Bushman Counterpoint*

Although contrapuntal practices of the type to be described below will be encountered in most Bushman communities within the Northern Language Group (as well as in several communities of the Central and Southern Language Groups), the Bushmen to whom I refer specifically in the title of this paper are the of South West Africa and Bechuanaland. The speak a dialect of !Kxõ (traditionally, !Kung, in the literature of ethnology), the principal Northern Bushman language. There are approximately 1500 in all, and roughly 1000 of them live within the area called Nyae Nyae over the past decade by members of the Peabody-Harvard Kalahari Expeditions. Nyae Nyae is a corruption (a convenient simplification) of the Bushman name, , which means Great Flat Place and refers to a large water pan prominent among a group of such pans in the northeastern portion of South West Africa.