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Australian Journal of Linguistics

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What's That Song About?: Interaction

of Form and Meaning in Lardil Burdal
Songs
a
Cassy Nancarrow
a
Cairns, QLD
Published online: 14 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Cassy Nancarrow (2010) What's That Song About?: Interaction of Form
and Meaning in Lardil Burdal Songs, Australian Journal of Linguistics, 30:1, 81-92, DOI:
10.1080/07268600903134046

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 Australian Journal of Linguistics
Vol. 30, No. 1, January 2010, pp. 81
92

What’s That Song About?: Interaction

of Form and Meaning in Lardil
Burdal Songs*
CASSY NANCARROW
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Cairns, QLD

Burdal is a public genre of song and dance belonging to the Lardil people of Mornington
Island. The meanings of burdal songs can be interpreted on several levels: culturally
ascribed meaning; meaning from the music; and meaning from the song text. Each of
these levels is explored with examples. Metre and song text are focussed on in relation to
their contribution to meaning-making. Phonological differences between song language
and spoken language are examined, along with implications for teaching songs.

Keywords: Aboriginal Song; Tangkic; Lardil; Burdal; Metre; Song Words

1. Introduction
This paper looks at the construction of meaning in Lardil burdal, a genre of song and
dance received in dreams and traditionally performed by the Aboriginal people of
Mornington Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Burdal is the most common
traditional genre of song of Lardil people, other genres being jarada (love songs),
lullabies, hunting songs, weather songs, marndar (men’s ceremony songs), kujika
(shake-a-leg), yirrijirri (women’s ceremony songs), wangga (mainland style), and
island songs (Northern Cape York style).

+
This work is based on my honours thesis, completed in 1999. Kenneth Jacob, Nelson Gavenor, Ian James, Paul
Memmott and Jane Simpson were particularly important in helping with this early research. Between 2000 and
2002 I worked on a further project with songmen to retrieve even more recordings from the archives and to
transcribe and re-record as many songs as possible. Altogether there are now about 230 songs in the database,
150 of which are classified as public burdal songs. A version of this paper was presented at a workshop on the
language of poetry and song in September 2007, Adelaide, where I benefited from insightful comments by
participants. I thank Myfany Turpin and Tonya Stebbins for providing helpful comments on earlier drafts as well
as two anonymous reviewers for providing many useful ideas on how to improve this article.

ISSN 0726-8602 print/ISSN 1469-2996 online/10/010081-12 # 2010 The Australian Linguistic Society
DOI: 10.1080/07268600903134046
 82 C. Nancarrow
An obvious question for an outsider to ask about burdal is, ‘What do they mean?’;
and this is where the difficulties start, because the words themselves, while
superficially resembling spoken language, generally do not directly correlate in
meaning at all. This phenomenon of ‘song language’ is common in many Aboriginal
song styles.1
Most burdal are dreamt. They are ‘given’ to the dreamer in the dream by dead
relatives, ‘unseen people’, ‘sky people’, or by the mirndiyan ‘dreamtime’ spirit of a
certain place. Accompanying dances may be dreamt with the song, but more often the
dance is ‘found’ later by a group of dancers, at the discretion of the dreamer of the
song. Popular songs may outlast the lifespan of the dreamer, and these days young
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Lardil songmen are mostly learning old songs rather than dreaming and bringing out
new ones. In the past 20 years only one new song has made it into the public sphere.
This paper attempts to sort out some of the complexities of interpreting burdal. It
is my hope that such analysis may prove useful in practical pursuits such as teaching
and learning of songs, an undertaking that has been recognized as a priority by Lardil
people for cultural maintenance.

2. Hierarchy of Interpretation
Among the Lardil dancing is a form of religious thought*it is religious thought in
action . . . Naturally, the message received need not be the same for everybody. Nor
need it be the same as the performers intended, for such is the nature of symbolism
(McKnight 1999: 228).

