Abstract
The practice of gumleaf playing bridges art and activism as a whimsical musical thread in Australia’s national imagination. This article pursues a gumleaf sound-culture system that embraces environmental, physical, and musical qualities remote from mainstream music. In scoping meanings and modalities for gumleaf sounds within the Indigenous Koori lifeworlds of New South Wales, this collaborative reflection features the voice of senior custodian of the tradition Yuin-Monaro Elder Uncle Ossie Cruse (b. 1933). The coauthors’ ecocritical stance portrays a fringe musical tradition at the intersection between colonial domination and environmental degradation. They base a phenomenology of gumleaf sounds around Uncle Ossie’s memories, lived experiences, performativity, and approaches to preserving Indigenous sonic space in environmental, political, pedagogical, and spiritual settings. Uncle Ossie’s soundmark enhances his endorsements of environmental and social justice. A commissioned curation of an early twentieth-century gumleaf band at Eden’s 2022 Giiyong Festival underscored a decolonial turn in Australian music as it reconnected gumleaf sounds to community and country. The gumleaf is an explicitly green instrument that subtly references the universal threat of bioextinction. Its sounds implicitly undergird the environmental thematic, pointing us back to ways of “playing the land” instead of destroying it.
Introduction
Sounds played on Australia’s iconic eucalypt leaf, commonly called a gumleaf (fig. 1), reflect human interaction with the immediate physical environment as an expressive cultural response to the environment. The gumleaf’s primal inventory of sounds provides a unique way of viewing both music and our relationship with the more-than-human world. It is feasible that the custom of teasing acoustic sound from biodegradable leaf matter is the continuation of an ageless musical discourse with nature’s sound commons: a concept theorized by Jeff Todd Titon to signify sound communication between all living beings in an open commonwealth of sound.1
Eucalypts vary regionally and seasonally, necessitating specialist knowledges of species leaf tone, timbre, and range. Gumleaves relate to all five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, but they lack creative agency until “leafists” connect with them to generate music.2 The process begins at a plant’s own source or, more commonly, on an intact leaf plucked for performance. Leaves can be transported across distances in coolers. Sound is produced as the leaf vibrates against the upper or lower lip, at the same frequency as the vocal cords. Pitch is manipulated by tightening or loosening the leaf to raise or lower its frequency. Gumleaf sounds have been diversely mistaken for birds, human whistling, violins, wind instruments, female voices, and chirping insects.3
Ecomusicologists explore the significance of sound and music in human cultures and societies worldwide while also focusing attention on the wider soundscape of and impact on the planet.4 A prominent direction in the field pursues the Anthropocene’s interface with cultural activities of music via closer applications of ecology in particular places.5 Steven Feld’s acoustemology describes how peculiar modes of Indigenous knowing are enabled by acoustic experience,6 while discussion of musical instruments, according to Kevin Dawe, must increasingly focus on both the physical impact and symbolic power of the materials themselves: “For in these natural resources, nature is given new life and form.”7 Aaron S. Allen asserts that privileging human culture over nature endangers the sustainability of all cultures, human and otherwise.8 Music has a distinct role to play in sustaining environments because it “goes beyond words.” Tim Hollo describes music as “a prime for shifting perspective about how people view the world and reach each other because musicians are able to speak to many people through the medium.”9
To strengthen the ecology of the gumleaf as a resource of and for local societies, this article underscores the love of country that engenders the Indigenous person’s affective bond with environment mixed with a sense of cultural identity. Country is an Aboriginal English term commonly used by First Nations Australians to describe the lands to which they are connected through ancestral ties and associations with particular parts of Australia. Tribal boundaries were fixed over time and explained in cultural stories and songs. Custodianship included responsibilities to “care for country.” Tribespeople kept the ecosystems that supported life in balance by practicing intimate environmental knowledges and by conducting specific ceremonies such as those still performed by the Yolngu people of North East Arnhem Land today.
The following dialogue features the memories, performativity, and approaches adopted by Senior Yuin-Monaro Elder Uncle Ossie Cruse (b. 1933) of Eden, New South Wales (NSW), to preserving Indigenous sonic space through changing ecological and intercultural contexts.10 Uncle Ossie has long traversed First and Second Nation societies in regional, national, and international spheres, considerably broadening the dialogue between them while maintaining the essence of Yuin-Monaro culture.
