Afterlife Before Genesis

Afterlife Before Genesis is the final volume in a trilogy that began with Life Before Genesis and was followed by Return to Eden. Here David H. Turner focusses on what the Aborigines of the Groote Eylandt area of northern Australia take to be the foundations of their way of life, namely musical Forms. Their music, like their way of life, incarnates from «Nothing» as differences (songLines) which are «renounced» from «owners» to «non-owners» to connect rather than divide. This music is a complex polyphonic interplay of didjereedoo (their hollow log instrument) and voice which not only transcends but also heals. This the author documents by recounting how he learned to play the didjereedoo.

Autorentext

The Author: David H. Turner is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and Fellow of Trinity College and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. He has worked for 25 years with the Australian Aborigines as well as in northern Canada, north India, Bali, and on aspects of his own society. He is also author of Tradition and Transformation, Shamattawa (with P. Wertman) and Challenging Anthropology (with G. Smith).

Zusammenfassung
"David H. Turner is an anthropologist who has realized that music is more than just a system of arbitrary sounds that have come to take on social meaning; he has shown how music encodes the essence of the culture itself, and his approach provides the discipline with an ethnomusicological lesson of great importance. This book will be of immense interest and value to all involved in the study of the cultural structure of traditional societies." (Professor James Kippen, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto)
"I found this book important for a number of reasons. It is a unique documentation born out of a long and intimate relationship with the Aboriginal people and culture. Aboriginal music as the intermediary for integrating the society with all aspects of their reality is fascinating in its developmental intricacies. It is also about a culture and society that is exceptionally different from all other societies on this planet. It seems particularly tragic and paradoxical that while we (the global material and warring societies) are on a path of self destruction, we are also responsible for the destruction of the Australian Aboriginal culture, a culture which may hold the clues if not the answer to why our moral structure is in a state of decay." (Nobuo Kubota, Cutario College of Art, Toronto)