Remains of Ritual: Northern Gods in a Southern Land

Remains of Ritual: Northern Gods in a Southern Land
ISBN-10
0226265064
ISBN-13
9780226265063
Category
Social Science
Pages
272
Language
English
Published
2010-07-15
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Author
Steven M. Friedson

Description

Remains of Ritual, Steven M. Friedson’s second book on musical experience in African ritual, focuses on the Brekete/Gorovodu religion of the Ewe people. Friedson presents a multifaceted understanding of religious practice through a historical and ethnographic study of one of the dominant ritual sites on the southern coast of Ghana: a medicine shrine whose origins lie in the northern region of the country. Each chapter of this fascinating book considers a different aspect of ritual life, demonstrating throughout that none of them can be conceived of separately from their musicality—in the Brekete world, music functions as ritual and ritual as music. Dance and possession, chanted calls to prayer, animal sacrifice, the sounds and movements of wake keeping, the play of the drums all come under Friedson’s careful scrutiny, as does his own position and experience within this ritual-dominated society.

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