Words are how we connect, and how we differ. Words are how we learn from and about each other, how we gossip, make poems, jokes and express our deepest wisdom – all in words.
Central Station
Only Irish characters understand how Aboriginals feel about strangers owning their artefacts ...Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, the murderess Clytemnestra tells of the deception of Agamemnon, how he sacrificed her eldest daughter – her beloved Iphigenia – to the Trojan campaign; how Clytemnestra used what power she had, seducing the prisonerAegisthus, turning the government against its lord; plotting the many long years until her beacon fires announce the king’s return…
ANZ LitLovers will again be hosting Indigenous Literature Week in July to coincide with NAIDOC Week here in Australia. (2 to 9 July).
About Blog - Central Station is a blog where the men and women of the Australian outback come together to share an insight into their lives- the good, the bad, and the dusty!
(It used to be, when everyone learned classics at school, that everyone knew this story of
Colm Tóibín - Then it became a story only known to those who studied classics at university. And now, when all the classics (especially murderous ones like this) are reworked for computer gaming, the story is well known to many again. Strange, eh?)
In the last week or so, the world has seen some terrible murders. Teenage kids at a concert in Manchester, pedestrians on London Bridge, and closer to home in Brighton, a man just doing his job in an apartment building. And the media being the intrusive beast it is, we have seen the bereaved react in various ways, from refusing to hate the perpetrators to hating them very much indeed. And while we know that these short term responses are made in shock and that the loved ones of the victims have a long road ahead and that all of them will at some time or another probably swing back and forth from a desire for vengeance to a desire for justice, we in our respective societies share this dilemma. The ancients knew it too, and this is the story that Tóibín has chosen to tell.
Electra, daughter of a murdered father, loyal subject of the rightful king, watches Clytemnestra and her lover with cold anger and slow-burning cunning. She watches, as they walk the gardens and corridors of the house of Atreus. She waits for the traitors to become complacent, to believe they are finally safe; she waits for her exiled brother, Orestes, for the boy to become a warrior, for fate to follow him home. She watches and she waits, until her spies announce her brother’s return
ANZ LitLovers will again be hosting Indigenous Literature Week in July to coincide with NAIDOC Week here in Australia. (2 to 9 July).
This is a week when Australians celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and this year the NAIDOC Week theme is Our Languages Matter
Language Matters with Bob Holman » Why Language Matters
In his Life of Browne (1756), Dr. Johnson defends Browne’s rococo linguistic palette: “His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another. He must, however, be confessed to have augmented our philosophical diction; and in defence of his uncommon words and expressions, we must consider, that he had uncommon sentiments, and was not content to express in many words that idea for which any language could supply a single term.”
Can A Podcast Save A Near-Extinct Native Alaskan Language?
Ninety two percent of Indigenous languages are fading or extinct. Australia has suffered the largest and most rapid known loss of languages and past government policies have been largely to blame. This is clearly outlined in the Our Land: Our Languages report which was released by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs in 2013... Czech Didgeridoo player Alda Man
The importance, resilience and richness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages will be the focus of national celebrations marking NAIDOC Week 2017.
The 2017 theme - Our Languages Matter - aims to emphasise and celebrate the unique and essential role that Indigenous languages play in both cultural identity, linking people to their land and water, and in the transmission of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, spirituality and rites, through
Kangaroo a.k.a. Klokan: The Kindness of Strangers | ABConnorstales
story and song.
Some 250 distinct Indigenous language groups covered the continent at first (significant) European contact in the late eighteenth century. Most of these languages would have had several dialects, so that the total number of named varieties would have run to many hundreds.
Today only around 120 of those languages are still spoken and many are at risk of being lost as Elders pass on.
National NAIDOC Committee Co-Chair Anne Martin said languages are the breath of life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the theme will raise awareness of the status and importance of Indigenous languages across the country.
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait languages are not just a means of communication, they express knowledge about everything: law, geography, history, family and human relationships, philosophy, religion, anatomy, childcare, health, caring for country, astronomy, biology and food.
“Each language is associated with an area of land and has a deep spiritual significance and it is through their own languages, that Indigenous nations maintain their connection with their ancestors, land and law,” Ms Martin said. [ Australian Plant Hunter]
Czech didgeridoo virtuoso Andrej Smeykal jamming with Australian national treasure Mark Atkins
Czech Didgeridoo virtuoso Andrej Smeykal in Sydney and Melbourne ...
Ondřej Smeykal (Fujara) at Didgeridoo & Cultural Festival
THE RECENT Mediawave festival in Šaľa, which introduces a whole range of arts, also hosted Czech didgeridoo player Ondřej Smeykal who has made this traditional wooden instrument of the aboriginal Australians famous far from its native land.
Czech Aboriginal
Ondrej Glogar (of the Czech Republic) plays Aboriginal instrument ...
THE RECENT Mediawave festival in Šaľa, which introduces a whole range of arts, also hosted Czech didgeridoo player Ondřej Smeykal who has made this traditional wooden instrument of the aboriginal Australians famous far from its native land.
With Pavel Fajt on drums, Smeykal demonstrated how the two instruments
complement each other in sound, and then invited Yumiko Ishijima on a special "keyboard" to join them. Later, Smeykal switched the classical didgeridoo to electro-didgeridoo, which intensified its sound.
The Czech musician came to the instrument after the The Second Prague Spring; The Velvet Revolution of 1989 freed his country from Communism and the borders opened to the world.
"The streets of Prague were filled with didgeridoo players ( and media dragons). But it was not until I heard some albums and realised how much variation the instrument allows that my interest in it deepened," said Smeykal, who taught himself to play the didgeridoo.
