In February 2006, the antipodean summer, I arrived at the Aboriginal village of Yuendumu, 300km northwest of Alice Springs to continue work on a project to record, transcribe and translate song cycles sung by Warlpiri speakers. This was, in part, to follow up on many hours of recordings made during fieldwork in 1972-3, which had been neglected since then. The summer period from December to February is the time that Warlpiri people have conducted circumcision ceremonies as part of male maturity rites, at least since their involvement with the pastoral industry, because it was the period of the summer lay off from stock work. I arrived just after the last ceremonies of that year had finished, as I learnt from an old Aboriginal friend. I asked him about the ceremonies, where they had been held, who had been involved and whether they had been conducted in the same way as when I first saw them in 1972. After a few minutes of answering my questions he halted and then said: you know those younger and middle-aged people don't know the songs, they were ‘just humming’.

This surprised me. Warlpiri people are not in decline, indeed their numbers are growing substantially, with over 800 Warlpiri speakers living at Yuendumu and several hundred other Warlpiri people nearby. Further it was not as if there had been a hiatus in the holding of circumcision between 1973 and 2006. Not only have circumcision ceremonies been held at Yuendumu during most Christmas periods but they have also been held at nearby Wurriwurri (Mt Allen Station), the home of Amatjirra speakers, which Warlpiri often participated in. Further in many years substantial numbers of Warlpiri people have been gathered up by travelling pre-circumcision candidates ( jilkaja) and their guardians from other communities, sometimes from communities over a thousand kilometres away, and taken back to the boys home community to participate in the ceremony for the boy held there. While there is some variation in the main circumcision ceremony held across the Western Desert there is enough similarity in language, song and ceremony for people from far apart to fully participate in each others ceremonies.