The authors’ postcolonial ecocritical stance portrays human-environment relationships in intersection between colonial domination and environmental degradation as they scope meanings and modalities of gumleaf sounds for the Koori people of South East New South Wales. They locate the processes and positionings of Uncle Ossie’s leaf playing in environmental, political, pedagogical, and spiritual contexts respectively. The article concludes with a unique attempt by Uncle Ossie and four others to revive the sound-culture of an early gumleaf band.
Historical Perspectives
Robin Ryan has collaborated with leafists since the mid-1990s. Many, including those since passed, generously shared music and knowledges of how leaf playing defined their cultural survival. Uncle Ossie complements these findings by advocating the uniqueness of gumleaf playing as a medium of respect and concern for Mother Earth and for the rights of Australia’s First Peoples to flourish where they belong. As Kiley Price advocates, racial inequality must first be addressed if Indigenous leaders are to tackle climate change.11
Gumleaf playing proliferated in Australia’s Southeast Crescent during the early twentieth century. Recalling how the sounds fortified the sociocultural fabric of Koori communities during his childhood, Uncle Ossie introduces himself and describes how, why, when, and where he took up gumleaf playing:
I was born in 1933 at Orbost, East Gippsland, Victoria, to a mother from the Gunaikurnai tribe. My father was a Yuin-Monaro man of southern NSW whose ancestry included both saltwater and freshwater peoples. The Yuin managed the pristine coastline and Monaro high-country hinterlands up until contact, when strangers changed the names, sights, and sounds of our country. Country is key to our survival and our connection to the past. The Earth is our “Mother”; she provides our food, shelter, and everything else we require.
Initially, I lived very close to full-blood Aboriginal people. My first recollections were as a four-year old at Nowra, and of the Wreck Bay Mission, forty kilometers away. Gumleaf playing was a popular pastime in both areas. I loved listening to the “old fellas” sounding their leaves in harmony. Sometimes they performed alongside a choir. Everyone just loved singing back then . . . especially Charlie Ardler and the Koori war hero Andy “Digger” Bond.
The leafists I saw at Wreck Bay were Stan Mundy, Junung and Alan Roberts, Jerry Witts, Sam and Johnny Ardler, Herbie “Brother Boy” Chapman, Billy Johnson, Hector McCloud, and members of the Thomas family. I noticed leafists in other towns too: Bobby McCloud, Reg Walker, and Lance McDougall. Some other memorable characters were little Mice Ardler of La Perouse, and big Ted Chook Mullett of Lake Tyers, Victoria, who led a gumleaf trio in the 1930s. Their “leafy” live music enhanced social inclusion within our culture.
I started playing the leaf around 1940 because it was the natural thing for Koori youngsters to do. I played with the “mob” or when I “went bush” with my gudjaagalali [playmates]. Growing up in an era of overt discrimination, we played leaves more confidently when visiting missions at La Perouse, Wreck Bay, Wallaga Lake, and Lake Tyers. The Wallaga Lake community included my father’s people, the Walkers and Hoskins; the Lake Tyers “mob” my mother’s people, the Peppers and Thorpes.
The evidence for traditional tunes played on gumleaves is scant. However, postcontact data corroborates evidence for leaf soundmakers functioning as hunting decoys, music toys, contact signals, danger signals, and ghost simulators.12 For example, at campfires along the Murray River bordering NSW and Victoria, the gumleaf (waala; walou) assumed the theatrical modality of a blood-curdling Hairy Bekka ghost soundmark13 as Yorta Yorta Elders entertained children with stories.14
Modes of leaf playing co-opted by missionaries were woven into the mostly obscured internal vitality of Indigenous community life in response to incumbent processes of musical transculturation. This evidenced how much of a special soundmark the gumleaf was for enticing social participation from its impoverished stakeholders. In 1994, the late Yorta Yorta Elder Aunty Geraldine Briggs commented that she “no longer felt quite so alone when the leaves were being played and you are singing in Yorta Yorta and it’s happy.”15
The early twentieth-century media represented gumleaf playing as a rustic signifier of Aboriginal material poverty. The Wallaga Lake Gumleaf Band’s heyday peaked during the 1920s and the 1930s Depression, garnering them mainstream popularity at a time when Koori/non-Koori socialization was rare. In Victoria, the Lake Tyers Gumleaf Band performed for thousands of tourists during the 1920s and 1930s and famously stirred up a martial spirit among troops departing for World War II.16
Many regard Indigenous leaf playing to be traditional because, as Mark F. De Witt notes, the sound patterns that instruments produce through familiarity become desiderata, things wanted or needed.17 Gumleaves furnished plentiful musical resources at postcontact corroborees; on missions, in churches, and on the stock routes; at socials and weddings; and at school and sporting venues. Koori and non-Koori leafists performed in concerts, at circuses and cinemas, and in bush bands, dance bands, variety broadcasts, stage shows, and fairs.
