A small but significant body of recent research has successfully crossed the boundaries between ethnomusicology and psychology, and both disciplines are demonstrating a growing interest in charting interactions between music, context and individual consciousness. The phenomenon of trance is a clear example of the interaction of mind with specific cultural contexts, and cross-disciplinary...
The recent renewal of interest in trance, within the field of ethnomusicology as well as without, warrants a reconsideration of the particular challenges of studying musics of spirit possession. These include a disciplinary focus on ‘the music’, an approach that runs the risk of artificially abstracting music from the larger ritual and cultural complex of which it is a part. They also involve...