For the purposes of this paper, by ‘performers’ I refer to anyone who is involved in
burdal performance. This includes songmen, female and male dancers and children
who regularly dance. In order for a performer to know what a burdal song means,
I propose that there are three levels of interpretation:
1. Culturally ascribed meaning: this is the meaning that is generally understood by
performers and Lardil audience.
2. Meaning from the music: elements of music can be contributing factors in
determining the meaning of a song, particularly a song whose ‘culturally ascribed
meaning’ has been lost.
3. Meaning from the song text: only some burdal text is directly translatable.
However there is a belief by Lardil people that song text is meaningful.

This is a hierarchy, or perhaps a progression, in that most performers would never get
beyond the first stage of meaning. I propose that it is part of becoming a songman to
take on board the second level of meaning, and part of being able to create songs to have

1
The nature of untranslatable song language has been studied by several researchers, including Merlan (1987)
and Apted (2007).
 What’s That Song About? 83

an understanding of the third level, including the phonological shape of texts and
poetic interpretations of words. The process of creativity has been examined by Hale.2

2.1. Culturally Ascribed Meaning

Songmen and dancers usually have a general understanding of the meaning of a song,
also referred to as the ‘received meaning’. The more often a song is performed, and
talked about (and its meaning reinforced), the more likely it is that different people
will agree on its meaning. Meanings of songs tend to be learnt, rather than
interpreted through analysis of song text.
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For example, most performers agree on the meanings of about 100 burdal. Their
meanings are ‘common knowledge’ and can usually be attributed to what has been
said by the songman who dreamt the song. The meanings of some burdal are further
fixed through having been performed with school groups or at festivals where it is
customary to provide a brief explanation of the dance.
So ‘everyone knows’ that a certain song is about brolgas, for example. There is one
song in particular, Murankaji, that is performed regularly and its meaning as ‘brolga
feeding’ is known by almost everyone on Mornington Island. The song text is as follows:

Murankaji kajere murankaji kajere

Mayanguru mangaru mayanguru mangaru

Then there is this song:

Mayanguru mangaru mayanguru mangaru

Murankaji kajere murankaji kajere

This second song was recorded by Frank Woolston in 1966, and is almost identical to
the first, except that the lines are switched, and it is sung more slowly and gently; it
sounds more like a lament than a dance song. The songman on the 1966 recording is
Henry Peters, the same songman who we know dreamt the first song in 1952.
However, on Woolston’s recording, Peters gives the meaning as ‘people from far away’,
with no mention of brolgas. As none of the text can be traced to ordinary Lardil
language, the meaning must be first interpreted from popular opinion and then from
the accompanying dance, which for the first song undoubtedly involves movements
that indicate brolga, and for which there is no record in relation to the second song.
Nancy Wilson described the traditional process by which songmen created new
burdal. She explained that, on waking from a dream, a songman would first sing the
song with other men. He would then ask women to join in with handclapping until
the song was ‘finished’, and finally retreat with men only to layiwurri ‘choreograph’ a
dance to match the meaning from the dream (Wilson, pc, in Nancarrow 1999).

2
Based on Strehlow’s work in Central Australia (Hale 1984).
 84 C. Nancarrow
In the past 10 years several songs have been ‘re-discovered’ by Lardil performers
from archived audio recordings. In a variation on the process described above, new
dances have been created by men and women for several burdal for which there was
no living memory of the dance. This process of creativity illustrates how meanings are
collectively established both independently of dance and through dance.