Leafists adapted Western tunes, blending in Indigenous traits of additive phrases and irregular meters to hymns, folk and coon songs, war songs, gumleaf jazz, country and western songs, pop and rock songs, and original Koori songs. Ethnomusicologist Cath Ellis recorded an eerie-sounding version of “The Old Rugged Cross” by a harmonizing gumleaf duo at Gerard Mission, Upper Murray District, South Australia, in 1962.18
A convergence of historical forces caused the mid-twentieth-century demise of circulating gumleaf bands: demissionization, the postwar urban drift, and rock and roll’s new appeal for guitars in Koori society. A few leaf trios, duos, and lone minstrels endured. Having watched the “old fellas” play the leaf with two hands, one hand, or no hands, Uncle Ossie (fig. 2) cultivated all three methods.
Uncle Ossie recalls the Wallaga Lake bandsmen who inspired him to perpetuate the tradition:
As a young man I worked with Uncle Percy “Bing” Mumbulla [1907–1991]. Percy sent out a powerful sound on the leaf, and old ladies cried when he sang sad songs. Uncle Percy “Square Blocks” Davis [b. late nineteenth century, d. 1968] was a talented leafist, fiddler, and dancer. Uncle Jimmy “Kunkus” Little [1911–1972] was described by his granddaughter Frances Peters-Little as “one of the band’s flashiest performers, jumping about and making a racket and generally doing everything he could to charm the crowd.”19 Uncle “Guboo” Ted Thomas [1909–2002] used to sing me to sleep when my family lived south of Nowra. Guboo was the youngest Yuin leaf bandsman to walk from Wallaga Lake to Melbourne in the late 1920s to perform at a ball.
I miss my old uncles very much and my motivation for playing the leaf has always been to honor them, to ignite cultural memories, and to sustain the tradition through participation. I still attract audiences in my ninety-second year, but I’m challenged by their inability to elicit leaf sounds as easily as their forebears did. However, gumleaf playing is well worth the investment of my time and energy. Just like revived spoken languages, the sounds fertilize the cultural soil of our Koori heritage and identity. It’s important to revitalize our traditions, to recognize who we are, what we do, and why we do it. Our knowledge systems retain keys for sustainably harnessing elements of natural environments.
Environmental Perspectives
The varied timbres of leaf sounds offer sensual exercises in hearing place. The ecologically inspired practice of playing out on-country forms an intimate part of Uncle Ossie’s personal reflection to and from the more-than-human world. Gumleaf playing creates music out-of-country as a live relational act since “country” is a place of belonging for all forms of life. Healthy gumleaves project the “perennial aesthetic pull of the earthy, the natural, the green, the living.”20 Contemporary Indigenous leafists use this essence of a green voice to influence and inspire public actions and attitudes around environmental upheaval.
Indigenous performances serve to unify human relationships within the auditory and spatial environments of natural ecosystems. The movements and sounds of dance and music acquire strong associations that engender continuities with the traditional past. Uncle Ossie explains how traditional performing arts connect people to environment in a sensually cultural way:
The coastal Yuin’s connections to natural environments strongly influence our cultural outpourings. On Aboriginal-owned land at Jigamy Farm via Eden, we sing- , play-, and dance-up country in the ceremonial “Bunaan” ring. We also utilize the Bundian Way, a 365-kilometer heritage-listed pathway between Bilgalera [Fisheries Beach, Eden] and Targangal [Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s highest peak].21 I enjoy improvising tunes as a bush “walkabout” activity while strolling the Bundian Way Story Trail [fig. 3] around Turemulerrer [Twofold Bay]. I also perform gumleaf at a Bunaan along the Story Trail.22 Audiences connect enthusiastically with this picturesque arboreal and marine environment when they hear the reverberating echoes of leaves blown near water.
