Orana to Christmas Dystopia

In the September issue of Quadrant Music, R.J. Stove alluded to William G. James, the now neglected yet inspirational composer who, during his tenure as the first music director of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), established Australia’s six state orchestras. If Clio does remember James, she smiles favourably upon his Australian Christmas Carols. James wrote three sets of five carols, all of which set lyrics by John Wheeler, with the first published in time for the Christmas of 1948 and the following two released in the mid-1950s. The carols were, and still are, well received by Australians and international listeners. David Tunley, James’s biographer, has observed the composer’s “real gift” for miniatures, “particularly song writing”. Of the fifteen carols—and there may have been a now-lost fourth set, according to one Philip O’Brien writing for the December 1999 issue of Panorama, Ansett Australia’s inflight magazine—I am particularly fond of “Carol of the Birds”, as are many. Wheeler’s text in this song employs the line, “Orana! Orana! Orana to Christmas Day”.

The etymology of this word orana is fascinating. The contemporary contention is that orana means “welcome” in the Wiradjuri language. The eminent linguist David Nash, however, argues otherwise. Nash asserts that Australian Aboriginal languages generally lack words that are primarily salutatory. He can find no reference or close relation to orana in the Wiradjuri wordlists collected during the nineteenth century. Wiradjuri words, he also notes, do not typically begin with vowels, and the contemporary phrasal greeting of today’s Wiradjuri people is gawaymbanha, meaning “welcome, tell to come”.

This Quadrant Music essay appeared in our December ’23 edition.
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How, then, did James and Wheeler stumble upon orana to include it in “Carol of the Birds”? Nash resolves that the creative duo most likely discovered the word in a 1921 ethnological booklet by W.W. Thorpe—incidentally, the first publication to associate orana with Aboriginal language. The phonetic similarities between orana and the biblical hosanna, Nash posits, may have appealed to Wheeler, particularly for inclusion in a Christmas song. As to the Aboriginality of orana, however, Nash rebukes Thorpe’s prescription. The enigmatic phrase kia orāna is commonly used among the inhabitants of Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands, and ia orana is Tahitian for “hello”. In short, Nash concludes that orana has “gone feral”; whilst its exact origins cannot be known, nor how it arrived in Australia, it is almost certainly a word of Polynesian conception.

Ironic, then, is the fact that if Wheeler were seeking to include orana in his lyrics today, he would be required to obtain permission from various Aboriginal authorities. These authorities—at the very least, one Wiradjuri elder; more likely, a conclave of what are called First Nations Cultural Advisers—would alone determine whether Wheeler’s intentions were suitable. Is he seeking, in an imperial fashion, to appropriate (what is claimed to be but is, in fact, not) an Aboriginal word for the purpose of Western entertainment? Does this act usurp agency from Aborigines and perpetuate intergenerational trauma among the Wiradjuri people? Why should Aboriginal language, historically oppressed by white, genocidal supremacists, feature in a carol commemorating not the Dreamtime but Christmas? Is Wheeler himself virtuous enough to be allowed to wield Aboriginal culture, or is he a closeted bigot whose use of orana now might disadvantage Reconciliation™ efforts in twenty years’ time? The most radical of cultural advisers would ask these questions.

All this is a simple matter of policing. The University of Tasmania’s Centre for Historical Studies, for instance, stated as early as 2006 that there is a need for Aborigines to “[take] control of history through academic research” so as to “escape the confines of historically constructed identities”. The centre goes on to admit that “partisan research has been successful in finding a new ‘imaginable context’” for Tasmanian Aborigines. These objectives—which are inherently restrictive—are projected upon artists and their art, and have been for some time. Composers alone abound with horror stories, ever fearful that their discontented whisperings may one day be overheard by those they seek to appease. My own work, once, was torn to shreds by a First Nations Cultural Adviser, and I was forced to redact a title, itself a benign and current colloquialism, because it—for reasons that were never properly justified to me—was deemed “insensitive”.

Consider, and reject, the approach that Christopher Sainsbury has taken. Dr Sainsbury, himself of English, Dutch and Aboriginal descent, writes in his 2019 book Ngarra-Burria: New Music and the Search for an Australian Sound that non-Aboriginal composers should be required to undergo cultural awareness programs before they include Aboriginal elements in their work. So too has Sainsbury featured as a recurring critic of Peter Sculthorpe’s ethnomusicology; the former perceives the latter’s independent use of Aboriginal melodies as “without appropriate engagement with Indigenous peoples”. How silly a position this is. Great works of art—and much of Sculthorpe’s music is, indeed, great—are not born of permission. When Stravinsky composed The Rite of Spring, did he seek the permission of any pagan Russians, let alone grovel for their blessing? Did Verdi consult Hebrew descendants before composing Nabucco? What of Strauss’s Elektra, or Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite, or Copland’s Appalachian Spring, or even Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, which depicts the Romans of the late fifth century BC? Perhaps the contention is, concerning these works, that, owing to their impious production, the world would be better off without them. If so, what a horribly arrogant contention.

