This book, set of four compact discs, and digital video disc, is the most recent addition to multimedia documentation of songs and associated stories, designs and dances of a genre from Central Australia known as Yawulyu. Compiled and edited by Georgia Curran, with transcriptions by Barbara Napanangka Martin, Georgia Curran, Mary Laughren, Teresa Napurrurla Ross and Tess Napaljarri Ross, and linguistic and musical analysis by Mary Laughren and Myfany Turpin, the publication comprises extensive and rich audio-visual documentation of Yawulyu from language speakers and long-term collaborators of their communities.

Yawulyu, also known as Awelye, celebrate the activities of Dreaming ancestors, and are composed, held and performed by women across a diverse and vast range of Central Australian communities and language group areas. It is one of the major ceremonial dance-song genres of Australia. Accordingly, numerous repertories have been the subject of major anthropological, ethnomusicological and linguistic studies, including Awelye Akwelye from Kaytetye women from Arnerre (Koch, Barwick, Turpin, and Ross Reference Koch, Barwick, Turpin and Ross2004) and Yawulyu Mungamunga from Warumungu women (Papulu Apparr-kari Aboriginal Language and Culture Centre, Barwick and Simpson Reference Language, Centre, Barwick and Simpson2000). This latest contribution, Yurntumu-wardingki Juju-ngaliya-kurlangu Yawulyu, provides recordings and detailed collaborative and interdisciplinary documentation of a further four repertories: Minamina (fifteen songs), Watiyawarnu (eleven songs), Warlukurlangu (twenty-two songs) and Ngapa (fifteen songs) from the large Warlpiri community of Yurrampi or Yuendumu. It is preceded by the volume Jardiwanpa Yawulyu (also from Yuendumu) by Coral Napangardi Gallagher, Peggy Nampijinpa Brown, Georgia Curran and Barbara Napanangka Martin (Reference Gallagher, Corol, Curran and Martin2014).

As with these previous publications, the present volume is a model of documentation and features extensive and immaculately presented rhythmic and text transcriptions with free translations, accompanied by audio recordings. Across four chapters, each focusing on a distinct Yawulyu repertory, the authors deploy multiple textual devices, including expansions or glosses by multiple singers and speakers, editorial notes, and captions that layer meanings and meaningfulness. Generous space is dedicated to each of the seventy-three songs, and each chapter begins with stories in Warlpiri language and translated into English by appropriate knowledge holders that explain the origins of the repertory in the ancestral Dreaming. Each song and its package of documentation can be heard on the accompanying compact discs, or alternatively by scanning a QR code with a mobile application. Pictorial documentation of ceremonial action, dances and items, and related animals, plants and other natural features, and the accompanying DVD, which provides edited video footage of a performance of Yawulyu, further render the song information with context. As a package, the volume will undoubtedly serve as an important resource for members of the Yuendumu Yawulyu-holding community and their families, authorised by the transcribed words, recorded voices, and images of knowledgeable custodians and holders of the tradition.

For those familiar with Central Australian song practice, and Indigenous Australian dance-song and ceremony more broadly, the thoughtful curation of layered textual and audio-visual sources invokes the iridescent and multivalent nature of Central Australian Indigenous song. For those encountering Yawulyu for the first time, detailed introduction to the publication and a section “How to read and listen to the songs” provide basic information on the structure and sound of Central Australian songs, and thus the tools to appreciate their beauty and complexity through listening and viewing the accompanying DVD. Curran, the authors and publishers, have achieved a publication that provides invaluable multidisciplinary documentation of an important genre and repertories, and also gestures towards the aesthetic, artistry and power of singers and the ceremony that they carry.

A particular achievement of the publication is the standard that it sets for intercultural collaboration in the production of song documentation for academic and community benefit. Curran, Carew, and Martin Reference Curran, Carew and Martin2019 meticulously document the collaborative process and decisions made in the course of several workshops that gave rise to this publication. The transparent discussion of this collaborative process, together with extensive acknowledgements, dedications, and captions that attribute authorship and knowledge to individual and communal owners, evidence a volume firmly based upon rigorous attention to the sensitivities and requirements of intercultural research collaboration. The subsequent critical reflection on the preparation of the publication with regards to cultural property, ownership and rights, provides an additional layer of insight and rigour that will be invaluable to other scholars seeking to produce outputs that contain representations of Indigenous cultural knowledge for community and broader public use (Curran et al. Reference Curran, Carew and Martin2019). The volume serves as a model for applied ethnomusicological and linguistic research outputs that seek to provide high quality documentation of song traditions, that privilege multiple voices and perspectives, and that contribute to the aspirations of communities.