The late Gumbaynggirr Elder Aunty Roseina Boston (1935–2018) of Macksville, NSW, “called the land” by echoing the sounds of nature. By shivering the chuckling sounds of her totem Gaagum (the Laughing Kookaburra) on Ghost Gum leaves, Aunty Roseina animated the surrounding acoustic communities.23 Her practice resonated with Thoreau’s nineteenth-century understanding of nature’s interactive community communicating presence in sound along with human music’s artful echoing.24
A “sound commons” expresses an ecological rationality as a soundscape in which all beings enjoy a commonwealth of sound, freely communicating in their acoustic niches with as little interference as possible.25 The gumleaf sound-culture enhances the ongoing reinvigoration of Indigenous customary relations to country, demonstrated below by Uncle Ossie as he shares his ethical approach to playing the gumleaf within local ecosystems:
Mother Earth is the initial referent for our music. I tune in to her soundscapes to consider how I can blend in respectfully before I offer my melodies to her varied sound commons of birdcalls, insect chirping, animal grunts, echoes, splashes; wind and thunder; and intermittent silences. While playing a gumleaf in the bush, a nearby bird tried to outdo my sounds in a full-on musical conversation! I gave him my best, but he was better than me. . . .
The deeper we plunge into contact with Mother Earth, the more we can feel the energy and vibration of her sound commons. Speaking or singing our language on-country can enrich this experience. For example, we exchange Yuin language words and knowledges of flora, fauna, and seasonal changes along the Yanda Biratj [walk and talk] trail. Our old people understood the cycles and patterns of flora and fauna, the timing of tides, and the cycles and patterns of seasons. I have noticed changes taking place in recent years. Mother Nature is upset because weather is not working together with the rest of her community. For example, the southerly wind brings in heavy waves, but “Guragama” [the westerly wind] calms the sea. We relied on the first Guragama and northeast winds to start our lobster season, but fish no longer travel the way they used to at certain times of the month.
The resilient Australian eucalypts are becoming more prone to catastrophic weather events. The 2019–20 Black Summer (fig. 4) burned 5.5 million hectares of NSW land.
Rising temperatures and depletion of soil moisture have brought new pests and diseases to eucalypt populations,26 which, as Uncle Ossie observes, makes it increasingly difficult to locate uncorrupted gumleaves for musical use:
When I worked as a timber sleeper cutter, I enjoyed playing Blackbutt and Mahogany leaves during work breaks. In Eden, I play juvenile leaves of Spotted Gum, known to Kooris as “Leopard Gum.” I planted a grove beside Jigamy’s Keeping Place because Leopard Gum strengthens my connection to country. Its leaves are relatively unspoilt, but I have concerns for the long-term survival of Eucalyptus in temperate South East Australia. When I mention the damage from leaf-chewing insects [fig. 5] at my performances, I draw attention to the threat of universal arborial loss. Indigenous peoples worldwide are often the first to feel the impacts of global warming. Restoring as much of the natural environment as possible is the greatest challenge of this century.
