The gathering ground: composing collaboration in Nyilipidgi, a dynamic meeting of manikay and jazz

Scholarship on Australian composition regularly draws attention to practices of unethical borrowing from Indigenous musical cultures, especially the incorporation of musical elements or themes from Australian Aboriginal traditions within orchestral compositions. By contrast, recent collaborative endeavours by improvising musicians renew approaches towards co-creation across cultural differences, foregrounding the generative interactions of Indigenous performance and ceremonial narratives. Exploring features of integration and juxtaposition in Nyilipidgi, by celebrated Australian pianist-composer Paul Grabowsky, this paper shows how jazz composition might be utilised to structure collaborations characterised by responsive listening and improvisation. We argue that Grabowsky’s compositional processes extend from narrative themes within the Yolŋu manikay tradition and performance practice of Wägilak ceremonial leaders, and that his approach sustains relationships between different people and cultures through musical integration and juxtaposition. Further, by outlining the development of Grabowsky’s collaborations with Wägilak singers, we argue that engagements between Indigenous and non-indigenous musicians are best enabled through long-term relationships of trust and the celebration of those relationships in performance.