Myths and Music
Trance and music today
Vesa Matteo Piludu
Helsinki
Department of Comparative Religion
University of Helsinki
Trance?
 What is trance?
?
Trance and ecstasy: two different things
 A state of consciousness connected
with a direct contact with spirits, divinities or other spiritual
entities
 The trance is connected with movements, dance, instrument
playing, singing, storytelling, performing arts, sensory over
stimulation
 Trance generally isn’t an individual activity, the rituals are more or
less collective
Trance’s hyperactivity
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Bewilderment, convulsions, trembling, yawing, noisy breathing
Dance
Singing in uncommon languages or codes
Playing instruments
Storytelling
acrobatic displays
sometimes: insensibility to pain
Trance
 Trance isn’t provoked by drugs, even if sometimes some kind of
drugs are used during the rituals
 Trance is still alive in different cultures and religions
 Trance is not only present in the so called ”native cultures” … it was
very popular also in the cradle of the western civilization … Ancient
Greece
Music = from Muses (goddesses of inspiration)
 According to the ancient Greeks
 The Muses inspired music and
poetry
 The singer-poet received the
inspiration thought a state of
creative trance
 It was a case of artistic inspiration
trance
 The Muses inspired also other kind
of artist
Problems
 It is difficult to define exactly trance
 The scholars generally don't have any direct experience of trance …
they never fall in trance
 In Latin America: cases of native scholars initiated in trance cults
Trance is an umbrella-concept
 Trance is an umbrella-concept or a
grapefruit-concept
 It include many different
phenomena or many different kind
of trances
Scholars in total grapefruit confusion
 The scholars often confused one
trance with another one
 The connection with the music
wasn’t clearly expressed
 Results: scientific chaos
 chaotic melting pot
???
”Music and trance” – Gilbert Rouget
 Gilbert Rouget is one of the first scholars who create a clear
typology of the trance states …
 … and analysed the relation between music and different kinds
of trance
Trances
 Inspiration or contemplative trance (dervishes, Tibetan Buddhism)
 Artistic inspiration trance (poetry, music according the Ancient
Greeks)
 Prophetic trance (possession by a spirit to predict the future)
 Mediumship (possession by a dead spirit)
 Ritualized possession trance (vodou, candomblé)
 Shamanic soul-fly trance
 Shamanic expulsion of evil spirits from the body of the patient
 Possession healing trance
Music and trance – Gilbert Rouget
 the ideological opposition between classic shamanism and
possession rituals was theorized by Gilbert Rouget in his book
”Music and Trance”
 In the shamanic soul-fly,
 the soul of a human shaman is visiting the world of the spirits
 During the possession trance
 the spirit are visiting the human world, taking possession of an
initiate
Shamanic soul-fly trance
 The shaman sing, tells, plays instruments, acts and falls in
trance
 in the shamanic trance one of the shaman's soul leaves the body
and travels in other worlds with the help of certain animal spirits
 The shaman is not under the control of the spirits, he controls his
helping spirits … that are generally in animal form
 The shamans is the ”rider” and the helping spirits are the
”horses”
 The shaman remember his travels in the trance state
Shaman
 Original world ”shaman” from the Tungus-languages
 Complicate etymology …
 Sha = to know
 Shaman = the one who knows, tietäjä
 The shamans know … myths, rituals, songs, secrets, secret
languages, origins … and how to find the roads to the other
worlds …
 Other languages have other world for the shamans: Kam, paje …
 The word shaman was once restricted to Siberia … now extends all
the way to Southern Asia, the two Americas and Oceania
 The word shamanism has come to include religious practices of
the greater diversity
Shaman according to Hulktrantz and Hoppal
 The shaman …
 mediate between the world of humans and the spirit world
(heavenly spirits, animal spirits, forest masters, spirits of the dead)
 always in the interest of some collective goal
 The shaman maintain the communication between the human
community and the transcendental dimensions
Human community
Chukchi Shamanic Ritual from Siberia
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JJw5bTfUL8
Spirit’s community
Reciprocity, fight or ambiguity
 The relation between the shamans and the spirits could be based
on respect, reciprocity or even alliance… (shamans and certain
divinities, forest spirits)
 The relation could be contrastive: the shamans should fight against
evil spirits causing suffering, illness or sickness (evil spirits, ghosts,
