Its master performers and sages who coolly orchestrate sound and silence, beginnings and ends, free improvisation and ritualized order.
Its multi-rhythmic configurations, cyclical modes and audience participation. Its offbeat breaks hidden inside rhythmic and ritual order. Its musical polarism, rhythmic relativism and metaphysical pluralism. The book’s first section, ‘Ancient African Wisdom’ deals with the symbolic knowledge and intuitions of Sub-Saharan Africa embedded in its music and traditional world-views. This book examines why all this Black ‘roots’ and ethnic music has become the dominant sound of our global age. Since the turn of the century the world has been swept by a succession of Black American dance beats, from Ragtime to Rap and Samba to Soul - followed in recent years by the popular ‘world’ music of Africa itself. Importantly, the thesis argues that re-interpretation of Indigenous culture by the New Age is neither welcome nor necessary. Alternative festivals that operate with a spiritual ethic are explored as evidence that the New Age can and in some areas, does operate in a positive, life-affirming manner. The embodiment of New Age goals can be understood within the context of environmental ethics philosophies. Neo-paganism holds many of the qualities that New Agers seek in Indigenous traditions and is a potential alternative avenue of spiritual solace to the appropriation of Indigenous culture. It argues that the New Age can achieve a sustaining, earth-based spiritual practice without resorting to the appropriation of Indigenous traditions. It critiques New Age perceptions of Indigenous cultures as misinformed and argues this misinformation is proliferated through certain New Age practices. Indigenous spiritual traditions have been appropriated to support relevant New Age theories. This thesis examines the New Age spiritual movement in its relationship with Indigenous cultures.
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