The Gift of Song

The Gift of Song Performing Exchange in Western Arnhem Land - SOAS Studies in Music

Hardback (17 Oct 2024)

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Publisher's Synopsis

The Gift of Song: Performing Exchange in Western Arnhem Land tells the story of the return of physical and digital cultural materials through song and dance. Drawing on extensive, first-person ethnographic fieldwork in western Arnhem Land, Australia, Brown examines how Bininj/Arrarrkpi (Aboriginal people of this region) enact change and innovate their performance practices through ceremonial exchange. As Indigenous communities worldwide confront new social and environmental challenges, this book addresses the questions: How do Indigenous communities come to terms with legacies of taking and collecting? How are cultural materials in digital formats received and ritualised? How do traditional forms of exchange continue to mediate relationships? Combining ethnomusicological analysis and linguistically and historically informed ethnography, this book reveals how multilingualism and musical diversity are maintained through kun-borrk/manyardi, a major genre of Indigenous Australian song and dance. It retheorises the core anthropological concept of 'exchange' and enriches understanding of repatriation as a process of re-embedding tangible objects through intangible practices of ceremony and language.

About the Publisher

Routledge

Routledge

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Book information

ISBN: 9781032106366
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Imprint: Routledge
Pub date:
DEWEY: 781.629915
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 296
Weight: 689g
Height: 229mm
Width: 152mm
Spine width: 18mm