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Music, Religion, and Ritual in Africa is a collection of eleven essays
that draw on recent, original research materials and present new and critical
perspectives on the dynamic configurations of
music, religion (indigenous, Islam, Christian), and ritual in contemporary
African societies. Examples are drawn from east, west, and southern African
regions to demonstrate issues and processes of accommodation, the construction
of religious, ethnic, and cultural identities, and local articulations of gender
and the aesthetic. Parallel processes of modernity, cultural production, and
varied illustrations of the common themes of reinvention and reinterpretation
explain further the phenomenal impact of religious traditions (and the
performative) on both normal and extraordinary contexts of life. The essays
emphasize resiliency and creativity, both in relation to the internal dynamics
that inform the ontologies of African spirituality and the performative, and as
shaped by the plural identities and contexts in which the studies are situated.
The examples from African-American Pentecostalism, independent Christianity in
Africa, Tumbuka healing, Yoruba kingship ritual, Senegalese Sufism, etc.
confirm the common and divergent patterns that truly establish “Unity in
Diversity” in African cultural traditions, old and new. This volume thus represents an
important contribution to the growing intellectual and interdisciplinary
discourse on Africa.
List of Illustrations
Musical Examples on accompanying compact disk………………….. i
Photo Illustrations…………………………………………………….. v
Preface………………………………………………………………………..viii
Ruth Stone (Director, Ethnomusicology Institute and past President, Society for
Ethnomusicology, Indiana University, Bloomington)
Acknowledgment
PART
ONE: INTRODUCTION
1. A Sound Idea: Belief and Production of
Musical Spaces…………..1-31
AVORGBEDOR, Daniel (Associate Professor, School of Music and Dept of
Black Studies, Ohio State University, Columbus)
PART TWO: RITES AND SOUNDS OF TRANSITION: SONIC AND VISUAL
2.
Gods and Deputy Gods: Music in Yoruba Religious and
Kingship
Traditions ………………………………………………………………35-60
EUBA, Akin (Melon Professor, Department of Music, University if of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh)
3. Mukanda: Boys’ Initiation in Eastern
Angola—Transference, Counter-
Transformation
and Taboo Symbolism in an Age-Group Related Ritual
Therapeutic Intervention……………………………………………….61-91
KUBIK, Gerhard (Professor of Musicology and Ethnology, University of Vienna, Austria)
4. Performance as Ritual,
Performance as Art: Therapeutic Efficacy of
Dadanda Song and Dance in Zimbabwe……………………………….93-121
THRAM, Diane (Lecturer in African Music, University of Johannesburg, South Africa)
PART THREE: SOUND AND SOUNDING
BODIES: HEALING RITUALS
5.
Maresaka and the Value in
Things: Tromba Spirit Possession on the East Coast of Madagascar …………………………………………….….…125-149
EMOFF, Ron (Assistant Professor, Ohio State University, Newark Campus)
6.
The Disease of the Prophets: The Musical Construction
of Clinical
Reality……………………………………………………………..…….151-185
FRIEDSON, Steven (Associate Professor of Music, University of Texas, Austin)
7.
Identifying Witches: A Performance by the Sing'anga
Jonasi
Masangwi………………………………………………………………187-216
MALAMUSI, Moya Aliya (independent scholar, Oral Literature Research
Programme, Chileka, Malawi)
8.
Where all Things Meet: Performing Spiritscape in
Shambaa
Healing………………………………………………………………….217-250
THOMPSON, Barbara (Assistant Professor of African Art, University of Iowa,
Iowa City)
PART FOUR: RE-SOUNDING FAITHS: INDIGENOUS CHRISTIANITY AND
ISLAM
9. I am able to see very far but I am
unable to reach there: Ndugu Gideon Mdegella's Nyimbo za Kwaya……………………………………..…..253-293
BARZ, Gregory (Assistant Professor of Music, University of Vanderbilt)
10. Sacred Space, Ritual Action
and Processes of “Textualization” in
Ibandla lamaNazaretha………………………………………………..295-311
MULLER, Carol (Assistant Professor of Music, University of Pennsylvania, PA)
11. Modes of Ritual Action and Performance in African-American Pentecostalism…………………………………………………………313-345
NEELY-CHANDLER, Thomasina (Assistant Professor, Spelman College,
Atlanta)
12. Music and Memory among Senegalese Sufism………………………347-368
ROBERTS, Allen and Mary (Associate Professor [Allen], World Arts and
Cultures, UCLA; Curator [Mary], Fowler Museum, UCLA)
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….369-391
Appendices………………………………………………………………………393