“Heartbeat”, or singing the novel afresh

Abstract

Popular music constitutes a rarely-mentioned facet of Carpentaria’s intermedial aesthetic. “Song”, part of Diana Brydon’s “Reading across the Pacific: Reorienting the North”, briefly evokes song in Carpentaria, though only “national” song(s). In “Dreaming of Others: Carpentaria and its critics”, Alison Ravenscroft is “puzzled not only by song but by the entire scene” when Fishman sings country songs. Yet Wright wrote Carpentaria “while listening to music”, including “blues” and “country”; it “started to be written like a long song”. Some popular singers are either named or suggested by their lyrics. We consider these artists and their work in context, within Carpentaria’s appeal to Americana, not Australiana, and to polyvocally singing the novel afresh. Wright later co-wrote the song “Giidang”—“heartbeat” in the Gumbayngirr language.