A song to make the bullroarer

Source term: bullroarer

In 1930 Norman Tindale and the musicologist Edward Davies took a wax-cylinder recorder out to MacDonald Downs station in Central Australia and cut a run of songs there. Most carry titles that name a place or a being. Song seven is flatly practical: 'To make the bullroarer.' It was said to have come from Aitjilara, at Hatches Creek, well over a hundred kilometres to the north-east. The cylinder survives, damaged. The archive itself warns that its language labels may follow whoever happened to be singing rather than whose song it was — so the route the song travelled is firmer than its ownership.

To make the bullroarer (from Aitjilara, Hatches Creek)

SA Museum, Tindale AA338/11/1, Record 5 / Song 7 / AS25

Particulars

Object

No object; a damaged 1930 wax cylinder preserves a song catalogued as 'To make the bullroarer', recorded at MacDonald Downs and said to come from Aitjilara at Hatches Creek.

Function

A making song for the bullroarer, carried from Aitjilara at Hatches Creek and recorded at MacDonald Downs in 1930.