Jeanette Wormald attended Oak Valley Aboriginal School which hosted its first ever community concert or inma last month. Jeanette Wormald, from Adelaide, spent a week at the remote desert school, 1500km north west of Adelaide, working with the students. It was the final leg in a month long tour working with Pitjantjatjara students from throughout South Australia. During her week at Oak Valley, Jeanette encouraged the students to sing and write songs that celebrated their lives and environment. They then performed their songs at the inma. “The focus of my Songs of the Inland Music programme is to share the joy of music and show students how songs can tell stories, celebrate identity and build self esteem through using students own experiences and lives as inspiration,” Jeanette said. “Working with Aboriginal communities is a priviledge and an incredibly special experience. For the majority of the students and communities I work with, English is a second language. Music is a wonderful way to overcome so many barriers and connect, communicate and celebrate.” Oak Valley students were taken on a bush trip to nearby sand hills in the Great Victoria Desert and then the next day they wrote a song with Jeanette called “Stories in the Sand” about the animal and birds tracks they found in the sand hills. This song and other songs about Anangu children’s lives were performed at the inma. Jeanette said response to the inma was wonderful, with parents and adults from community clearly delighted by their children’s singing and dancing. “And the kids were so enthusiastic they kept asking to sing the songs again,” she said. “It was great to host the event in the school grounds. When we made the decision to set up the concert in front of the admin building, we did not realise that we were creating a historic event for the school.” Oak Valley Aboriginal School principal Vivien Deed said Jeanette’s visit was a great success with positive learning outcomes for the students. “It gives them a chance to be creative and make up their own songs,” she said. “It was good to see that all the kids got involved with the inma and good to see the family members turn up.” “Events like Jeanette’s visit give the kids an experience we can’t offer them. The children have music in them. It’s something that they love and they love to participate in. It’s good to hear them sing.” “We want to continue the programme and will definitely have Jeanette back again,” Ms Deed said. Jeanette also spent a week at the Yalata Anangu School, west of Ceduna, building on the previous work she had done there last year encouraging the students to write and perform their original songs. “The songs this time were wonderful with the students celebrating what was unique about their lives and their community. Yalata is the only Anangu community whose land encompasses parts of the far west coast of SA. We wrote a song with the middle primary students about the whales and the older students wrote a great song in the desert reggae style about Yalata Beach.” Yalata School also hosted an inma to celebrate Jeanette’s visit which was well attended by the community. Jeanette, who has been working on music programmes with SA Aboriginal communities for more than ten years, spent the whole of June working in Anangu schools throughout the state. She began the month with a two week visit to the APY Lands delivering a music programme which focussed on building literacy skills in early childhood and junior primary students, before heading west to work in Yalata and Oak Valley. She said students in the APY Lands were excited to hear the songs she had written with the Yalata students when she visited last year. “I think the Yalata children’s songs could be a hit – especially “Roly Poly Wombat” and “Bush Sweet.” It’s really important for children to hear and sing songs that relate to their own lives.” Jeanette Wormald is a professional singer songwriter based in Adelaide. She has released four albums and has enjoyed national and international success with her music, performing at major music festivals including the Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Adelaide Cabaret festival, Tamworth and the Gympie Muster. Jeanette has been working with the Oak Valley community since 2001. However, this was her first visit to Oak Valley which focussed purely on the children and the school and her second visit to the Yalata Anangu School.
Jeanette Wormald has made a request for second hand nylon strings for the guitars in her music education project in the communities of the Northern Territory.