2.2. Meaning from the Music

Beyond the ‘culturally ascribed’, or ‘received’ meaning of a song, there is another layer
of meaning within the musical elements of a song. Unlike Central Australian songs,
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Lardil burdal are not always sung to the same melody. However, rhythm tends to be
consistent across performers and performances. When it is not, as in the example of
Murankaji above, the two performances may be regarded as being of different songs.
Rhythm is used here as a general term that includes metre as an element, along with
tempo. The more specific sense of rhythm that refers to the pattern of the song text is
not invoked here. Although there is no evidence for a blanket correlation between
rhythm and meaning across all burdal songs, there appear to be some rhythmic
elements that are suggestive of certain meanings.
Many songs have two or more parts to them. The first part is always called the
derra ‘thigh’, and consecutive parts are all called mirnda ‘trunk’. Usually the derra and
mirnda parts of a song are dreamt together, but occasionally they are dreamt
separately and then put together later.
There are two kinds of rhythmic accompaniment used with burdal songs.
Boomerang clapping has various realizations: biru ‘rattle’; balbal ‘light’ double clap;
or jirdangkul ‘heavy’ pulse. Women’s thalurr handclapping, indicated in my
transcriptions by ‘T’ is always a steady pulse. It is the thalurr pulse that is the focus
for this section of the discussion.
For each thalurr pulse a series of beats, or metre, can be abstracted from the song.
On the surface, metre relates most closely to dance. In different modes, dancers’ feet
touch the ground either with the boomerang or handclaps, except in shake-a-leg
(which is not strictly part of burdal, but imported). And dance movements, especially
of the upper body, can relate a lot of the meaning of a song. However, for experienced
songmen, metre itself may communicate meaning, as I argue below.

2.2.1. Duple metre

Duple metre refers to songs with four beats, or occasionally two beats, per pulse. This
is the most common metre in burdal, occurring in 130 out of 150 songs (87%). The
song Karmin Barna ‘Bulbul’ exemplifies this in Figure 1.

2.2.2. Triple metre

Triple metre, referring to groups of three beats per pulse, often realized as , is less
common, occurring in only 23 out of 150 songs (15%). An example is in Matha
Wawuna ‘Pulling Dugong Rope’ as in Figure 2.
 What’s That Song About? 85

Figure 1 Duple metre in Karmin Barna

A few songs incorporate both metres (such as duple metre in the derra part and
triple metre in the mirnda part of the song). Occasionally there are also polyrhythms
occurring with the beat of the melody in triple and the boomerang claps in duple
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metre. For the purposes of this analysis, such burdal are regarded as being essentially
in duple metre.
An interesting feature of triple metre is that despite its infrequency across the
burdal genre as a whole, its occurrence is limited to song texts of particular semantic
domains. Of four ‘waterspout’ songs in the corpus, at least three are in triple metre.
The fourth is in duple metre, but it is likely that the form recorded was incomplete,
and is in fact only the derra part of a longer song that may have its mirnda part in
triple metre. The three waterspout songs in triple metre are also notable in that, apart
from the initial syllable, they are sung entirely on one base note. The high frequency
of waterspout songs in triple metre may have led to associating triple metre with the
meaning of waterspout.
A further domain associated with triple metre is that of bushfire. Bushfire is used
extensively by Lardil people for hunting and ‘cleaning up’ the country and
additionally, for signalling and ‘love magic’. Bushfire songs represent 40% of burdal
with triple metre, which is found in nine out of 14 recorded bushfire songs (64%). As
a result, some songs just ‘feel’ like bushfire songs because they are in triple metre.
When experienced songmen are trying to interpret a previously unknown, or
forgotten, song, this ‘feel’, from the metre (and probably also pitch and tempo) may
be more important than the text. This situation has occurred in my research in the
context of listening to recordings made 40 or so years earlier. It is of course possible
to have a bushfire song that is not in triple metre. In that sense metre is not the sole
determinant of meaning, but rather a potential contributing factor.
There are other burdal songs with triple metre that may be mistaken for bushfire
or waterspout songs. In the Matha Wawuna song, presented above, it is generally
understood that the meaning is pulling on a rope to bring in a net with a big

Figure 2 Triple metre in Matha Wawuna

 86 C. Nancarrow
dugong. However, in traditional dugong hunting, the ‘chaser’ would light a bushfire
as a pre-arranged signal to let the ‘catcher’ know that the dugong were coming
towards the net. And Gully Peters recalled that fire was a part of the dance as
performed around 1910 (Memmott 1975). So in this case there does seem to be a
semantic link with bushfire. The observation that triple metre is most prominent in
certain semantic domains could suggest a link between those domains, such as
between waterspouts and bushfires. However, I am not aware of any such links.
There are a few other burdal songs that incorporate triple metre, several of whose
meanings involve a sense of ‘looking for’ something. These particular burdal may
have links with songs that are sung as part of storytelling.
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2.3. Meaning from Song Text

