Dirrari Lament (2014)
(for String Orchestra)

Molly Jalakbiya was a Bunuba woman who lived her whole life in the Fitzroy Valley, in Fitzroy Crossing and on the cattle stations on Bunuba country in the Kimberley region of North West Australia. She was a much loved and highly respected woman, a granny and a mentor to June Oscar and Patsy Bedford, who are the custodians of her haunting song Dirrari, which tells the tale of a mother black cockatoo grieving the loss of her young one.
 

Molly’s song was incorporated into a stage play about the life of Bunuba resistance hero Jandamarra, set in the late nineteenth century during the time of dreadful and bloody frontier wars. The Dirrari song is sung in the play by Jandamarra’s mother, Jini (played by Patsy Bedford), as a metaphor of mourning for the fallen hero. Later the song was incorporated into the Dirrari Lament in the large-scale dramatic cantata commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and written by Steve Hawke and me in collaboration with Bunuba musicians, dancers and storytellers.
 

A further transformation, this new chamber orchestra version, commissioned by Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, begins with sombre, introspective mourning with mysterious-sounding harmonic textures, and gradually develops into a searing emotive outpouring. Molly’s song is used here with the kind permission of June Oscar and Patsy Bedford.

Paul Stanhope