SONGLINES ON SCREEN Naina Sen’s The Song Keepers and Aboriginal Histories

I remember thinking – well, actually, wasn’t thinking; I felt. I felt just sheer joy. And I felt this weird sensation of bewilderment that no-one in this country knew about this choir. How is this possible?

I’m on the phone with documentary filmmaker and video installation / projection artist Naina Sen; she’s recounting the first Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir rehearsal that she attended, in a small church in Alice Springs. While she was born in New Delhi, Sen has spent the last seven years working with Aboriginal people and communities, and, in turn, has ‘had access and privilege to hear some pretty extraordinary music’. The choir comprises an exceptional group of women from various remote communities in the desert region around Ntaria (Hermannsburg) – situated in the hills of the MacDonnell Ranges, 125 kilometres west of Alice Springs – who sing centuries-old Lutheran hymns in their own languages, namely Arrernte and Pitjantjatjara. They are the subjects of Sen’s feature-length documentary The Song Keepers (2017), which traces the fascinating history of the choral traditions of Central Australia’s desert communities and follows the choir on their tour of Germany with conductor Morris Stuart, returning the Lutheran hymns to their birthplace.

Much as songlines do,

The Song Keepers

traces the journeys and stories of these women. As both an uncovering and an opening-out, the film provides a platform for these voices and calls on us to listen in.

Perhaps ‘return’ is the wrong word, because it suggests the