Thursday, December 30, 2021

Chris Knight critiques debunks the Dawn of Everything book Graeber and Wengrow

 And of course they got a point. But of course OUR point is that their premise is wrong. What on Earth makes Wengrow and Graeber thinks that hunter-gatherers are SMALL SCALE? Why? What's small scale about the Bengele. When Jerome played music on a recorder from the other side of the continent, a thousand miles away, they immediately said YES that's US - these people must be US - they sing the same songs. And we know that hunter-gatherers have an extraordinary connection - when they party they bring in people from all over the place and they connect up extraordinary connections. And they say this among the First Nations of the Americas you could walk from one end of the Americas from far West to the far east - and whenever you connect you'd always find hospitality - you'd always be at home - because there's that connectedness and of course the same with the Songlines of Australian... But unfortunately they say that's NOT true of Hunter-gatherers - --- it only became true after 30,000 years ago - primarily a European thing - and it WASN'T true of AFrican hunter-gatherers - and they wouldn't even discuss.... 

It's just one of many many sad things....the book, somehow, completely LOSES IT.

 https://vimeo.com/650831627

 Jerome Lewis:

The singing that Chris was describing, that was really beautiful...one of the things that I noticed when we do engenge - or any of our rituals in the forest in the Congo is there a certain point when the singing is no longer acoustic. I mean it is acoustic of course but it's more like a wash that washes through your body and in that experience of the music washing through you, it one comes when you sing and sing and sing for hours on end like that ... but it's a very beautiful thing. And you start hearing the music everywhere when you walk around and it really does come into you. And when I feel that feeling - what the Bjembele describe - the spirit of the song is in you - that's what spirit is! There's always this difficulty of explaining this to Western people who've watched too many Disney shows - that actually spirit has no materiality - it's NOT something you see - it's something you feel, a presence that comes into you....


 


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