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Melody and the Musical Articulation of Yolngu Identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

P.G. Toner
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Extract

In the ongoing anthropological conversation concerning the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia, perplexing issues of social identity 100m large. Beginning with the so-called “Murngin controversy” from the 1930s to the 1950s, some of anthropology's leading lights have attempted to sort out the complexities of Yolngu marriage, the subsection system, the kinship system and local organisation, including W. Lloyd Warner, Claude Lévi-Strauss, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and Edmund Leach. The debates have undergone considerable changes since those days, but the continual analysis and re-assessment of Yolngu sociality continues to the present day in the work of Nancy Williams, Howard Morphy and Ian Keen.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 35 , 2003 , pp. 69 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 By The International Council for Traditional Music

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Footnotes

1

I owe a debt of gratitude to the entire community of Gapuwiyak, N.T., for their hospitality during my field research between 1995 and 1997. In particular, I would like to thank Micky Wunungmurra, Bobby Wunungmurra, Yangipuy Wanambi and the late Bangana Wunungmurra. The research on which this article is based was supported by the Commonwealth Scholarships and Fellowships Program, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Faculty of Arts of the Australian National University.

References

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