1st Edition

Supporting Vulnerable Performance Traditions Keeping it Going in Contexts of Continuity and Change

Edited By Georgia Curran, Mahesh White-Radhakrishnan Copyright 2025
232 Pages 50 Color Illustrations
by Routledge

232 Pages 50 Color Illustrations
by Routledge

232 Pages 50 Color Illustrations
by Routledge

Supporting Vulnerable Performance Traditions: Keeping it Going in Contexts of Continuity and Change explores endangered forms of performance from across the world, and the aspirations of practitioners, community members and researchers to keep these traditions going. Readers are provided with an ethnographically rich focus on specific performance contexts in diverse cultural worlds, including... Read more

1 Contemporary issues of continuity and change for vulnerable performance traditions

Georgia Curran And Mahesh White- Radhakrishnan, with contributions from Lillis Ó Laoire, Catherine Ingram, Nicholas Ng and John Napier

Interlude: Yarlpurru-rlangu yawulyu – ‘Women’s songs about the two age brothers’

2 ‘So they can keep it and carry it on’: Shifting modes of song transmission and learning of Warlpiri women’s yawulyu

Georgia Curran, Lorraine Nungarrayi Granites, Peggy Nampijinpa Brown and Valerie Napaljarri Martin

Interlude: Laansas treseer padaas

3 Laansas parmi napooy: Squaring the circle on the “difficult” Portuguese Burgher lancers

Mahesh White-Radhakrishnan

Interlude: In Meditation (2004), for erhu and electronics

Composed by Nicholas Ng

4 Liturgical Latin in Lewisham: Old Rite music as a means of transcultural religious identification

Nicholas Ng

Interlude: Theyyam Exhibition – Everyday Life: A Repertoire of Ritual and Performance

Curated by Diana Chester, featuring Dhanaraj Keezhara

5 Performance as exhibition: Sonic and visual response to the Theyyam Festival

Diana Chester and Dhanaraj Keezhara

Interlude: Kodava song: Before and beyond the synecdoche

6 ‘Who do you not see here’? (but what might you hear?): Synecdochic maintenance of culture in Kodava song

John Napier

Interlude: Rupert Manmurulu and Renfred Manmurulu discuss and perform Inyjalarrku mermaid songs

7 ‘Remix!’: Continuity through innovation in the manyardi song tradition of western Arnhem Land

Reuben Brown, Isabel O’Keeffe, Rupert Manmurulu, Renfred Manmurulu and Jenny Manmurulu

Biography

Georgia Curran is a research fellow at the Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, and the current Chair of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance Study Group on Music and Dance of Oceania. Alongside Mahesh White-Radhakrishnan, she also co-hosts the podcast series Music!Dance!Culture! (www.music-dance-culture.com).

Mahesh White-Radhakrishnan is an Honorary Associate at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Collaborator at the Centre of Linguistics at the University of Lisbon and the National Folk Fellow 2022.