Many of the most important human stories around the world passed through the years as memorable songs and poems from Homer’s Odyssey to Beowulf. Many of the greatest human stories remain great, even after translation into other languages as civilisations replaced others on lands throughout the world, like the Babylonians over the Assyrians, the Romans over the Hebrews, the Normans and Saxons over Gaelic lands, Mongols over Chinese, Mughals over Hindus, and British over 250+ Australian nations. This blog is intended to be a reflection upon human cultures that despite appearing divided share many similarities within the human condition. You may recognise some of them in songs.
Oral stories shared by bards are not new (fantasy fiction is the contemporary art form where this tradition lives on such as the character Jaskier in The Witcher, and Thom Merrilin in The Eye of The World). Learning culture ‘by heart’ as songs and poems has been dying out since the recent technology of written word. The oldest written song ever discovered is 3,400 years old, not very far back in human history when our Sapiens have been around for 300,000 years. In the relatively recent but ancient times of Odysseus and Beowulf, epic poems spoken aloud in communities were an essential ritual for survival, for future generations. Many songs and poems ‘of Old’ taught ethics. Just as children’s fairy tales teach lessons in enthralling fantasy worlds. Songs and spoken poems helped communities endure by embedding ethical behaviour into individuals, as well as survival knowledge and a sense of identity.
When I read that Paul Kelly, one of Australia’s greatest musical storytellers, quoted that The Uluru Statement of the Heart should be considered a great poem (although technically is prose), I was intrigued anew. Examples of epic poems that have stood the test of time (and numerous cultural invasions in their homelands) included The Odyssey from ancient Greece, Beowulf from ancient England, the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Iraq, and Dante’s Divine Comedy from medieval Italy. Paul Kelly has immersed himself in the greatest stories ever composed to inspire his own art. In the introduction of his large 2019 poetry anthology he clarifies,
“For most of human history poetry has been sung. Homer was. And much of the Greek tragedies. Many songs were poems before they were songs; ‘Danny Boy’ is a famous example...Another notable exception is a piece of prose – the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It has the heart, hurt and urgency of great poetry."
The Uluru Statement of the Heart official website explains,
“In May 2017, over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Delegates from all points of the Southern Sky
gathered in Mutitjulu in the shadow of Uluru and put their signatures on a historic statement
...addressed to the Australian people invited the nation to create a better future via the proposal of key reforms…”
Despite only recently being recorded in 2017 what also gives The Uluru Statement of the Heart status as an epic poem along with its emotional urgency, is that it has been spoken and shared over and over on its national trek, essentially a pilgrimage the likes of Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March. Secondly, The Uluru Statement of the Heart may be spoken for posterity, may be learned by heart, for those same reasons; to know where your People have come from and to know where your People are going.
The best way to take in all the greatest poems is to listen not read. Here the Australian band Midnight Oil made a collaboration with music and video of mural painting.
The most memorable lines for me are:
“Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates.
This cannot be because we have no love for them…”
I went to the Brisbane Writers Festival a couple of years ago and I heard The Uluru Statement of the Heart spoken aloud by signatory and indigenous leader, Thomas Mayo, a Kaurareg Aboriginal and Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander. Eventhough, he had toured the country speaking The Statement hundreds of times he still delivered the meaning with heart and emotion. Because of this, I was very moved that first time. As in the days of bards, I am highly receptive to this ancient human tradition. Not one word could I recall now, it had not been told to me enough times to learn by heart, but I can recall the stirring of my own heart, a meeting of hearts in a way. A universal human understanding. That is what makes The Uluru Statement of the Heart memorable to me.
Any screenwriter or game designer will tell you using stories is how to remain memorable or to be remembered. Poems are stories with devices to help you remember such as arcs, rhyme or rhythm.
“We are programmed through our evolutionary biology to be both consumers and creators of story,”
- Jonah Sachs, CEO of Free Range Studios.
“Psychologist Jerome Bruner’s research suggests that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.”
- Vanessa Boris at Harvard Business Publishing.
“Neuro-economist Paul Zak’s lab studies indicate that people listening to a story with a classic dramatic arc, release more brain chemicals associated with empathy—and that, in turn, prompts more generosity.”
