Singing with a Distinctive Voice: Comparative Musical Analysis and the Central Australian Musical Style in the Kimberley

Abstract

The history of ethnomusicological study of Australian Aboriginal music is rooted in European schools of musicological and analytical training. Early Australian ethnomusicologists such as Trevor Jones, Alice Moyle, and Catherine Ellis all incorporated analysis of musical form in research and scholarship on Australian Aboriginal song, setting a path for following generations who have included substantial musical analysis and transcription in their studies of Australian Aboriginal music (see Toner 2007). Musical analysis has subsequently substantially informed ethnomusicological inquiries into Aboriginal music in various parts of Central Australia (Catherine Ellis, Linda Barwick, Richard Moyle,..