Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine

Front Cover
University of California Press, Oct 22, 1991 - Social Science - 278 pages
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.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
THE ARTICULATION BETWEEN MUSICAL AND MEDICAL DOMAINS
9
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
11
THE ORANG ASLI
17
TRANSLATING WORLDS
20
Concepts of Being
24
HEAD SOULS
25
HEART SOULS
30
SYMBOLIC CLASSIFICATIONS AND METAPHORS FOR SOUND
118
EVERYDAY LIFE AND RITUAL PERFORMANCE
126
Setting the Cosmos in Motion Sources of Illness and Methods of Treatment
129
SETTING THE COSMOS IN MOTION
145
SINGING AS TRANSFORMATION
148
Remembering to Forget The Aesthetics of Longing
151
REMEMBERING TO FORGET
152
THE AESTHETICS OF LONGING
156

ODOR
36
SHADOW
40
SPIRITS SOUNDS GOODS AND SELVES
45
Becoming a Healer
52
DREAMING
56
SINGERS OF THE LANDSCAPE
63
A POTENTIAL
72
A ROLE
73
ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES FOR WIVES AND WOMEN
76
LAND PERSON AND SONG
78
The Dream Performed
80
SPIRITGUIDE GENRES
87
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURING OF SOUND
105
MALE MEDIUMS AND FEMALE CHORUS
106
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
159
DANCE AND MOVEMENT
161
SOUL LOSS
165
MUSICAL FORM EMOTION AND MEANING
168
Songs of a Spirited World
174
THE BODY AS NEXUS
179
ENSOULING THE WORLD
181
Temiar Transliterations
185
Discography
190
Notes
191
Glossary
208
Bibliography
209
Index
225
Copyright

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About the author (1991)

Marina Roseman is Assistant Professor of Music and of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and has been recognized for her work in ethnomusicology and traditional Asian medicine.

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