– Paul VanDeCarr in Storytelling and Social Change.
Returning to Paul Kelly’s personal collection, Love is Strong as Death, with 300 poems gathered across three millennia of humanity. The poetry anthology is not for activism but to elicit a range of emotions: the highs and the lows of the human experience. There are quite a few emotional poems from other repressed cultures (at the time dying out) such as the Irish in the 18th century and their spoken ‘laments’. Paul Kelly also includes translated poetry from an array of languages: Latin, Arabic, Korean, Polish and more. The national poets of Palestine and Israel are both included. I believe the oldest poem in the collection is from Sappho, the Ancient Greek poetess who lived two and half thousand years ago. King Solomon’s Bible also features several times as well as a riddle from the Anglo-Saxon riddle hoard, the Ancient Greek tragedians, and Ancient Roman poet philosophers, all who lived in times of feudal expansionist cultures.
What has further meaning to me is Paul Kelly did not include any song lyrics with the exception of a handful, because they are, in his view, poems that are sung. These included Danny Boy alongside Indigenous Australian Archie Roach’s song, They took the children away. Again, for the purpose of human tradition, I encourage you to listen to this sung poem, instead of reading the lyrics. If you do read, always read aloud for the full experience that reaches through human time immemorial.
Australian indigenous poems I noted in Paul Kelly's huge poetry anthology are First Time (I Met My Grandmother) by Ali Cobby Eckermann about the author as one of The Stolen Generation, and Gifts by Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Australians may also know her as Kath Walker) about customary young love whose last line made me laugh out loud in mutual understanding. In 1901, an anthropologist recorded songs in Central Australia, and one is included Western Arrernte Rain Poem. The author is anonymous. The poem is about the mythical rain ancestor Kantjia who conjures a great flood. In the Red Centre where it rarely rains, this sung poem has big emotion even when translated, in sharing the ‘Big Weather’ as a momentous experience. I didn't find audio versions of these poems to share with you, so I recommend that if you do seek them out, read them aloud.
Paul Kelly includes several poems from New Zealand indigenous woman Tusiata Avia. I find relevance in the first two lines of her poem, House, in my nation’s journey towards unification;
“Ask the god to open the house of your chest
wide enough that your enemy may enter…”
If you didn't know, the first Peoples of New Zealand had a treaty with the colonists from the beginning but if you read her poem, you get an understanding of the challenges for the Maori, that a government document does not balance social scales overnight, nor bring peace where there continued to be a hierarchal dominant culture that discriminated with foreign values. In New Zealand, within two years of intended occupation Britain had made a Declaration of Independence of New Zealand signed initially by 34 chiefs. By the end of 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by 500 Maori. Despite this, land disputes continued. When New Zealand formed its first government in 1852 there were no Maori parliamentary seats. In 1867, four seats of 76 were for Maori members. Despite this, New Zealand's indigenous rights are 150 years ahead of Australia’s.
Indigenous Australians have been seeking compensation since 1846 for colonial agreements made and not upheld. In 1901, when Australia was federated as a young nation, its native peoples we're not considered people but fauna (or animals) to be protected under environmental legislation. This is the continuation of the scheme that Australia was not inhabited and therefore was ‘Terra Nullius’. In 1962, ‘we were counted’ The Uluru Statement of The Heart reminds us, indigenous Australians were given the right to vote, a privilege that Australian non-indigenous women had 60 years earlier.
In 1979, over two hundred years after occupation, an Australian treaty was called for. In 1983, an independent committee appointed by government also recommended a treaty. Yet today, forty years later there is no treaty. This is why in 2017, a constitutional change is called for by 250 delegates for Indigenous Australians so the politics of the elected party or Prime Minister in power (at times less than four-year cycles), does not stop and start, reverse or worsen the livelihoods of dispossessed indigenous Australians (The Voice to Parliament Handbook cites some of these social policy failures).