In trying to answer the question, ‘What’s that song about?’, the first step is to find out
what the received meaning of a song is. The second step is to identify the domains
that are associated with the particular metre. The third and most difficult step is to
try and unpack the text in terms of what the words contribute to the meaning of the
song, given that they are largely untranslatable.
The text of burdal songs is organized in ‘legs’. Leg is the preferred term used by
Lardil songmen to describe a section of burdal song that may be transcribed as one
line of text. A typical leg consists of a repeated phrase of between two and four words.
Other variations occur, such as one word or non-repeated text. There are between
one and four legs in each song part (derra or mirnda, explained in Section 2.2 above).
Burdal text is highly elliptical in its grammatical structure, usually being a
collection of individual words with little identifiable syntax. This is similar in style to
many mainland traditions, particularly those of Central Australia, but contrasts with
the songs of Kaiadilt neighbours, which tend to be quietly sung, personal songs prized
for their ‘grammatically complex constructions’ (Evans 1995). Lardil mythology links
Mornington Island with the mainland, with some story beings said to have travelled
from the desert country. Alice Moyle pointed out that Lardil and Yukulta (Gang-
galida) song styles ‘suggest a closer musical affinity with desert songs further south
than with songs on Cape York Peninsula’ (Moyle nd, in Evans 1995: 39).
There are three types of words in burdal songs:
1. Some words are recognizably Lardil, though they may carry additional senses to
those of the original Lardil words. Around a third of all the textual material in
burdal songs can be said to be based on ‘ordinary’ Lardil language, but there is
wide variation between songs in this regard.
2. A few words are borrowed from other languages.
3. Most words are ‘song words’ that do not occur in spoken Lardil, but may have
meaning in the context of the song.

Despite their largely untranslatable nature, there is an expectation that words in

burdal songs have meaning, which may influence their interpretation by Lardil
 What’s That Song About? 87

Figure 3 Derra part of Jara Karnda

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people. As Margaret Hills, the widow of a prominent dancer, put it, ‘All the words
mean something, but we don’t always know what’ (Hills, pc 1999).
Figures 3 and 4 show the two parts of Jara Karnda bushfire song. Interestingly,
both share essentially the same text, in the derra part put to triple metre, and in the
mirnda part to duple metre.
The words of Jara Karnda can be examined more closely to illustrate some of the
issues in interpreting burdal from text. Jara is problematic in that none of the
songmen I spoke with could offer a translation. It is similar to the Lardil word jaran
‘spinifex’, and identical to the Ganggalida word jara ‘foot’, either of which could
potentially be meanings alluded to in the song. However jara also turns up in many
other burdal songs of varying topics, sometimes pronounced more like ‘yara’, but
never with a translation. There are several possibilities for its interpretation: that it is
simply a filler word; that it has a meaning which has been forgotten; or that it has an
important meaning that is deliberately obscured for some reason.
Karnda is straightforward; it is the word for ‘bushfire’ and ‘grass’ in Lardil, and
contrasts with nyuda ‘campfire, wood’. The presence of this word, along with the
triple metre, is a dead giveaway that this is a ‘bushfire song’, even without much other
knowledge of the song or dance.
The ordinary Lardil word for ‘smoke’ is wurburr, but the usual form used in songs
is wujbur or wujbu. Songman Kenneth Jacob identified that the form wujbur

Figure 4 Mirnda part of Jara Karnda

 88 C. Nancarrow
particularly refers to the sound of the smoke crackling. For example, he would say
Ngada kurri wurburr ‘I see the smoke’, but Ngada merrikun wujbur ‘I can hear the
smoke’ (Jacob, pc 1999). It is possible that the hardening of the consonant cluster is
an onomatopoeic variation of the original word.
The word rijbi, which is also realized as ridbi, and often reduplicated as rijbijbi or
ridbijbi, is not an ordinary Lardil word. Rijbi, as with wujbur, is approximant-initial,
they both include a repeated high vowel, and both contain a central fricative-stop
cluster. Its structure so closely represents that of wujbur that it appears to be the result
of a further transformation of wujbur, and possibly another example of onomato-
poeia to do with the sound of crackling smoke.
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This is the explanation that Teddy Moon gave of the meaning of the words in Jara
Karnda, about 15 years after he dreamt the song:

