There is a scene about an hour into Naina Sen’s documentary The Song Keepers in which a woman in her 60s ascends a ridge. The surrounding terrain is harsh desert, the red-hued country synonymous with the Australian outback. Below, nestled among the green blooms of towering eucalypts, is a patchwork of corrugated tin roofing that is the small, remote township of Areyonga. Visually the shot is sumptuous: a striking, sun-drenched panorama that alludes to the extent of isolation experienced by the Aboriginal communities that feature in the film. But that’s not all it is.
The woman is Theresa Nipper, a member of the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir that is the subject of The Song Keepers. Seated on the crest of the ridge, Nipper reveals a personal history that will challenge how many viewers situate themselves in relation to the impact of colonialism on Aboriginal cultures.
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In its publicity material, the film is promoted as “Australia’s answer to The Buena Vista Social Club” for its celebration of an obscure but once-vibrant regional musical movement. But The Song Keepers is far weightier than that. While the film’s narrative follows the choir taking a trip to Germany to reunite a “lost” collection of 16th-century baroque and early-romantic hymns with the German Lutheran church, it is actually a meditation on the complexities of cross-cultural exchange.
When Lutheran missionaries arrived in Central Australia in the 19th century with the goal of converting and assimilating the local Aboriginal people to western values and faith systems, they taught their new wards the church’s sacred hymns. What resulted was a movement of choral singing throughout the region. When the missionaries eventually departed, a commitment to the communal choirs persisted, and the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir is part of that legacy.
Through intimate interviews with Nipper and the choir’s senior “boss-lady”, Daphne Puntjina, as well as others, Sen’s film goes beyond the linearity and wide-eyed wonder of the choir’s trip to reveal the nuances of identity, cultural practice and lore that have developed in central Australian Aboriginal communities since the Lutheran missions were established. They also convey the depth of integrity that undergirds the film’s production methodology.
“This is very much a film about relationships,” says Sen. “It wouldn’t have been possible without the active participation of the women of the choir, specifically the senior women of the choir. Working within Aboriginal communities, everything relies on long-term relationships. Nothing happens quickly. Nothing happens without long-term thought and consensus.”
The women in the choir had been wanting to tell their story for some time before Sen broached the idea of a film. The trip to Germany was “a really significant full-circle moment” for the choir and became the catalyst for collaborating on the film, she says.
For many of the choir’s 32 members, who hail from communities including Areyonga, Kaltukatjara, Titjikala, Mutitjulu, Ntaria and Alice Springs, it was also their first trip overseas. Many are senior cultural women who have, alongside their own traditional obligations, voluntarily preserved the region’s choral heritage for most of their lives, singing the songs in traditional Western Arrarnta and Pitjantjatjara languages, as well as Zulu, German and English.
Like the choir’s musical performances, the film is imbued with a communal sense of joy. Sen says it was obvious to her from the outset that she needed to make the film with that sensibility: “The first time I was asked to sit in on rehearsals, what I saw was how incredibly happy they were as they sang. It emanated from them.”
The embedded, deliberative approach Sen took in the film’s production calls to mind the work of Amiel Courtin-Wilson, particularly his film Bastardy, about the life and turmoils of Aboriginal actor Jack Charles. This slow, immersive and reflexive process yields an intimacy between director and the project’s participants that isn’t often present in more orthodox approaches to documentary filmmaking.
The Song Keepers also demonstrates such close ties – the traumatic backstories of Theresa and Daphne were among the final scenes recorded by Sen, despite her being aware of them from very early in the development process.
Balancing the women’s sombre accounts of the impacts of colonialism on their personal connection to traditional culture and community is the presence of an undeniably Aboriginal humour. The choir’s “master”, Morris Stuart – a Caribbean-born, London-raised former pastor who has worked with choirs across the world – is often the butt of the women’s irreverent jokes, although buried in all the teasing is deep respect, says Sen. She describes the 12-year relationship between Stuart and the women in the choir as “playful”, “cheeky” and one of “wonderful openness”: “It’s a relationship built over time. Everybody’s honest.”
Nicholas Williams, one of only two men in the choir and also one of its youngest members, says he didn’t expect the senior women to be so comical during their tour of Germany. In one memorable scene, the octogenarian Daphne engages in a mock kung-fu fight. In another, she provides a show-stopping slapstick twist to a song played on a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar.
“These strong women are seen as leaders, senior cultural women in their communities,” says Williams. “You don’t expect them to act like teenagers.”
Figuring out the best way to present those stories – balancing joy and humour with the consequences of deep trauma – in a sensitive, authentic and respectful manner was critical to Sen, and impossible without the full confidence of the community. “My relationship with the women and being entrusted with this story, would be, I would say, one of the greatest privileges I’ve ever had as a filmmaker.”
• The Song Keepers has its free-to-air premiere on NITV on Sunday 15 July at 8.30pm
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