If you're going to watch your local football team this weekend, or perhaps catch a big match on a TV screen in the pub, do you know that you may be unconsciously participating in an ancient ritual? And as you're shouldering your way to the bar from the mosh pit at some gig and grinning at those you pass, are you aware that the artist you were watching may be embodying some spirit of transformation?
That was the radical proposal of the book The Death and Resurrection Show that Rogan Taylor published in 1985, a book that is exceedingly difficult to get hold of now but one that became the inspiration and touchdown for my guest in this episode.
David Bramwell returned to the Bureau to talk about The Ghosts of the Medicine Show, the book he's written about the themes of Rogan Taylor's Death and Resurrection Show. It is also a personal memoir of something most of us can relate to -growing up and being transformed by seeing musicians and artists and actors.
David asks: 'What if the musician, the actor, the clown, the circus performer, the rock star — even the celebrity — are the latest manifestations of something that began much, much earlier'
For most of human history, before temples, books and organised religions existed, our ancestors lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Their knowledge could not be written down; it had to be remembered, performed and embodied.
The figures who carried this knowledge were the shamans—storytellers, healers, singers, dancers, magicians and guides who used performance to preserve culture, bind communities together and lead people through experiences of suffering, transformation and renewal.
Where are they now?
We also get into football, funerals - and ABBA..
For more on David and The Ghosts of the Medicine Show
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thanks
Stephen
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