The Gift of Song

ISBN-13: 9781032106366 / Twarda / 2024 / 296 str.

Reuben Brown

Opis

The Gift of Song: Performing Exchange in Western Arnhem Land draws on first-person ethnographic fieldwork, to examine how Bininj/Arrarrkpi (Aboriginal people of this region) enact change and innovate their performance practices through ceremonial exchange.

Recenzje

‘The Gift of Song is highly original, brilliantly conceived, and engagingly written. Its description of how music and dance are used to create and reactivate relationships across time, space, and ethnicity is a major contribution to studies of Aboriginal song and repatriation, as well as to the fields of ethnomusicology and the performing arts.’

Anthony Seeger, Distinguished Professor of Ethnomusicology, Emeritus, UCLA

 

‘A superb piece of work, consummately showing the rich musical life of Western Arnhem Land, its interconnectedness to emotion, sociality, and the ritual and sacral, as well as the ability of music both to sustain deep elements of traditional culture and to connect across to Balanda and global cultural interests.’

Nicholas Evans, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, Australian National University

 

‘A major contribution to the field of ethnomusicology, and an important source for linguists, anthropologists, art critics, dance scholars and historians working with indigenous languages and cultures in Australia.’

Allan Marett, Emeritus Professor, The University of Sydney

Spis treści

1. Following Footsteps  2. ‘They Still Help Us’: Legacies of Exchange  3. ‘You Belong to Gunbalanya’: A Reburial Ceremony  4. ‘It’s a Secret, For You’: A Mamurrng Ceremony  5. ‘That Spirit Changed My Voice’: A Funeral Ceremony for Nakodjok  6. ‘I’ll Tell You This Corroboree Song’: An Intercultural Exchange in 1948  7. ‘Join in and Dance’: Festivals and New Forms of Exchange  8. ‘We’re All Family Now’: Understanding the Exchange

O autorze

Reuben Brown is a non-Indigenous (Settler/Balanda) applied ethnomusicologist specialising in Indigenous song and dance practices from western Arnhem Land (kun-borrk/manyardi). Brown has co-authored publications with Indigenous Australian ceremony leaders as well as musicologists, linguists, anthropologists and historians on the relationship between language and song and the re-use of archival recordings to support transmission of Indigenous knowledge. Brown is an ARC DECRA Research Fellow at the Research Unit for Indigenous Languages, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. His DECRA project investigates how ceremonial performance at Indigenous festivals in northern Australia enacts diplomacy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants, and between different clan and language groups.