Songs, Dreamings, & Ghosts

Songs, Dreamings and Ghosts:
The Wangga of North Australia

Allan Marett

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 twenty 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 firsthand, 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.

Published by Wesleyan University Press with the cooperation of Charles Darwin University Press