You looking for something to start fire. You finally find that two stick for make fire.
Jara karnda means ‘you put that stick down to the woman. You rub that stick and
fire comes out’. Jara means ‘you’re looking around’. When you get that rijbi rijbijbi,
you’re happy now, you’ve got fire now. Wujbur wujbur means ‘you put wood on the
fire’. You’ve got the fire going and you put wood on (Moon, pc 1999).

Moon’s translation hangs very lightly on the actual words of the song and relies
heavily on cultural knowledge about fires, the sequence of actions depicted in the
dance, and perhaps most importantly, his own knowledge of the meaning of the
burdal as he received it in his dream.

3. Phonological Patterns
The phonology of words in burdal song differs in some aspects from spoken Lardil,
even when the song texts are spoken. Below I compare phonemes and stress patterns
in burdal song texts with spoken Lardil and look at the implications of the differences.

3.1. Occurrence of Sounds

Table 1 compares the occurrence of sounds in spoken Lardil with that in song texts.
The spoken Lardil data are based on about 7,500 words in dictionary and story texts,
and the Songs data are based on about 1,500 words of burdal song text (including
Lardil words in those songs).
Table 1 shows that alveolar (d, n, l, rr) and velar (k, ng) sounds occur markedly less
in songs than in spoken language, while palatal sounds (j, ny, y) occur more
frequently. As can be seen in Table 1, there are other tendencies too, such as more ‘a’
and ‘i’ and less ‘e’ in songs. These sounds are maintained when song words are
spoken, indicating that the changes, particularly of consonants, are not merely a
result of the words being sung.
Burdal songs are actually closer in some ways to spoken Ganggalida language (also
known as Yukulta). Ganggalida has no ‘e’ sound, and has less ‘n’ and ‘l’ sounds in its
 What’s That Song About? 89

Table 1 Occurrence of phonemes in spoken Lardil and burdal song texts

Lardil L% Songs S% Lardil L% Songs S%

b 1652 4.0 646 6.1 rl 46 0.1 41 0.4

m 1655 4.0 488 4.6 j 1068 2.6 377 3.5
w 1614 3.9 349 3.3 ny 366 0.9 171 1.6
th 1272 3.1 95 0.9 ly 5 0.0 2 0.0
nh 37 0.1 4 0.0 y 817 2.0 362 3.4
d 1451 3.5 296 2.8 k 2860 7.0 513 4.8
n 2948 7.2 470 4.4 ng 1798 4.4 296 2.8
l 2143 5.2 490 4.6
rr 1554 3.8 283 2.7 a aa 7458 16.9 2286 21.4
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r 1065 2.6 645 6.0 e ee 2049 4.8 228 2.1

rd 387 0.9 97 0.9 i ii 4342 9.6 1392 13.0
rn 459 1.1 172 1.6 uuu 3872 8.9 965 9.0

lexicon than Lardil (Keen 1983, Hale 1997). It is unclear whether these sound changes
reflect historical roots of Lardil or more contemporary borrowing.3 There is no
evidence of the use of Damin, the Lardil men’s ceremonial language, in burdal songs.4
Vowels are preferred at the end of song legs (and the repeated phrases within legs).
There is also a tendency for /a/ to change to /ay/ or /ayi/ when it occurs leg-medially.
This is a unique feature of burdal songs, and does not occur in spoken Lardil.
Occasionally vowel sounds are inserted as ‘fillers’ on the off-beat right at the start of a
melodic line. These may be ‘residual’ vowels from the preceding line, but not
necessarily. Such vowels are never cited by songmen as being part of the songs text,
but rather appear to act as a means by which to predicate the melodic pitch of a line,
before the main beat.5
In the following songs, vowel ‘fillers’ and word-final vowel changes are shown in
italics.

