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Songs that children sang in South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s have come alive more than half a century later in a new exhibition.

Music Dance Landscape Image is in the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery until 14 December.

It is based on the John Blackling Collection from the Calloway Centre archive and is a lively mix of photos, film, audio recordings, diary entries, notes and drawings.

They belonged to and were made by the musician, scholar and traveller Professor Blackling - who was a personal friend of UWA's Foundation Professor of Music, Sir Frank Calloway.

Professor Blackling, who was educated at King's College, Cambridge, carried out extensive fieldwork with Indigenous Venda musicians in Transvaal in South Africa. He also journeyed to other parts of the continent, including Mozambique, Zambia and Uganda, to document musical events.

He was expelled from South Africa in 1969 because of his anti-apartheid views and joined Queen's University in Belfast where he developed an ethno-music program.

He was particularly interested in the songs and dances of the Venda children and in how their musical instruments were made of local woods and skins. In a diary entry that he wrote about recording some songs, he remarked that "bird song added to the charm".

Many of the children's songs are about places, trees, birds and animals that were part of their everyday lives - and today are a record of their geophysical and biological communities.

The exhibition was curated by Dr Jennifer Post, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Calloway Centre.

"As we share these records with the southern and eastern African communities that shared their practices with Blacking in the first place, there will be new cultural, social and ecological benefits for each group, as well as opportunities for new dialogues on music, dance, social practice and the environment," Dr Post writes in the exhibition catalogue.