In February 2025, Kaitie re-researched this beloved song and found an incredible, comprehensive article in the CMIVC blog. This article is a much fuller resource than the teaching page below; we encourage you to read it in full.
The experience of finding this information so many years after learning the song is a great example of how, when you are sourcing songs, it’s good to go back and do it again and again years later. If you love a song, keep digging to meet more of it. The internet itself is oral tradition, and new reunions of old stories and people are finding their way back together all the time.
I’ve left the teaching page as it was before the article was found, so you can see where it started. A significant update after discovering this article is that the Aair yawodi part refers to calling the youth, and that the memory of Balang T. E. Lewis referring to his lost brother was, in fact, real.
I learned this song in the Goldenbridge Choir from Maggie Wheeler, whose source was the Melbourne Millenium Choir. The song has since traveled and now can be heard frequently in song circles; few people know it was written by the Aboriginal Australian performer, Tom E Lewis. You can listen to his recording with Stephen Costello and Melanie Shanahan below.
Note: Don’t forget to stagger your breathing. Think: didgeridoo.
Left: artistic rendering of the Aboriginal Australian myth of Ngurunderi, a story that contains a catastrophic flood (Source)
Right: Tom E Lewis
Below: Tom E Lewis’ recording with Stephen Costello and Melanie Shanahan
Notes from Maggie Wheeler, who taught me the song:
Here is the original recording from which I learned this song. It was given to me as a gift by Rebecca Spaulding of Australia – we met on line because I wanted to include her song Walk A Mile in a concerts – she later went to Canada to Ubuntu Choirs & we met there when Emile & I went to teach a workshop to that years participants. She brought me several gifts from Australia – one was the CD that contained this song which has now spread among Ubuntu choir directors and beyond. Lingmarra – melborne millenium choir
Written by Tom E Lewis one of Australias most significant actors. He is an Aboriginal man from the very north of Australia a place called Roper River in Sth.Eastern Arnhem Land.This is a very remote extraordinary part of our country.
Tom’s “Lingmarra” is an improvisation on a mix of song concepts from his country and languages.
It’s not really possible to translate directly, Lingmarra is a kind of call to people, he made this version a long time ago when he was living in Melbourne, a long way from his country in the Northern Territory of Australia (Arnhem Land), he was calling up spirits, for guidance and support and company, so it’s a kind of chant for home and kin. Originally he remembered his father singing it in a boat .
The word Lingmarra crosses a number of Arnhem languages, the Djilin YouTube channel has a video for a recording of Gamba Lingmarra, which means “spirit of man” (people), this is an important song in Dalabon language, the White Cockatoo corroboree known as Bongiling Bongiling.
I was recently searching in vain for days and days to find background on a Maori song – I had just about given up when I found a funky little website run by a guy who seemed to know a lot about Maori culture . I wrote to him and he sent me exactly what I had been fruitlessly searching for – the info on Lingmarra came the same way – I had just surface level info on the song & a great deal of info on the composer . I reached out through an Aussie website to try to get more info & Tom’s blessing as the Aboriginal culture is very private – no luck . I wrote several times – no luck. A year later 2 of my CCLT friends who learned the song from me reached out to the same organization and got an amazing response … all this to say that from my own perspective the search itself can lead you to unexpected places and can deepen your relationship to the song.
Kaitie’s note: I have a memory of being told that the song originated while Tom was looking for his brother after a flood; no one else seems to remember this story so it’s quite possible that the story came in my imagination through the searching, expansive feeling of the song.
