Hidden Music Maps

Some Indigenous groups have musical traditions that are intended to remain within their communities rather than being shared publicly, as is the case with the Aboriginal Australian Songlines. Also known as Dreaming tracks or the Dreaming, the Songlines act as a map to Aboriginal land, a storage of origin stories, and a living archive of surrounding flora and fauna.¹ Even though Western interest in this tradition has significantly increased since the publication of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, only a few examples of the Dreaming are available on streaming platforms, for a wider audience. One of them is the performance of the Seven Sisters Songline, lasting circa an hour. This is a more popular Dreaming track, for it is also the subject of a museum exhibition in Canberra, at the National Museum of Australia. Still, the full scope of the Songlines is far more complex and expansive than the simplified versions presented online or in museum spaces. 

Considering this, one may wonder: why are most Aboriginal Songlines inaccessible online, for a wider public? In exploring this question, I make use of Dylan Robinson’s theories on Indigenous music studies, from his book Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Robinson argues that certain forms of knowledge belong to specific communities and are not intended for unrestricted access. In the case of the Dreaming, its sacred nature means that Aboriginal custodians take great care in how they pass down their knowledge to the next generations; only a select few are initiated in its secrets. 

As a follow-up question, I look into how an outsider or Westerner would study Indigenous music. Scholars working within a Eurocentric paradigm may risk projecting misunderstandings onto Aboriginal cultures. Critiques of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines suggest that even he fell into this trap.² If accuracy is unattainable, then what might a Western study of Songlines look like? What can we learn from this Aboriginal practice? Neale Margo’s and Lynne Kelly’s book, Songlines: The Power and Promise, shows some answers to these questions. Each Dreaming track contains multiple layers of meaning, and Aboriginal custodians carefully determine who is entrusted with different aspects of this knowledge. Understanding this selective process is essential for approaching Songlines with the respect and cultural awareness they require. 

In examining why so few Songlines are accessible to outsiders, I explore several sub-sections. First, I look at who stores this knowledge, and who are the ones who have access to the full Dreaming, if there are such people. Second, I explore how this knowledge is kept, through what practices and for what purposes. Next, I consider the content of Songlines, based on what is available to outsiders. Finally, I reflect on what we can learn from this tradition and how we can contribute to its continued vitality.

Theoretical Framework: Listening to Indigenous Music

In this analysis, I make use of Dylan Robinson’s approach to Indigenous studies, as described in Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Robinson encourages readers to reflect on their positionality and consider how their identity shapes the knowledge they have access to. While Western academic traditions often prioritize “complete accessibility” to sources of study, Indigenous communities may restrict certain forms of knowledge to those within their cultural and spiritual frameworks.³ As Robinson—who is of Indigenous descent—emphasizes through the chapters introducing Hungry Listening, some knowledge is considered sacred and is not meant for universal access.⁴ To illustrate this, he explicitly asks non-Indigenous readers to skip a section of his book, reserving it for Indigenous audiences.⁵ In doing so, he fosters an awareness of boundaries and a respect for knowledge that does not belong to everyone. This framework informs my analysis of Aboriginal Songlines as well. I begin with the premise that respect for Indigenous protocols is essential, acknowledging that not all knowledge is meant to be widely shared. Therefore, rather than focusing on a specific Songline, my paper examines the broader discussion surrounding this tradition and considers how one might engage with Aboriginal knowledge in an ethical and respectful way.

Method: Sources About the Songlines

British writer Bruce Chatwin went to Australia to learn more about the Songlines firsthand, rather than relying solely on literary sources.⁶ In his well-known travel novel, The Songlines, he describes that Aboriginal music as “a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.”⁷ He sees it as “both a map and a direction-finder.”⁸ This was my first understanding of the Songlines, as I initially encountered them through Chatwin’s book. His narratives, however, blend fact with fiction. Critics have pointed out that he romanticizes Aboriginal stories and that his previous experiences with other Indigenous groups may have shaped his portrayal of Australian Aboriginal cultures.⁹ Even in its simplest form, the Songlines tradition appears far more complex than what Chatwin conveys in his book.

In examining the study of Aboriginal music, I primarily draw from Songlines : The Power and Promise by Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly. With both a Western and an Aboriginal perspective, the book is a more recent and nuanced look at the Songlines. Offering both Western and Aboriginal perspectives, this book provides a more recent and nuanced exploration of Songlines. While Chatwin’s novel, written by a white Westerner, dates back to 1987, Songlines: The Power and Promise was published in 2020 by authors of both Western and Aboriginal heritage. Through close reading, I aim to highlight key insights from this book to better understand the function of Songlines, to explore why much of this knowledge remains within Indigenous communities, and to consider how this musical tradition can be respected and preserved without compromising its sacred nature.

