Yawulyu Mardukuja-patu-kurlangu: Relational Dynamics of Warlpiri Women's Song Performance

Warlpiri women, as with other groups across Indigenous Australia, sing to sustain and nurture their relationships with Country and jukurrpa (dreamings). For the custodians of these singing traditions, spiritual agency and power are consigned to songs and their singers, and performances are centred around nurturing relational links between people with Country and to other participants. Within contemporary contexts, in which Warlpiri singers are finding fewer opportunities to perform and pass on songs, new performance spaces are being created to continue to carry forward the significant cultural work of maintaining social and spiritual order through song. In this article we consider a number of performance instances of Warlpiri women's yawulyu (ceremonial songs) and discuss the inter-group dynamics and negotiations which are central to these events. We explore the ways in which Warlpiri women are continuing the cultural work of maintaining the relational aspects central to yawulyu through these performances despite shifting purposes and performance contexts. We illustrate through examples from contemporary events, how the dynamics of the particular performance instances involving ceremonial songs, dances, and other activities, direct the ways in which participants assert and reshape their intimate links to Country and to broader social networks of others.