Filmmaker Naina Sen’s The Song Keepers follows The Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir that has adapted ancient German hymns. The documentary, which took Sen about four years to make, released in theatres in Australia earlier this year.
I felt a strange kinship, a sense of belonging, a familiarity that I had never experienced before in Australia. I loved my life and work in Melbourne but I felt a surreal connection while working on the five-day workshop for the Koori Aboriginal people in 2006. I think that’s when it dawned on me that I knew nothing of the vast history of this land and its people,” says filmmaker Naina Sen, while talking about the conceptualisation of the documentary, The Song Keepers, which takes us into the world of The Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir (TCAAWC).
The filmmaker moved to Darwin in 2007, but the experience of the workshop stayed with her. Soon, she was introduced to TCAAWC, while she was on a flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne. “The lady sitting next to me told me about this fabulous all women’s choir. It was an anomaly to me, because till that moment I had only been exposed to aboriginal music as deeply ceremonial, traditional and within the parameters of folk, reggae and country music. I Googled them and here was this 140-year-old musical tradition that was continuing,” adds Sen, who graduated from St Stephen’s College in Delhi. She traces the popularity of choir groups and choral singing in central Australia to the early 19th century, when Lutheran missionaries arrived in the region. The missionaries departed but the aboriginals continued to sing their music and hymns, while making them their own.
The 84-minute documentary , which took Sen about four years to make, released in theaters in Australia earlier this year. The Songkeepers begins with a scene of the choir practicing in a tiny church in Alice Springs. Pastor Stuart informs the 32-member group that they will soon travel to Bavaria to perform the very hymns that were taught to them by Lutheran missionaries. “I had many lengthy conversations with Morris Stuart, the choir master, who told me that the women want to share their story with the world but don’t know how. The choir was preparing for the Boomerang tour, where they would travel to Bavaria and Germany and sing the hymns that they were taught but in their own language and style. The meanings and the forms of the songs have evolved. The tour had a seminal significance,” says Sen, who first moved to Australia in 2001 to pursue her Masters at La Trobe University, Melbourne.
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