Kookaburra: A Song History
"Kookaburra" was written by Marion Sinclair (1896–1988), a teacher, poet and composer born at Werribee in Victoria, who from 1920 taught music and drama at Toorak College, the school she had attended, and helped with its Girl Guides.[1] Her round won a 1934 competition that the Girl Guides' Association of Victoria held for "a typically Australian round," with Dr A. E. Floyd as judge.[1] Sinclair met the cost of printing it alongside two more of her rounds, under a cover bearing the Victorian Guides' name and the year 1934, and donated the money from sales to the Guide House Fund.[2] Late in 1934 it was heard at the first Pan-Pacific jamboree to take place in Australia, and guides and scouts from abroad brought it back to their own countries, where it came to be sung in many languages.[1] Its composer was modest about it: the Australian Dictionary of Biography records that she thought it a slight thing and took more pride in her Songs from an Old Gum Tree.[1]
David Little, Young Gum Trees, etching. Australian gum trees, shown for the kookaburra's home; it has no connection to the song.
Ownership of the round later became a matter for the courts. In 1987 Sinclair signed over her records, including her musical compositions, to the Libraries Board of South Australia, and she died at North Adelaide in February 1988.[1][2] In 1990 the Public Trustee, as executor of her estate, signed a deed assigning the copyright in "Kookaburra" to Larrikin Music Publishing; the Board, which also had a claim, was paid to give it up and in 2000 joined in a deed assigning its rights to Larrikin as well.[1][2] In July 2009 Justice Jacobson of the Federal Court of Australia held that, whichever of the two had owned the copyright, it had passed to Larrikin, and that the 1934 competition rules had not transferred it to the Guides; his answer applied only as between the parties to the case, to which the Guides were not a party.[2] In February 2010 he found that Men at Work's 1979 and 1981 recordings of "Down Under" reproduced a substantial part of the round in their flute line, though Qantas advertisements also before the court did not.[3] In July 2010 he set Larrikin's share at 5 percent of the APRA and AMCOS income from "Down Under," applied to payments from May 2002.[4] On 31 March 2011 the Full Court of the Federal Court dismissed EMI's appeals, and later that year the High Court of Australia refused EMI leave to appeal further.[5][1]
The manuscript, the court noted, marks the piece as a round in four parts.[3] Dulcimer groups can find it in Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers, which Mark Gilston publishes himself; its 28 pieces were chosen to work well when several players take the same part but start at different moments, so that harmonies and rhythmic contrasts arise.[6]
Sources
- Australian Dictionary of Biography: "Sinclair, Marion (1896–1988)" (P. A. Howell).
- Federal Court of Australia: "Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Ltd v EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited [2009] FCA 799".
- Federal Court of Australia: "Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Ltd v EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited [2010] FCA 29".
- Federal Court of Australia: "Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Ltd v EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited [2010] FCA 698".
- Federal Court of Australia: "EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited v Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Limited [2011] FCAFC 47".
- Mark Gilston: "Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers".
- Image: David Little, Young Gum Trees, etching. The Cleveland Museum of Art.