Lou Bennett describes being a 'conduit for song' in lead up to Adelaide Festival show nyilamum song cycles

Dr. Lou Bennett, a legendary figure in the Australian arts scene, has been awarded the Order of Australia (AM). Prior to her performance at the Adelaide Festival, we interviewed her via video link, feeling her extraordinary talent and generous spirit.

For the past 36 years, this woman from the Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung tribes has been not only an outstanding singer and songwriter, but also an artistic and musical director, actor, composer, scholar, and educator. In the 1990s, she was a founding member of the internationally renowned folk trio Tiddas; in the mid-2000s, she co-founded the Black Arm Band, which brought together iconic musicians such as Archie Roach, Gurrumul, Ursula Yovich, and Paul Kelly.

Bennett is currently a senior lecturer in Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, and her doctoral research focuses on the revitalization of Indigenous languages. This research has led Bennett to bring Indigenous languages to the international stage through song. She also frequently collaborates with Australia's leading classical composers and orchestras, blending ancient culture, language, and modern sounds to tell stories about land, identity, and resilience.

This month, she will share a touching family story on the Adelaide stage, her show "nyilamum song cycles" is a collaboration with the Australian String Quartet and composer Paul Stanhope. Ahead of the Adelaide Festival's opening, ABC Arts' "What Sparks Art" series interviewed Bennett, exploring what inspires her extensive creative work.

"There are always little songs or storylines in my head"

"Life! Life is a wonderful thing and worth celebrating, whether it's experiencing pain and adversity, or joy, love and wonder – the sun rises every day and sets every day," Bennett said. "Even when I was young, there were always little songs or storylines in my head, influenced or inspired by real stories. I don't write much about fantasy worlds or fictional things. The stories I sing and co-create are real, have already happened – and then fantasy can arise from them."

She recalled, "One of Tiddas' first songs, 'Sing About Life,' was like that. Another example is 'Inside my kitchen.' At the time, my partner had a psychotic episode, and I didn't know what to do. So I came to the kitchen table and started singing – 'Come inside into my kitchen, rest your feet and your weary mind … You can settle and I will listen to the problems that you find'. That's how the song started. It was my way of getting rid of confusion and pain."

"Many of my early songs were driven by pain or suffering, and I wanted to celebrate the adversity experienced by myself, my loved ones, or people I saw, whether on TV or on the street. So it stemmed from the idea that artists must experience pain in order to sing, write, and create. However, over the years, that has changed, and I can also celebrate the good things in life and the celebration of life."

"There is song in the land"

Bennett shared, "I often wander in the countryside, which is a very inspiring place for me. Songs and melodies will emerge… they will overwhelm me. I have to slow down. But the land brings amazing inspiration, and wherever I go, there is song in the land – whether in the breeze, in the trees, or even in the city, crossing the road – it's everywhere."

"Before the piece 'nyernur nyakur' (nyernur means listen, nyakur means watch) for the Australian Chamber Orchestra's Omega Ensemble, I said to my partner, 'Let's go for a walk in the countryside.' We went to Jaara Jaara, not far from the Dja Dja Wurrung Country where we live, and we sat there at sunrise, we took out recording equipment… we just sat quietly, lit a small fire, and suddenly, the birds started singing… the melodic lines in it! It was like it was carefully arranged. It was so beautiful."

Becoming a "conduit" for songs

"As I get older, I realize that I am just a conduit for songs, which means I hear my ancestors singing to me, they appear in dreams. They appear while driving, something will suddenly hit me, and I will repeat a melodic line over and over again," Bennett explained. "Sometimes, I have to pull over, take out my phone, and just record that melodic line, then I'll go back and record another melodic line or harmony… and then I might not touch it for days or a week. Then I'll go back and revisit it, and then something else will emerge."

"Tiddas' songs, we created a lot together, it was very natural and easy. One of our first recordings was 'Happy Earth,' inspired by a little boy we met in Alice Springs. He said something like, 'Mother Earth pushes up the dirt and gives us mountains, isn't that beautiful?'" She recalled, "I remember sitting at a table in Brunswick, where I lived with band member Amy Saunders, and we started singing, and the song just fell out of us. I think we wrote it in half an hour or an hour, and we were so happy – we called all the mums and said, 'Listen to this!' We sang the song to about six different family members."

"There are times when songs just come naturally, they have nowhere else to go. We are lucky enough to capture them."

The story of nyilamum

"I created this song cycle to tell a story about my family. 'nyilamum song cycles' tells the story of a little girl, a little baby, who was found in a hollow of a tree in Jaara Jaara, Dja Dja Wurrung Country, after a young man was cutting down trees. In 1904, the tree fell, and a small bundle rolled out of the top of the tree. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was a little baby girl wrapped in a Djukum Djukum (possum skin cloak)."

"When he opened the cloak, she was lying there with many burial objects. What's really interesting is that these burial objects were both European and Dja Dja Wurrung artifacts. There was a metal axe, a little boot, a christening gown, but also items like ochre, a kangaroo tooth necklace, and an emu apron."

"The young man did what he thought was right and took her to the police station. After confirming that it was not a murder case, the police took her to the State Museum in Melbourne, where she was stored in a cold steel drawer for 99 years until a family member found her. My cousin, Gary Murray, found her and arranged for her to be sent back home, and he put a lot of effort into it. Every time I sing this song and song cycle, I thank him – acknowledging that he and his loving work are very important."

"My mother's sister and my eldest cousin Wendy and Aunty Lillian Crombie held a ceremony for her, they rewrapped her and placed her in a secret place in the countryside. They swore never to tell anyone where she was to protect her and passed this secret on to the next generation. It's a bittersweet story, full of joy and pain – but it's also a story about Australia. It's a story about the collision and conflict of our histories, and also about their fusion."

Life in language

"My doctoral research is titled 'Sovereign Language Rematriation'. I hope this title encapsulates everything I've done for the past 36 years. Art nourishes education, and vice versa – they are intertwined. It's hard to separate them," Bennett explained.

"It is said that there are about 7,000 languages in the world. I believe there are more. In Australia alone, there are over 500 tribes, so there are at least 500 languages in Australia alone. But I think rematriation is a maternal act, a feminine act. That doesn't mean men can't rematriate – rematriation has a deeper meaning, an understanding of the intangible spirit surrounding language… language has a spirit, it has a life of its own, and we treat it like family."

"It is important that Australian languages have the opportunity to sing again and tell their stories. Languages possess knowledge that other languages cannot. So English cannot contain all the knowledge in the world. Language has a larger definition or a larger scope for me… it's not just something we do that's beautiful and then say, 'Oh yes, I can sing in this language. I can sing in that language.' It contains knowledge, it contains love, it contains a curiosity, and how people see their place in the world."

Song cycles

"For me, it's more appropriate to describe it as song cycles than songlines. The word songlines was created by a white man who wanted to explain how those old men and women traveled through the countryside via songlines, singing their way through the countryside. I call it song cycles because there are many cycles to a story. There are many chapters to a story. There are many vignettes and overlapping elements to a whole story. For me, that's what song cycles are. Spiral is also a word. For us, it's not lines, not a linear perspective, which is a very Western perspective and construction of time and song, but cycles, spirals."

"Things move in circles, things move in cycles – from our days, our seasons, our lives – we are born, we die, we are reborn, we die… so cycle is a very important term that explains how we see our place in the world."

"nyilamum song cycles" by Dr. Lou Bennett and the Australian String Quartet will have its Australian premiere at the Adelaide Festival on Thursday, February 27, 2025.