About the Book
Music and dance play a central role in the "healing arts" of the Senoi Temiar, a group of hunters and horticulturalists dwelling in the rainforest of peninsular Malaysia. As musicologist and anthropologist, Marina Roseman recorded and transcribed Temiar rituals, while as a member of the community she became a participant and even a patient during the course of her two-year stay. She shows how the sounds and gestures of music and dance acquire a potency that can transform thoughts, emotions, and bodies.
Table of Contents
Contents
Figures and Tables
Plates
Acknowledgments
Orthography
1. Introduction 1
Jungle Paths and Spirit Songs
The Articulation Between Musical and Medical Domains
Theoretical Considerations
The Orang Asli
Translating Worlds
2. Concepts of Being
Head Souls
Heart Souls
Odor
Shadow
Spirits, Sounds, Goods, and Selves
3· Becoming a Healer
Dreaming
Singers of the Landscape
Halaa' Adeptness: A Potential
Halaa' and Leadership: A Role
The Nonadept: Alternative Strategies for
Wives and Women
Land, Person, and Song
4· The Dream Performed
Spiritguide Genres
The Social Structuring of Sound
Male Mediums and Female Chorus
Symbolic Classifications and Metaphors for Sound
Symbolic Inversion: Everyday Life and Ritual Performance
5· Setting the Cosmos in Motion: Sources of Illness
and Methods of Treatment
Sources of Illness
Setting the Cosmos in Motion
Singing as Transformation
6. Remembering to Forget: The Aesthetics of Longing
Remembering to Forget
The Aesthetics of Longing
Longing in the Late Afternoon: Instrumental Music
The Aesthetics of Sway: Dance and Movement
Soul Loss
Musical Form, Emotion, and Meaning
7· Songs of a Spirited World
The Body as Nexus
Ensouling the World
Appendix A. Temiar Transliterations
Appendix B. Discography
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
