Songs of Ceremony: Reawakening Songs in palawa kani

‘It all began with the birth of my first child.’ 

For Dewayne, Songs of Ceremony has been a dream since he first became a father in 2010. 

‘In the first couple of minutes of holding my son in my arms I wished I could sing to him in language,’ he says.  

‘The dream is to reawaken songs of ceremony for Palawa people so that our children can sing to their children in language and so on and so on, creating opportunities to embed our cultural strengths and resilience. And then to bring non-Aboriginal people into a story of cultural immersion and allyship.’ 

Dewayne and the TSO acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and the Tasmanian Aboriginal People and community language specialists who have worked diligently to reawaken the Palawa language, now palawa kani, using wordlists and oral history from the many languages spoken in Lutruwita (Tasmania). 

‘Dewayne's interested in things not always being comfortable. He likes this idea that there's tension’ 

For Erkki Veltheim, the composer of the orchestra's melodies for the album, ‘it is extraordinary to be part of such a special project’. 

‘Dewayne has talked a lot about the idea that we're on this journey together. He wants to really join the local Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures together, using the symphony orchestra, which is an old ceremonial tradition of Western culture,’ Erkki says. 

‘I'm trying to tap into both what Dewayne's talking about in terms of the local culture and the ceremonies and the connection of nature – hence, using transcriptions of local bird calls for instance – but also acknowledge the history of Western orchestra music. It's a real synthesis of the two together. Dewayne's also interested in things not always being comfortable. He likes this idea that there's tension,’ he says. 

This project is funded by the Creative Futures Fund. An initiative of the Australian Government’s National Cultural Policy Revive, the Creative Futures Fund aims to support ‘the creation and sharing of Australian stories, and new ways for people to engage with them’.   

The TSO is also grateful to TasNetworks, whose support is helping to expand this powerful cultural project into Tasmanian schools. Thanks to TasNetworks’ involvement, one of the album’s songs will be taught in classrooms across the state, supporting cultural learning from a young age.