Return of a travelling song: Wanji-wanji in the Pintupi region of Central Australia

This chapter discusses responses to the return of legacy recordings of Pintupi singing made in 1976 and the collection of further metadata about the song Wanji-wanji featured on the recordings. Wanji-wanji was once a popular entertainment song that was performed across the western half of Australia, as can be seen by the many recordings of it held in archives. Custodianship of the song is unknown; the earliest reference to its performance dates back to the 1850s, where it is described as a ‘travelling dance’ (Bates 1913–1914) and so in terms of copyright its status may be comparable to ‘public domain’, i.e. outside of copyright. Responses to hearing the recording were emotional. Those who knew the song recalled the place and time in which they had heard it long ago. There was great interest in how widely it was known though little interest in the meanings of the lyrics. On the whole, responses to access and proposed uses of the recordings, as well as the future possible uses of the song, reflected its public domain status. Nevertheless, the confidence in people’s responses varied depending on whether the individual knew the song, had experience in using archival recordings, and whether they perceived community interest and support for classical Aboriginal singing practices