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Articles

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2025): Ecomusicology in Indigenous Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and beyond

Ceremony and sentient ecology

  • Myfany Turpin
  • Maya Ward
DOI
https://doi.org/10.59998/2025-14-2-2582
Published
2025-12-18

Abstract

Many cultures use songs to influence the world around them (e.g. Levin 2006, Feld 1982). In Australian Aboriginal societies, song can be a tool to influence one’s environment. Such practices can affect the physical world—people, animals, plants— and the non-physical world, where spirit beings reside, a realm referred to as the Altyerre in Arandic languages of central Australia (Dobson 2007, Turner 2010, Wallace & Lovell 2009, Green 2012). Like the Tuvan people of Siberia who use singing and other verbal practices “to coexist peacefully with these spirit-masters and gain access to the resources under their control” (Levin 2006:28), many Indigenous Australians engage in ceremonial and other vocal practices to influence their world. In this article we explore song as a means to experience sentient ecology in two contrasting Aboriginal Australian contexts. In doing so, this contribution invites us to consider more broadly the role of humanly created sound in society.