It is this very lengthy, thwarted progress that The Voice to Parliament Handbook recollects why over 30 years ago in 1991 the song Treaty was published by Yothu Yindi whose lyrics have not aged a day,
“Back in 1988
All those talking politicians
Words are easy, words are cheap
Much cheaper than our priceless land
But promises can disappear
Just like writing in the sand
Treaty Yeh
Treaty Now"
I’m an amateur history buff, I've read the diaries of early Australian settlers (1700s) and I've studied archaeology including The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, and more recent Iron Age civilisations to the Industrial Age all around the world. So many individual lives have rarely been recorded, and those that were came from privilege who had resources and means. The spoken word is the word of the everyday man and woman. A mother singing a nursery rhyme to their child, never did she read it, only that her mother had sung to her the same. Paul Kelly's poetry anthology across three millenia of humanity includes the poor and the rich and the lucky and the unlucky. This is what I have noticed.
Cultures may find difference, but humanity remains the same; the human experience is singular.
Today, Australia’s culture is part of Western culture whose fundamental system is based on winners and losers. Despite democracy, there remains a patriarchal hierarchy still in place from feudal ruling (of the most powerful male groups) for the past 12,000 years. In a social hierarchy we believe there isn’t enough prosperity for everyone, we fear that we will lose when others win. A game of who wins and who loses creates misery for the many, and peace-of-mind for the privileged few. The core of the issue is a concept of ‘lack’, those that have, those that have not. Instead of a concept that there enough to go around. Enough land, enough livelihoods, and enough love. Millions of Westerners are raised today to participate as citizens striving to win (or not lose too much). This ladder-like culture may mean that any kind of virtues we strive for in our communities, such as egalitarianism may on-the-whole be prevented.
An alternative view going forward would be a belief of a bottomless cup rather than a cup half full or a cup that runs over. The bottomless cup is the symbolism of continual bounty and peace for all (abundance principles of Eastern philosophies) that will more likely unite humanity. If everyone shares their surplus there wouldn't be so much fear of lack. Unfortunately, the Western economic system of capitalism encourages the opposite. Most of us think we will never have enough if we look at today's ideals of what is a successful life or even a comfortable life. We also all have our own version of hardship even though there will always be someone suffering more. It is the songs of bards and spoken poetry across the world that shows us we are all in this together. Paul Kelly has written so many great songs about the human condition. From Little Things Big Things Grow inspired by an eight year strike for better human rights is fitting.
Despite our flawed social and economic systems, the symbolism of what 22 million Australians choose at the referendum for their First Nations peoples will reach across time for another 250 years at least. What is ‘learned by heart’ will live on. Songs will be sung to share the progress of humanity through the generations. What words are chosen is up to every Australian by 14 October 2023.
The Australian psyche is unique when you consider our preferred national song is about a thief who commits suicide to evade capture in Waltzing Matilda. A song for the underdog but not exactly embodying the virtues of mankind. For me, every Australian's vote or veto on recognising indigenous Australians in the national constitution, is not about whether we can trust government will do the right job with that authority, or whether it's the right legal instrument to fix Australia’s biggest social issues. I see the compulsory national movement by 14 October 2023 as an acknowledgement or denial of Australia as one humanity limiting suffering for all. The Voice Referendum may consolidate what is cleaved, regather what is scattered, fuse metals to meld a stronger alloy for an Australian future,
as bold as brass,
as hard as iron,
as heavy as lead,
and as good as gold.
References
Kelly, Paul. (2019) Love is Strong as Death. Penguin Random House Australia.
Mayo, O’Brien, K., & Lee, J. (2023). The Voice to Parliament handbook : all the detail you need / Thomas Mayo & Kerry O’Brien ; cartoons by Cathy Wilcox ; design and infographics by Jenna Lee. Hardie Grant Explore.
(2023) Uluru Statement from the Heart. Available at: https://ulurustatement.org/
O’hara, C. (2015) How to tell a great story, Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2014/07/how-to-tell-a-great-story
VanDeCarr, Paul. (2015). Storytelling and Social Change, for Working Narratives, second edition 2015. Available at: https://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/story-guide-second-edition3.pdf
History of New Zealand, 1769-1914, URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/history-of-new-zealand-1769-1914 , (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 18-Apr-2023.