The Gumleaf and Social Space
Uncle Ossie cultivates networks of relationships as he circulates in Koori, mainstream, and intercultural contexts. This varied space of possibles and position-takings allows him to capitalize on the symbolic performative of his gumleaf. Bourdieu’s space of possibles is a space where radical politics operates through artistic production, situated within a network of relations among objective positions.27 Uncle Ossie’s respected stance within Koori inhabited and appropriated space commands the representations and positions he adopts to conserve the values and rights of the Yuin-Monaro for freedoms that other Australians take for granted. He has advised several prime ministers, state premiers, and local government bodies. In the late 1970s he was a member of the National Aboriginal Conference that introduced the Makarrata.28 In 2017 Uncle Ossie participated in the signing of a Makarrata at Uluru, Northern Territory:
I expounded the Makarrata at public forums and at regional festivals in Bega, Braidwood, Canberra, Candelo, Cobargo, and Eden. At these and other events, I incorporate gumleaf sounds laterally. As I stand on contested ground, this emblem of Indigeneity speaks for both of us. For that matter the sight of any Aboriginal performer subtly disrupts the concept of terra nullius, the colonizing untruth that our island-continent was uninhabited before the British arrived. The Makarrata, also known as the “Uluru Statement from the Heart,” called for Australia’s First Peoples to be recognized in the Constitution through a “Voice to Parliament.”29
Uncle Ossie vivifies his formal Welcome to Country engagements with a gumleaf solo:
The “Welcome to Country” protocol greets people onto unceded Indigenous land. Clan leaders originally welcomed neighboring and far-removed peoples onto country as extended family. Your totem and skin grouping could find you a family anywhere. Inclusiveness remains the central facet of our culture. And whether we sing, play, or dance people on-to-country, the welcome conjures up feelings of respect for the land.
In May 2016, I played gumleaf to welcome Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and NSW Premier Mike Baird to Eden’s port for their preelection announcement of a forty-four-million-dollar expansion to service international cruise ships. The sound and sight of a gumleaf is embraced by disembarking passengers because it’s an iconic sensor of the Australian bush. Cultural tourism allows me to welcome and befriend people as a Yuin-Monaro descendant. The Mission to Seafarers hosts dinners to welcome crew members from the Asia-Pacific Rim into Eden during the fumigation of vessels. In 2019, Rev. Michael Palmer invited me to welcome crews with a gumleaf tune and teach them how to vibrate the leaf [fig. 6]. Together we transcended cultural space. One crew responded to this “Aussie” music by sharing songs and dances from their homelands of China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Myanmar. The engineer astonished himself by the leaf sounds he achieved.
Uncle Ossie’s instructive stewardship of the gumleaf promotes care of natural environments:
I demonstrate leaf playing to Koori children and youth both off- and on-country to encourage their self-worth, and pride in our culture. I also share the skill with non-Koori youth. All Australians need to connect with country, care for country, and share knowledges of country. There is nothing more important than restoring country in step with environmental change. In July 2019, I demonstrated gumleaf playing to some 550 primary-age children from Bega Valley schools. My vision is for leaf playing to be a cultural arts and bushcraft facet of Jigamy’s forthcoming youth camp.
Uncle Ossie’s visionary role modeling resonates with didactic concepts advocated by Nancy G. Barrón, Sybille Gruber, and Gavin Huffman of bringing the principles of ecocomposition and the study of the relationship between discourse, nature, environment, location, and place into the sphere of student engagement with environmental awareness.30 Uncle Ossie explains how a special leaf technique assumed new life:
I produce a “Koori lonesome whistle” on gumleaf to alert other Kooris to my presence. Sydney composer Damian Barbeler recorded the reverberating whistle to use as a leitmotif in the multimedia Bundian Way Concert premiered at Canberra International Music Festival on May 7 and 8, 2022. Scored for five musicians, recorded wildlife, and the lonesome whistle, Barbeler’s “Scenes from the Bundian Way” connected seamlessly to compositions by Brenda Gifford, Eric Avery, and Kate Neal. John Blay’s voice narration informed the rhythmic and expressive executions of the scenic soundscapes portrayed.31
Donning his signature hat (see fig. 2) as pastor to Eden’s Indigenous community, Uncle Ossie describes how gumleaf sounds function in ministry:
Indigenous Christian pastors reinforce values of caring and sharing by setting worshipful music in motion. Rev. Graham Paulson [ordained 1968] was Australia’s first Indigenous Baptist pastor. He directed his congregation at Fingal Point, NSW, to pick gumleaves, leading them with his own leaf to play hymns in two- or three-part harmony. There’s something moving about hearing hymns played on gumleaves. The sounds reflect how nature itself glorifies God. I have played stiff, dry eucalypt leaves at Aboriginal Christian conventions in arid Port Augusta, South Australia, since 1970. I also played leaf at an annual Eden Country Gospel Sounds festival that I founded half a century ago as respite for Koori families.
