pass on their knowledge, culture and language, then3GD 2NMF
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the multiplicityand complexity of these various histories and tradi
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Hearing the women singing these hymns in Arrernte and
Pitjantjatjara is an act of connection and a gesture towards
understanding. The ethereal majesty of the hymns is anchored
throughout the documentary by interviews with the women, who
speak about their experiences on the missions and the role of the
choir in preserving their cultures. Most of the interviews take place
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of Hermannsburg in 1877 and, while the land was not returned to
Aboriginal people until 1982, the languages of the area were pre
served during this time. This was, in part, owing to the missionar
ies’ efforts to communicate with the local people and willingness
to learn their languages.^6 Within only three years of arriving, they
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munities, she emphasises the centrality of language and music in
opening up a dialogue between two very different cultures: ‘If you
codify language, you preserve language. You preserve language,
you inadvertently preserve culture.’ If the missionaries inadvertent
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legacy by listening to these women, hearing their songs and shar
ing these performances and stories.
To ‘give voice’ to something is to provide it with a platform,
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songs and anchoring them to narratives of experience,3GD 2NMF
*DDODQRtakes back this unspoken past and transports these
histories into the present: the women’s voices occupy space
and time, echoing and resonating in the theatre spaces. There
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of the women’s vocals – the way the sound spreads out. French
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of sound in spatial and tactile terms. He refers to a ‘sonorous
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space that is its own, the very spreading out of its resonance,LWV H[SDQVLRQ DQG LWV UHYHUEHUDWLRQp^9 6HQpV GRFXPHQWDWLRQRIWKH
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point not only to Australia’s history of genocide, erasure and sys
temic abuse, but also to ongoing discrimination, racial inequality,
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these women sing and tell their stories is to hear the ‘contradic
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ent cultures and traditions that are never quite made into one. The
words and songs of the choir invite us to hear these experiences,
this laughter, this pain, and to allow them to resonate with us.
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remembering and reclaiming. They speak to diverse, layered histo
ries that extend into the present.
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contradiction is ‘not resolved for you with a big bow at the end, be
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should never be ‘resolved’, but should – like the voices of the choir- continue to change, rise and fall, and reverberate outwards.
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