If, for argument’s sake, I were to proceed with writing music for a ballet inspired by Aborigines without obtaining the relevant cultural permission, I could be deemed unsavoury and ostracised by the arts community. This in itself is not an insignificant punishment, and it is a punishment that the ever-multiplying ideologues of the arts more often than not delight in administering. Legally, however, there is nothing that criminalises the act—yet. The fifth page of Creative Australia’s thirty-page Protocols for Producing Indigenous Australian Music asks, “What can be done to further promote and protect Indigenous people’s rights to own and control their Indigenous heritage within the current legal framework?” It is a query that serves as a call to arms, and it is a call to arms that, predictably, has been answered by the incumbent Commonwealth Government. Engaged supporters of Quadrant Music should now be familiar with Australia’s new national cultural plan, Revive: A Place for Every Story, a Story for Every Place. Among its many concerns, such as the prioritisation and full implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the plan seeks to “introduce stand-alone legislation to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, including to address the harm caused by fake art, merchandise, and souvenirs”. Presumably, such legislation would clamp down on non-Aboriginal artists who claim to be Aboriginal and who are, thus, producing fake Aboriginal art. Notionally, this sounds like a reasonable and achievable aim; no one should want or need yet another version of Dark Emu.

But could it be that legislation that seeks to “protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions”, as well as counter “fake art”, is in fact a further attempt to control Australia’s understanding of Aboriginal history and culture? Could I be up on charges if I did, in fact, proceed without permission in composing music for a ballet on Aboriginal themes? Moreover, if Keith Windschuttle were to write a new, critical tract on Aboriginal history and radical Aboriginal activists were to take issue with his research, then, under the legislation that Revive hopes to implement, could legal proceedings be launched against him? These questions must be asked, loudly. If it is the case that the misuse of Aboriginal heritage—however one defines that in any legal sense—is to be criminalised, Labor deserves to be voted out of office. A government beholden to the totalitarian whims of a dangerous activist class is a government unfit to govern.

In this issue of Quadrant Music, R.J. Stove investigates an important matter which all Australian musicians should awaken to: the contemporary dilemma of streaming platforms. His navigation of this complex matter is particularly timely. On November 7, Variety broke the news that, from 2024 onwards, Spotify intends to make royalty payments conditional upon tracks achieving at least a thousand streams each. Art music composers, of course, are the demographic most likely to wither under these alterations. Dr Stove’s engaging analysis, in fact, culminates in an invocation of the wisdom of Taylor Swift (this is either a Christmas miracle or a cruel summer; take your pick). Over the festive season, consider rejecting streaming platforms in favour of compact discs. CDs featuring Australian composers are still being produced and released to the commercial market; Australian labels like ABC Classics and Move offer customers a wide variety of albums to choose from. Incidentally, in his piece on the timeless love between Robert Schumann, Clara Wieck and Johannes Brahms, first-time contributor Jason Monaghan recommends Hélène Grimaud’s 2006 album, Reflections.

As we all prepare to rejoice once more in the birth of Christ, and at the risk of self-indulgence, I should like to offer some personal reflections. First, permit me to extend my sincerest gratitude to the Quadrant family, who, over the course of this year, have supported Quadrant Music with the utmost vivacity. I particularly wish to recognise Keith Windschuttle, Barry Spurr, George Thomas, Simon Kennedy and Matthew White, all of whom have reciprocated my ambitions for these music pages. Their foresight and alacrity have not gone unappreciated, whether by me or Quadrant Music’s already dedicated readership. So too must I thank, alphabetically, the maiden contributors to these pages: Catherine Broadstock, Benjamin Crocker, David R. Crowden, Malcolm Gillies, Jason Monaghan and R.J. Stove. Without their eagerness, this experiment might have failed before it began, and so I commend them all heartily.

And now to examine that experiment through a more intimate lens. It is true that, as a result of my unapologetic advocacy for the primacy of high art, some want nothing to do with me. I accept this reality, and have accepted it for some time. The opportunities which once may have been open to me, opportunities purchased through silence and conformity, are now barred, and this impasse cannot lift until I am either put to the sword or vindicated in my beliefs. If the latter is to eventuate, the arts in this country must undergo significant change, change which includes the complete repudiation of identity politics, pseudo-morality, inauthenticity and commercialism. I am confident that these pages can, to some degree, steward this change. But there is only so much a single evangelist can achieve. That my efforts have quietly received encouraging words from senior Australian musicians has been both comforting and motivating. Indeed, the magnanimity of several composers has been particularly reassuring. One is reminded that the sheer joyful act of writing music is an act that depends upon the self, not the society nor the surroundings in which the self exists. I truly believe that we may always create and express, even under the most difficult of circumstances.

History abounds with stories of downtrodden artists; to this end, the Swedish symphonist Allan Pettersson serves as a lamentable example. Throughout his life, Pettersson was paternally abused, impoverished, sickly, censored and miserable. An English critic once dubbed his Seventh a work of “rampant self-pity”. He died on June 20, 1980, aged sixty-eight. And yet, through all this—beginning with the sale of Christmas cards as a ten-year-old that allowed him to buy a cheap violin—he composed music of a sublime calibre, music through which he derived a deep and private meaning. In this moment, reader, Pettersson’s obscure legacy is totally inconsequential. Rather, this forgotten Swede is an inspiration to all those who suffer, and to all those who transcend their suffering through the creation of art.

With the dawning New Year, I pray that we like-minded, whether suffering or sympathetic to those who do suffer, may stand together, publicly, unashamed by our legitimate and vital convictions. I wish you a very merry, Australian Christmas.

Alexander Voltz is a composer and the founding editor of Quadrant Music, alexander@adkvoltz.com