This article aims to re-evaluate Johann Lhotsky’s published sheet music ‘A Song of the Women of the Menero Tribe near the Australian Alps’ to claim it as a distinctively Ngarigu document that speaks to Ngarigu people today. Following a method suggested by Graeme Skinner, we recover additional information, strip out the ‘improvements’ of the arrangers and create a new Ngarigu-oriented reading with what we hope will be ‘real value for song revitalisation’ by providing ‘usable details’ of text, melody and rhythm. We suggest that the evidence tends to substantiate Skinner’s suggestion that Lhotsky’s original publication was more ‘ethnographically honest’ than Isaac Nathan’s revision. We present new conclusions as to who originally performed the Song, and when and where the performance witnessed by Lhotsky took place. We show that Lhotsky’s untranslated text is clearly in an Aboriginal language and provides important clues to its significance to Ngarigu Country. We contend that various musical features of Lhotsky’s publication, while departing from the norms of settler colonial parlour music, bear witness instead to Ngarigu performance practice of the time.

本文旨在重新评估约翰·洛茨基（Johann Lhotsky）出版的乐谱“澳大利亚阿尔卑斯山附近的梅内罗部落妇女之歌”，声称它是一份独特的 Ngarigu 文件，与今天的 Ngarigu 人交谈。按照 Graeme Skinner 建议的方法，我们恢复了额外的信息，去掉了编曲者的“改进”，并通过提供“有用的细节”来创建一个新的面向 Ngarigu 的阅读，我们希望这将是“歌曲振兴的真正价值”文字、旋律和节奏。我们建议证据倾向于证实斯金纳的建议，即洛茨基的原始出版物比艾萨克·内森的修订版更“民族志诚实”。我们就谁最初演奏了这首歌曲，以及洛霍茨基见证的演奏时间和地点提出了新的结论。我们表明，Lhotsky 的未翻译文本显然是一种土著语言，并为它对 Ngarigu 国家的意义提供了重要线索。我们认为，洛茨基出版物的各种音乐特征，虽然背离了殖民者殖民地客厅音乐的规范，但却见证了当时的 Ngarigu 表演实践。