Indigenous Australian Traditional Music

Indigenous Australian traditional music is the ceremonial and social song practice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, among the oldest continuous musical cultures in the world. Song cycles map ancestral journeys across country, encoding law, kinship and land tenure in sung verse, accompanied by the drone of the didgeridoo in northern regions, paired clapsticks, handclapping and body percussion elsewhere. Melodies are typically short, descending and repeated with variation, sung in hundreds of distinct languages by designated custodians. Instruments such as the bullroarer and gum leaf belong to specific ceremonies, and many repertories remain restricted by ritual law rather than performed for general audiences.