Sound FX

‘New Songs at Baya Gawiy’: Songwriting action research between Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre, Tura’s Sound FX program, and the University of Melbourne.

When: 2022-2024

Researchers: Patricia Cox, Susan Loughlin, Amy Menzies, June Nixon (from MWRC); Gillian Howell (University of Melbourne), Annika Moses (Tura).

Songwriters: Patsy Bedford and family, Marcia Cook, Patricia Cox and family, Samantha Frank, Jayedene Green, Susan Hoad, Eva Nargoodah, June Nixon, Amarillo Oscar, Delphine Shandley, Brenda Shaw; Gillian Howell (University of Melbourne), Annika Moses (Tura).

 

Why did we do this research? 

We wanted to:

  1. Create new music-based resources reflecting community languages, life, and cultural knowledge.

  2. Strengthen the Baya Gawiy community’s engagement with heritage languages through music and singing; 

  3. Better understand the ways that songwriting and new language songs contribute to community wellbeing.

What were our research methods?

Group planning and research design; collaborative songwriting; song recording; reflective yarning (including a big Language Education yarn); impact analysis through Most Significant Change methodology (story-sharing, community voting for most significant story of change); collaborative thematic analysis and development of findings. 

What were the research questions we wanted to answer?

  1. How do we best create music together across different knowledges and worldviews?

  2. In what ways can collaborative songwriting support MWRC’s goal of strengthening language, culture, healing and wellbeing for its staff and community? 

What did we learn?

Through our research, we found:

  • The new songs strengthened feelings of connection to culture and family, due to songwriters embedding important cultural knowledge in their song lyrics, and families sharing and singing the new songs together across generations.

  • The new songs supported feelings of pride, meaning, and motivation for the songwriters and others in the wider community.

  • The new songs became practices through which Aboriginal Ways of Knowing, Being, and Doing—which underpin Baya Gawiy’s philosophy and approach to curriculum—were strengthened and broadened at Baya Gawiy.

The New Songs project has celebrated and amplified the knowledge of our Elders, making language learning more accessible and the knowledge of culture more resilient. The songs are the thread that pulls all the Ways of Knowing, Being and Doing together. (Co-researchers’ summary statement)