gained prominence with his book The Forest People (1961), a study of the Mbuti people. In 1972, having been commissioned to come up with an explanation and solution to the difficulties experienced by the Ik people, the controversial The Mountain People was published. The Ik were a hunter-gatherer tribe who had been forced to stop moving around ancestral lands, through the seasons, because it now involved the three national borders of Uganda, Kenya and Sudan. Forced to become stationary in Uganda, and without a knowledge base and culture for survival under such conditions, they failed to thrive, even to the point of starvation and death. The Mountain People was later adapted into a theatrical work by playwright Peter Brook. Contributions to music Some of Turnbull's recordings of Mbuti music were commercially released, and his works inspired other ethnomusicological studies, such as those of Simha Arom and Mauro Campagnoli. His recording of Music of the Rainforest Pygmies, recorded in 1961, was released on CD by Lyrichord Discs, Inc. His recording of a Zaire pygmy girls' initiation song was used on the Voyager Golden Record. Personal life Turnbull's partner, Joseph Allen Towles, was born in Senora, Virginia, on August 17, 1937. In 1957 he moved to New York City to pursue a career as an actor and writer. He met Turnbull in 1959 and they exchanged marriage vows the following year. From 1965 to 1967, Turnbull and Towles conducted fieldwork among the Ik of Northern Uganda in Africa. In the Congo in 1970, they conducted fieldwork on the Nkumbi circumcision initiation ritual for boys and the Asa myth of origin among the Mbo of the Ituri forest. In 1979, they traveled studying the concept of tourism as pilgrimage. Towles criticised Turnbull's semi-autobiographical work The Human Cycle (1983), which omitted all references to their relationship. Turnbull arranged for Towles' research to be published posthumously. It appeared in 1993 as Nkumbi initiation ritual and structure among the Mbo of Zaïre and as Asa: Myth of Origin of the Blood Brotherhood Among the Mbo of the Ituri Forest, both in Annales of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium), vol. 137. Later years Late in life Turnbull took up the political cause of death row inmates. After his partner's death, Turnbull donated all his belongings to the United Negro College Fund. He donated all their research materials, most of which were the product of