Affect, trance, healing, and the self

Assigned readings

Please read the following.

Music and Trance, by Judith Becker (10 pages).

Head, Heart, Odor, and Shadow, by Marina Roseman (20 pages).

Congregational Music in a Pentecostal Church, by Queen Booker (14 pages).

Review of Steven Friedson's book, Dancing Prophets (5 pages).

Note: Friedson's book is available in the SUB bookstore. While the book is too long to assign in a course such as this, many of you will find it fascinating, particularly after watching the video. The review provides an overview of the book, as well as an example of how critical reviews are constructed.

Optional: Leaf through Gilbert Rouget's book, Music and Trance (Music Library reserve; also available in the SUB Bookstore). It's become a classic.

Listenings, viewings

We will watch the following in class, mostly Tuesday. If you miss them in class, please try to watch them in the Music Library.

• Prophet Healers of Northern Malawi (Steven Friedson)
• Mystic Iran (excerpts)
• others TBA

Your selected readings

Select a reading relevant to this week's topic, read it, and insert a link and a brief summary here. If you can find links to appropriate audio-visual materials, please include those as well.

Trance and Music in the Hausa Boorii Spirit Possession Cult in Niger - Veit Erman This article references the same article that Becker does – Rouget, La musique et la transe (1980) – but much closer to its publication. (Becker is writing in 1994, Erman in 1982). Veit uses Rouget’s work as a jumping-off point to talk about a specific example of the relationship between music to trance (the Hausa Boorii Spirit Possession Cult in Niger) and to agree with Rouget's thesis that music does not cause trance, although music may support trance. He contends that, from the Hausa example, trance seems to be learned in a culturally-specific way for culturally-specifice purposes. dstark