Landscapes of Indigenous Performance: Music and dance of the Torres Strait and Arnhem Land

(Paperback)

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This book brings together a wide range of contemporary explorations of Indigenous music and dance in the Torres Strait and the tropical regions of the Northern Territory. This collection shows how traditional music and dance have responded to colonial control in the past and more recently to other external forces beyond local control. It looks at musical pasts and presents as a continuum of creativity; at contemporary cultural performance as a contested domain; and at cross-cultural issues of recording and teaching music and dance as experienced by Indigenous leaders and educators, and non-Indigenous researchers and scholars. Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors demonstrate how local music and dance genres have been subject to missionary, institutional, popular and global influences. They offer an understanding of the cultural background and history of Torres Strait music; discuss how contemporary Christian music and dance in Arnhem Land incorporate traditional ritual; unpack the complex form and structure of an Australian Aboriginal song series; and examine the transformation of a nineteenth-century American popular song into a 'traditional' anthem of the Torres Strait. The book also examines the interface between Aboriginal ritual, movement and the environment as portrayed on film, and explores the issues raised by the presence of Aboriginal performers in the non-Indigenous university classroom. The book is of critical importance for those involved in the fields of music, dance and performance in general.

Author Bio

Fiona Magowan is lecturer in Anthropology at Queen's University, Belfast and continues to research Yolngu music and dance in northeast Arnhem Land. Karl Neuenfeldt is Associate Professor in Contemporary Communication at Central Queensland University. He is active as a music researcher, musician and producer.