Mangka Juluwarr ‘Hook Boomerang’

e mangka mangka juluwayi mangka mangka juluwa
mangka mangka kurri kurri kurri mangka mangka kurri kurri kurri

Manjardinja ‘Crocodile’
a manjardinja yamaruruyi manjardinja yamaruru
yakura kurlamberna yakura kurlamberna

There is also a slight preference for all the legs of a burdal to start with the same
sound, although this is by no means the rule.

3
Alpher has identified similar difficulties in identifying origins of Yir-Yoront song words (Alpher 1976).
4
See Hale and Nash (1997) for a description of Damin.
5
Arandic songs incorporate similar vowel changes (Turpin 2007).
 90 C. Nancarrow
3.2. Stress Patterns
Stress patterns in burdal can either change to suit metre (more common), or can
remain the same despite the metre (less common).
In spoken Lardil, primary stress always occurs on the first syllable of a word, and
secondary stress usually on every second syllable thenceforth. In songs, this pattern is
often reversed. Frequently, a repeating line of text will be sung first with ‘reversed’
stress, then with ‘normal’ stress pattern. This can be seen most explicitly with three
syllable words fitting into duple metre. Figure 5 shows Banyanda ‘Moon Man’ song,
in which the word banyanda ‘stranger’ is repeated and fitted in so that the first
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repetition has the stress uncharacteristically on the second syllable, and the second
repetition has the stress on the first syllable, as in spoken language. Vowels that take
stress in this way may also lengthen considerably to fit in with the metre of the song.
In other cases, the stress on the text remains the same, such as in Matha Wawuna
(Figure 6).
The frequency of stress-shifting suggests that song texts change to fit the metrical
requirements of burdal. This has implications for the teaching of songs.
Traditionally, men learnt to dance before they became songmen, having years to
embody the rhythms of many different burdal. Recently, it has been seen as necessary
by songmen to start training boys as young as 10 to sing in accompaniment with
elders, in order to ensure a large enough body of songmen for the future. Given, as
demonstrated above, that there are at least some links between metre and meaning,
it would perhaps be appropriate to group songs in terms of metre when teaching
these boys. Explicit teaching of the relationships between text, music, dance and
meaning may be a way to ‘speed up’ the learning process and develop new songmen
faster.

Figure 5 Stress patterns in Banyanda

Figure 6 Stress patterns in Matha Wawuna

 What’s That Song About? 91

4. Conclusion
In this paper I have presented a way of analysing different elements of Lardil burdal
that can be used to elucidate different levels of meaning. I have demonstrated that
metre, along with song’s words in burdal, while not directly indicative of meaning,
can be suggestive of certain interpretations. I have attempted to show how text, music
and culturally ascribed meaning can be seen to sit in a hierarchy, whereby text is at
the top as the most obscure indicator of meaning.
It is clear that this is at best a superficial description of burdal songs, with a focus
on metre and song text in relation to meaning. More rigorous analysis would no
doubt reveal further relationship between meaning and both musical and linguistic
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form. In particular, study of the interactions between melody, tempo and dance could
contribute to a more complete analysis of the burdal genre, and may help to
demonstrate its relationship to song styles from other areas.

5. Postscript
Information on burdal songs is stored in electronic database form and in limited
print form. At Lardil performers’ request, only three copies exist at present. The
words of each song are transcribed as they would be spoken, followed by a catalogue
of recordings, and a series of entries containing descriptions and explanations of song
meanings by various people, noting the date and context of the observation. Most of
these entries are attributable to songmen, and often vary or are contradictory, both
from person to person and by the same person on different occasions.
Wild (1992) has pointed out that knowledge of songs in Aboriginal society is often,
as with other knowledge, dependent on relationships. In the process of compiling
songs in one place there is the potential for the ‘fixing of interpretations’ that may
pose a threat to the flexibility of community interpretations and knowledge
relationships. However, Lardil people have recognized that there is a need to record
not only songs but also information and interpretations about songs in order to stem
the loss of such knowledge. With this in mind, the ‘Lardil Song Archive’ is an attempt
to be as comprehensive as possible in representing the diversity of knowledge that
exists around each burdal, and to preserve this information for future generations of
performers.

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