Title: Muyngarnbi - Songs From Walking With Spirits
Artist: Tom E. Lewis and Songmen
Released: 2007
Available Formats: CD

Following the success of his debut album Sunshine After Rain (Best Album, 2006 Indigenous Music Awards), Tom E. Lewis brings together four Arnhem Land songmen in a new release unlike anything heard before in indigenous music. This startling new work is available through Skinnyfish Music and comes with a bonus 30minute behind-the-scenes DVD.

The area now known as Beswick/Wugularr Community has long been a meeting place for Songmen from all over Arnhem Land. From as early as the 1940s, ethnomusicologists have recorded the gatherings of these Cardinals of indigenous tradition, though the music predates the vinyl by thousands of years. The Songmen are the keepers of the codes that unlock the map – the map of kin, country, culture. When Muyngarnbi (Roy Ashley) sings Yolgnu Man, he is describing the journey of an ancestral being who walked from the sunrise to the sunset, laying down the palm leaves which became the languages, the languages which became the tribes, from Rittharngu to Rembarrnga to Dalabon.

Since 2002, for the Walking With Spirits festival, Songmen have gathered from as far as Numbulwar in the South-East Gulf country to Maningrida in West Arnhem to maintain the ancient campfires. This CD was recorded to celebrate the potency of this vocal tradition, a testament to the songs and their singers, to their power, longevity, and relevance, even in a changing world.

Producers Tom E. Lewis and Michael Hohnen have brought together the songs senior songmen in a ground breaking stylistic development, in which the songmen have relinquished their didjeridu to work with gyspy, rhumba, jazz and rock influences that provide a dynamic contemporary platform for traditional formats.

Ross Hannaford lends his legendary guitar style, and together with Tom Lewis (rhythm guitar), Michael Hohnen (double bass), and Tony Floyd (drums, percussion), songmen Roy Ashley, Mr. Hall, Victor Hood and Jimmy Wesan breathe new life into these songs from the dust.

Muygarnbi, a Djilpin Arts Production
Recorded at Pandanus, Katherine, Northern Territory
Produced by Tom E. Lewis Michael Hohnen