Reconsidering Music and Trance: Cross-cultural Differences and Cross-disciplinary Perspectives

Abstract

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 approaches would appear highly relevant to future research. However, outside ethnomusicology and anthropology, despite the burgeoning field of music and consciousness studies, attitudes towards the constructs of trance and altered states of consciousness as reputable areas of scholarly enquiry are somewhat ambivalent. One reason for this is a continued lack of academic consensus over definitions of the terms ‘trance’ and ‘altered states’. This paper re-assesses the different ways in which trance has been conceptualised in the literature. It argues that the continued ethnomusicological focus on high arousal models of trance has led to the neglect (or exclusion) of other types of trancing, particularly specific instances of European–American secular trancing, and associated literature. I draw on my own UK-based study of solitary musical involvement in daily life, which has been informed by both psychological and ethnomusicological perspectives.