Paper short abstract:

This paper assembles the various recordings and historical references to an Aboriginal travelling ceremony known in some parts of the country as 'Wanji-wanji'. In combination with contemporary rememberings of it, this paper aims to understand the breadth and origins of this once popular ceremony.

Paper long abstract:

Indigenous Australian culture has many different kinds of ceremonies, including entertainment ceremonies. Early colonists adopted the term 'corroboree', based on a word from the Sydney region, for such ceremonies. Like folk songs, these traditions traversed political, ethnic and linguistic divides, despite being sung in a foreign tongue. 'Wanji-wanji' was one such ceremony which was known across the western half of Australia. The earliest reference to its performance dates back to the 1850s, and the ethnographer Daisy Bates witnessed the 'travelling dance' on the South Australian coast in 1913 (Bates 1938). The earliest known audio recording of it was made in 1954, close to 2,000kms away, at Roebourne on the Western Australian coast. Custodianship and the geographic origins of the ceremony are unknown. Bates suggests an origin in the north-west of the country and musically and textually it resembles ceremonies of inland Australia. This paper also discusses contemporary 'rememberings' of the ceremony by senior men and women from across the western half of Australia, including many who recall related performances. As approximately 100 singers and 'rememberers', spanning 25 language groups, have shared their memories and knowledge of this ceremony, we ask how and why traditions like Wanji-wanji became so widely known across such a vast region of Australia? Moreover, we describe the historical, socio-cultural settings of the period when ceremonies like this were popular, contextualising it with similar ceremonies such as the Molonga/Tjitjingalla, and show the importance of combined musical, linguistic and ethnographic analyses of Aboriginal ceremonies.