A mesmerizing journey into the musical world of Australia’s Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal musicians receive songs both from an eternal realm known as The Dreaming and from the ghosts of deceased ancestors. Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts is the first book-length study of wangga, a musical and ceremonial genre of Aboriginal people of the Daly Region of Northern Australia. This work is a labor of love, the culmination of nearly 20 years of field work and research by renowned ethnomusicologist Allan Marett, and represents the only comprehensive documentation of a single major genre of Aboriginal music. With first-hand, in-depth knowledge of Northwest Australia’s Aboriginal cultures, Marett provides the reader with a penetrating description and analysis of this compelling musical practice. This book makes a significant contribution to knowledge of Aboriginal studies, and provides a rare glimpse into relatively unknown traditions and cultures. It includes illustrations, musical examples, and a CD loaded with samples of this fascinating music, closely linked to the text.
“In this brilliant and passionate book, Allan Marett reaches profound insights on Australian Aboriginal music through detailed analysis of the musical and linguistic features of many wangga songs, some of their accompanying dances, and the social and cosmological processes enacted through their performance.”—Anthony Seeger, Professor of Ethnomusicology, UCLA
“It is rare to find such a detailed and developed musical analysis in a single publication. This is a major advance on other ethnomusicological studies on Indigenous Australia and will become the new standard against which to judge subsequent contributions.”—Stephen Wild, Graduate Convenor in Music, Australian National University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Stanner Award (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies) 2006
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A recognized authority on Aboriginal music and culture, ALLAN MARETT is Professor of Musicology and Director of the Centre for Music Research at the University of Sydney.
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