“Ngarra Bura Fera” is a Yorta Yorta adaptation of the African American spiritual “Turn Back Pharaoh’s Army,” which is in turn an adaptation of the two Jewish praise songs—one Moses’s, one Miriam’s—recorded in Exodus 15, following the Jews’ successful escape from slavery in Egypt.
Phillip Ratner, Miriam. Dennis & Phillip Ratner Museum, Bethesda, Maryland.
Yorta Yorta is the language spoken by the Aboriginal people of the Goulburn and Murray Valleys in northeastern Victoria, Australia. Discriminated against for centuries because of their black skin, they resonate with the Jews’—and African Americans’—experience of state-sponsored oppression.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers of Nashville, renowned for bringing the African American spirituals tradition out onto the world stage, visited Maloga Aboriginal Mission in August 1886. They sang their standard repertoire, but the song that stole the show was the one they had translated into the native language of its audience, “Ngarra Bura Fera.” The song celebrates freedom from oppression, victory over evil. It became for indigenous Australians a song of defiance and hope. Continue reading
The Jesus Question 