Whether they be mellow, sweet, trumpety, or wailing, gumleaf timbres provide solace for Kooris at community burials. Grieving families have a special love for “The Old Rugged Cross.” Gumleaf sounds also refresh the spirits of those paying the price for intergenerational trauma within fractured Koori communities. I play Spotted Gum leaves when I pastor Indigenous inmates at Cooma Correctional Centre, NSW. The fellas have a “good go” at the leaves, and low-risk inmates try gumleaf playing during manual work on the Bundian Way.
Recent Initiatives
Today the gumleaf achieves visibility in street busking, festivals, contests, and YouTube clips. Notably the profitable busking activities of Gunaikurnai Elder Uncle Herb Patten of Melbourne suggest that “money does grow on trees.” Cyberspace has equipped Uncle Herb to connect with leafists across the globe.
Uncle Ossie’s dream of forming a modern-day gumleaf band was fulfilled at Jigamy’s 2022 Giiyong (“Welcome”) Festival:
South East Arts cultural festival coordinator Jasmin Williams secured a grant for me to invite other leafists to Eden. Our talents converged on April 3 for a weeklong rehearsal, recorded for a documentary film marking the centenary of the Wallaga Lake Gumleaf Band. The Giiyong Gumleaf Band comprised Uncles Ossie Stewart [b. 1939], James Gurri Dungay [b. 1958], and me from NSW, together with Uncles Herb Patten [b. 1943] and Wayne Watbalimba Jeela Thorpe [b. 1961] from Victoria.
Our performance on April 9 attracted the largest festival crowd. The band performed original songs, Koori staples, and “Pack Up Your Troubles,” a war song adopted by mid-twentieth-century Koori families moving between Lake Tyers and Wallaga Lake to avoid the forced removal of their children. A finale of gospel favorites completed this curation of a gumleaf band as we reconnected our sounds to country and to each other. Koori audience members were transfixed to hear a gumleaf band resonating once again on Yuin land.
Conclusion
This collaborative reflection augments knowledge of a gumleaf sound-culture’s role in nourishing relationships between nature, music, culture, and societies. On-country performances sustain ecology by illuminating the canon of Indigenous musical life enveloped within ecosystems. Having survived drastic social and musical change, gumleaf sound-culture faces increasing degrees of forest erasure. Should Australia’s eucalypt forests atrophy into ecological wastelands, this unique musical practice will experience decline. In portraying a nature-expressive culture link, the gumleaf implicitly references the threat of bioextinction. And as an explicitly green musical instrument, it projects critical space for the role of nature and sound in contemporary sustainability discourse. In advocating the survival, continuity, and diversity of Koori culture in South East Australia, Uncle Ossie leads by example. Notably the Giiyong Gumleaf Band restored a historical connection between gumleaf playing and country. This expressive sound-culture can be utilized—with flexibility and grace—as a barometer to the past and a wakeup call to the future.
Acknowledgments
We presented an earlier version of this article at the ANU School of Music Research Colloquium, the Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, on May 5, 2022. We thank Professor Kim Cunio for encouragement and our editors and anonymous reviewers for valuable advice.
Notes
The term leafist was coined by Robin Ryan in “Spiritual Sound,” 1.
Anecdotes compiled by Ryan; see “Spiritual Sound,” 215.
Koori Elders are respectfully addressed as “Uncle” or “Aunty.”
Ryan, “Spiritual Sound,” chap. 1.
This term was introduced by Barry Truax in Handbook for Acoustic Ecology to denote the presence and character of a sound that is predominant in a particular environment.
Track 1 of Picking up the Threads: Australian Women’s Folk Music, produced by Jenny Gall (Elidor Records, 2009).
Worded in the style of Rothenberg, “Introduction,” 5.
In On Track (2015), John Blay describes the rediscovery of the pathway. It is anticipated that work overseen by Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council will make this ancient pathway one of the world’s great walking tracks.
See “Bundian Way Story Trail,” New South Wales Government (website), https://www.nsw.gov.au/visiting-and-exploring-nsw/locations-and-attractions/bundian-way-story-trail (accessed November 28, 2024).
The federal referendum held on October 14, 2023, proposed to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian Constitution through a Voice to Parliament. The proposal was rejected by the Australian public.
Damian Barbeler, “Scenes from the Bundian Way—Trailer,” https://www.barbeler.com (accessed November 28, 2024).
