ABSTRACT
Manikay (song) performed by Yolnu people in Australia's remote Arnhem Land conveys many interesting and intricate perspectives on death. Death severs and strains families through grief and upheaval, and singing might seem a strange, impractical response to such traumatic and incomprehensible experience. Wagilak manikay suggests that an individual's life is just one thread woven into a greater, ongoing raki (string), a string that was established long ago in a creative ancestral past. The song 'Raki' imagines the way this string continues to extend today, as new, individual strands of fibre are rolled into its length. Manikay forges living community in sound, movement, relationship and narrative; ongoing performance sustains community across the generations and in resonance with generations past. Manikay is by no means a static tradition, even if the perpetuation of song sequences, narratives and musical forms remains highly orthodox and guarded.
