Signs of the spirit : music and the experience of meaning in Ndau ceremonial life

Author / Creator

Perman, Tony, 1973- author

Available as

Online

Summary

This text is an ethnography of spirit possession ceremonies and accompanying musical practices in the rural Ndau-speaking communities surrounding Chipinge, Zimbabwe. Collectively called madhlozi, t...

This text is an ethnography of spirit possession ceremonies and accompanying musical practices in the rural Ndau-speaking communities surrounding Chipinge, Zimbabwe. Collectively called madhlozi, these spirits are the 'outsider spirits' of distant social encounters that have shaped Ndau identity and history. The purpose of this book is to explain how musicking during ceremonial life in rural Ndau communities in Zimbabwe is meaningfully experienced during a single spirit possession ceremony. It investigates the immediacy of musical experience and the ways in which the ongoing present of ceremonial performance becomes emotional and socially salient.

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