Keepers of the Songlines: Open and Close Stories

There are multiple “layers” to each Songline.¹⁰ The ones that are accessible to everyone, including non-Aboriginals, are called “open” stories, while those known only by a small group of Aboriginals are called “close.”¹¹ The few examples of Songlines available online are from the first category. Such is the performance of the Seven Sisters story, “which the custodians call the schoolkids’ version,” for it is greatly simplified.¹² The performance lasts circa an hour and includes English translations of the narrative.¹³ The National Museum of Australia also exhibits this Songline in its open, simplified version, and so do books on the topic.¹⁴ What readers see “in published anthologies of Aboriginal stories are [the open narratives] told to children to start them on a journey to an adult level of understanding. When considered from within the Aboriginal culture, those outside it are the equivalent of children.”¹⁵ Curious visitors and readers might want to know more, yet the close, deeper layers of the story are only meant for “a select few,” based on age, gender, and family ties in the Aboriginal communities.¹⁶

Getting to know a Songline’s close version takes training and a fitting “family lineage.”¹⁷ One has to be related to the “owner” of the song.¹⁸ “In the Indigenous system, not all people can know all knowledge, and because it is a non-text-based system,” one can learn about various Songlines only from “the right people, at the right time, in the right place.”¹⁹ This process can last a lifetime, and Aboriginal archivists see it as “more than a job or even a passion[;]...it is their life purpose.”²⁰ If some deeper levels of the Songlines are not even open to all Aboriginals, how could a Westerner expect to have access to them? 

Storing Songlines: Memory and the Third Archive

Unlike written Western archives, Aboriginal ones are not based on text, but they are “embodied,” passed down orally from one generation to another.²¹ This process is gradually pursued by initiates, and is based on performance and visual cues from the country.²² Furthermore, songs stand at the center of these performances. “As senior Yanyuwa woman Eileen McDinny explains, ‘Everything got a song, no matter how little, it’s in the song – name of plant, birds, animal, country, people, everything got a song.’”²³ This incredible amount of information is stored through the use of spatial cues as well, locations to which each song refers to.²⁴ Everything, however, is connected to human memory.

One of the main reasons why much of the Dreaming tracks remain protected, even within Aboriginal communities, is the fragility of memory and the potential for error. Beyond their sacred and traditional significance, Songlines require precise transmission to preserve their meaning over time. If each song was repeated slightly differently by various individuals, its accuracy and significance could gradually erode. For this reason, they are passed down only to those deemed “ready to receive and protect” them.²⁵ Additionally, Songlines are closely tied to age and gender, forming part of a structured system that ensures knowledge is transmitted with precision and care.

Another method of storing information that recently gained momentum in some Aboriginal communities is the Third Archive. Mentioned by Neale and Kelly in their book, this is a combination of Western archival methods and the content of the “oldest culture.”²⁶ The authors do not specify the details of this procedure, but it involves Aboriginals using new technology for storing the Songlines. Such an archive would not run into the same problems as oral tradition of performances.

Songline Content: Sharing Dreaming Stories of the Country

While not all layers of the Songlines are open, Aboriginal communities can share general insights about their meaning and purpose. The content of the Songlines varies in its subject matters. If one were to use “standard Western encyclopedic terms for the knowledge that can be retrieved from the Songlines, the headings would include animals, plants, genealogies, geology, climate and seasons, land management, geography, astronomy, calendars, natural resources, ecology, religion, laws and ethics, among many others.”²⁷ Furthermore, musical narratives differ in their extension on the land. Some Dreaming tracks travel as far as the whole continent, like the “Kungkarrangkalpa,” known as the Seven Sisters saga, while others expand only on a small area.²⁸

Taking the Seven Sisters as an example, this Songline, as explained in its simplified version, involves seven siblings running from “their relentless pursuer Wati Nyiru, who harmed the eldest sister.”²⁹ Their presence is connected to the site at Kuru Ala, and the Anangu people consider the Kungkarrangkalpa so “palpable” there, that they only whisper when in its surroundings, in fear of “disturbing” Wati Nyiru, and “for other reasons not disclosed.”³⁰ The Pleiades constellation is also connected to the Seven Sisters Songline, representing the siblings’ run until the sky.  

Discussion

Considered by some to be the oldest continuous culture on Earth, the Aboriginal Australian musical tradition urgently needs more people to respect and preserve it. As Neale and Kelly argue, “Songlines have been around for millennia and will be around for many millennia to come if we lend a hand to keep them alive.”³¹ How to do this is one of the most important questions for the future, especially since some of the youth in Aboriginal communities lack the interest of following the Songlines rites and being initiated into the deeper knowledge of the close stories. As an outsider, preserving this culture and learning from it may seem challenging without full access to the more complex layers of the Songlines. Nevertheless, the open stories, the “children's level” understanding of the Dreaming, remain valuable and worth appreciating. 

This paper drew solely from the accessible aspects of the Songlines, particularly the Seven Sisters, but it refrained from further analyzing this performance as it seemed tangential to the main focus of my research. My aim was to provide a clear and concise explanation of why the Songlines should not be fully sought after by those outside Aboriginal communities, why close stories are reserved for a select few initiates, and how Westerners can contribute to preserving this culture. Future studies could delve deeper into these issues through a more empirical approach, perhaps by conducting interviews with members of Aboriginal communities, visiting the Songlines exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, or immersing oneself in the remaining Aboriginal communities to experience their culture—always with the utmost respect.

