The rush to record: Transmitting the sound of Aboriginal culture

Auditory experience has, in recent years, become something of a preoccupation for cultural historians. Quite apart from the need to address the imbalances of a visually fixated culture, the idea of the ‘soundscape’ resonates with a number of topical themes, among them the growing interest in the human sensorium and the now well-established concern for ecology and the environment. As Paul Carter pointed out in the early 1990s, sound is also germane to the study of cross-cultural encounter, with all its ambiguities of translation, mistranslation and pidginisation.1 Although it is not always acknowledged, this type of analysis owes much to R Murray Schafer, the guru of sound studies, whose book The Tuning of the World has been basic reading for audiophiles since its publication in 1977...