Colin Turnbull's Life

Colin Turnbull was born on November 23, 1924, and died on July 28, 1994. He was a famouse British American anthropologist and he was one first ones to work in the field of ethnomusicology. He was educated at Westminister School and Magdalen Collage, Oxford where he studied politics and philosphy. In 1951 after he graduated from Banaras he traveled to Democratic Republic of Congo with Newton Beal, and a school teacher that he meet at India.

Turnbull studied the BaMbuti during that time, though that it was not the goal of the trip. He later was working for the Hollywood producer Sam Spiegal, he hired Turnbull to assist in the construction and transportation of a boat needed for his film. The boat was called The African Queen which was used for the fim of the same title. Turnbull became a natrulized citizen of the United States in 1954, after he was named curator in charge of African Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in 1959 and he moved to New York City.

Colin Turnbull's life long affair with the African Pygmies made him one of the most famous intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s. In an intimate portrait of a remarkable man-at various times a gold-miner, builder of The African Queen and anti-death penalty advocate-Grinker describes how Turnbull fell in love with a beautiful, poor African American named Joe Towles who became as much Turnbull's heroic creation as did the Pygmies.