Conclusion

Even though access to the Dreaming is restricted, curious outsiders can still learn from Aboriginal culture and help in preserving it. Since the publication of Bruce Chatwin’s travel novel on the topic, public interest in this culture has increased significantly. However, Chatwin’s book is partly fictional and offers a flawed portrayal of Aboriginal communities and their Songlines. In contrast, Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly’s work provides a more accurate understanding of the Songlines. They offer a recent and nuanced perspective, drawn from both Aboriginal and Western Australian viewpoints. They offer a more recent and nuanced perspective, straight from Australian and Aboriginal communities, one of them being a Western Australian, and the other being an Indigenous Australian. Based on existing literature, Songlines can be seen as a map of the Australian landscape, but they also serve as an archive of Aboriginal cultural history and a record of the surrounding fauna and flora.

A close reading of Neale and Kelly’s work reveals answers to why so many parts of the Songlines remain inaccessible online—answers that echo Dylan Robinson’s theories on positionality and sacred knowledge. Beyond the importance of adhering to tradition, the primary concern is preserving the accuracy of the Songlines over time. Only a select group of individuals are entrusted with the most complex layers of the Songlines, dedicating their lives to becoming living archives. Aboriginal communities follow a strict social structure that determines who has access to these deeper layers based on factors such as gender, age, and family ties. Only the “open” stories, often referred to as the children's level of the Dreaming, are shared with the general public. These accessible narratives are found in the National Museum of Australia’s exhibition, the Seven Sisters Songline performance, and in books on the subject. However, the "closed" and sacred stories are not easily shared, as there is a concern that repetition by those not initiated into their deeper meanings may cause their accuracy to deteriorate. 

Songlines are preserved through performance, with song at their core, and through the memory of those who are dedicated to becoming living archives. There are also other methods of preserving this knowledge that outsiders can assist with; one of them being the Third Archive, a concept introduced by Neale and Kelly. The Third Archive combines Western technological means of archiving with the Aboriginal structure of knowledge transmission. This allows for the preservation of Songlines while respecting the traditional methods by which knowledge is passed down within Aboriginal communities. Outsiders can support this effort by offering technical assistance without disrupting the traditional structure that determines who is entrusted with the deeper layers of the Songlines. Further exploration of how this support can be effectively provided would require travel to Australia and direct engagement with Aboriginal communities. Until that time, this paper offers some guidelines for how outsiders can approach the study of Songlines from afar.

As Robinson emphasizes, outsiders must respect Indigenous voices and engage only with the aspects of Songlines that are open to public discourse. Certain cultural knowledge is intended to be preserved within its community to maintain its integrity, rather than being widely disseminated and potentially misrepresented

Endnotes

1. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook. 

2. Robert Clarke, “Star Traveller: Celebrity, Aboriginality and Bruce Chatwin's the Songlines (1987),” Postcolonial Studies 12, no. 2 (2009): 229-246, https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790902887197.  

   Christine Nicholls, “A Wild Roguery: Bruce Chatwin’s ‘the Songlines’ Reconsidered,” Text Matters 9, no. 9: 22-49, https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.09.02.

3. Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening : Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies, Indigenous Americas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), 22. 

4. Robinson, Hungry Listening, 25.

5. Robinson, 25.

6. Bruce Chatwin, “Chapter 3.” in The Songlines (Pennsylvania: Franklin, 1987), eBook.

7. Bruce Chatwin, “Chapter 21,” in The Songlines (Pennsylvania: Franklin, 1987), eBook.

8. Bruce Chatwin, “Chapter 3,” in The Songlines (Pennsylvania: Franklin, 1987), eBook.

9. Robert Clarke, “Star Traveller: Celebrity, Aboriginality and Bruce Chatwin's the Songlines (1987),” Postcolonial Studies 12, no. 2 (2009): 229-246, https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790902887197.  

   Christine Nicholls, “A Wild Roguery: Bruce Chatwin’s ‘the Songlines’ Reconsidered,” Text Matters 9, no. 9: 22-49, https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.09.02.

10. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

11. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

12. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

13. Aboriginal NRM. “Kungkarangkalpa: Seven Sisters Songline.” November 9, 2013. Video, 1:07:31. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3igXR7oL8FU.

14. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

15. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Spiral Forever,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

16. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

17. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

18. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

19. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

20. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Knowledge in Country and the Third Archive,”eBook.

21. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

22. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

23. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

24. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

25. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

26. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

27. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines and Synapses,” eBook.

28. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” eBook.

29. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” eBook.

30. Neale, Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “Songlines Today,” eBook.

31. Margo Neale, Lynne Kelly, and National Museum of Australia, “The Promise of Songlines,” in Songlines : The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1 (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Thames & Hudson Australia, 2020), eBook.

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