Singing the Songs of the Country.

It was not until the late 1980s that the Yanyuwa people of the south west Gulf of Carpentaria began to engage in public forms of painting. The traditional chosen art form for the Yanyuwa people has always been song poetry which is still composed and sung by a small group of women.

On the endangered languages list, Yanyuwa currently has only three speakers left.  It is also a language that has distinct male and female dialects and this gender divide is also seen in the kind of songs that men and women chose to compose and sing. The composition of these songs was always open to critique and the songs that now exist are those that are seen to have “passed the test” as to what is considered a song worthy of a singing.  

In recent times the Yanyuwa community have used animation to preserve knowledge that people do not want to lose.  The Songs from the Gulf Country is a collection of five Yanyuwa songs that have “passed the test” and are still sung to this day.