spirits of illness)
 The relation could be ambiguous … the same spirits could cause
disaster or give solution to some urgent problems
 The contact with the spirits is mediated by trance
”Goals” of the shamanic fly
 An ill person has lost one of his souls, that is somewhere in
another dimension (sky, underground) … the shaman should find
the soul and bring it back to the suffering patient
 To communicate with the divinities, master spirits, dead souls
 To give omens or to discover the origin or causes of something
 To change the courses of the events (misfortune, weather)
 To fight against another spirit or shaman
 To lead the souls of the dead into the underworld
 In general: to solve a crisis regarding a member of his
community
Trance and music
 The music is very important to achieve a shamanic trance state
 But the trance couldn’t be caused only by music, dance or some
kind of drug …
 The shaman could go in trance because he believe in the trance
ideology and in the existence of different spirit worlds
 Shamanism is a culture, a world-view, a philosophy
 The shaman is well trained in trance
 his trance is ritualized, not spontaneous
A long road
 Shamanism is a long, painful road …
 Passing through election … initiation … learning … practice …
1. Election
 Generally a man or a woman could be elected shaman
 because his father is a shaman (hereditary shamanism)
 By his own will (very uncommon) … because is chosen by the clan
(rare) … Shamanism is a hard taks
 By the “call of the spirits” (common)
Call of the spirits
 The body or mind of the future shaman
is somehow “marked” by the “signs of the spirit” (call of the spirit)
 The future shaman pass through a sequence traumatic experience
… illness … mental illness … spontaneous spirit trance …
dreams …
 During this experiences the initiate is near to the gate of the dead
realm …
 He learn the path to the other worlds
 Being sick and curing himself of illness …
 he is able to cure the others
Shamanism is not hysteria
 The shaman is not an hysterical and shamanism isn’t a strange
king of arctic hysteria caused by the difficult climatic conditions, as
many anthropologist postulated
 We find shamans in the tropics!
 The shaman is someone who passes through states of hysteria
(caused by initiator spirits) and overcomes the states of mental
insecurity and pain
Shamanic dreams
 During the period of the election … the shaman often dreams about
a particular spirit … the initiator or elective spirit …
 The elective spirit sometime “make love” whit the shaman or
“married” the shaman (alliance and change of the status of the
initiate)
 Often elective spirit kills the initiate and tore it into pieces
 … or devours it
 It is a symbolic death (the initiate loose his previous status)
 The initiate contemplate is skeleton
 The soul of the initiate travel in the otherworld and learn secrets
 The elective spirit bring the initiate back to life
(symbolical rebirth in the status of shaman)
Elective spirits (eskimo)
Elective spirits
Jaguar initiator or elective spirit (Mexico)
Bear initiator spirit devouring the initiate (Tlinglit)
The bear hibernation as a model for the initiation
 Hibernation
 Death from the previous status
 Awakening
 Rebirth in the status of a
shaman
2. Shamanic learning
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During the initiation time …
the shaman learn with an older shaman …
mythology
the secret of the curative herbs
per formative arts (singing and dancing)
How to build a drum and the costume
Sacrifice and other rituals
 Little by little learn to control his trance
 He acquire spiritual power and “extra” souls
 One of this soul is able to leave the body and travel in other
dimensions
Shaman’s spiritual power (aura)
Shaman’s spiritual power (aura)
3. Learning to control the spirit helpers
 The initiate is not tortured anymore by the initiator spirit
 Generally the initiator spirit became the most important helping
spirit
 The shaman now controls the helping spirits
 More helping spirits shaman control, more he is powerful
 he could transform itself into an helping animal spirit to travel into
another world
 The soul could ride the helping spirit when he is travelling
Helping spirits
 The helping spirits could be anthropomorphic or vegetal …
 often they are animals
 Some animal-spirit are the guide to the celestial world, others to the
underworld … others to the water world (realm of the dead)
 The most powerful animal-helpers could travel in many or all the
dimensions
Ayami, Nanai, anthropomorphic helping spirit
 Ayami is the shaman's guide to
the other world of the Universe.
It tells the shaman all the mysteries
and serves him during important
shaman's rituals.
 The nine figures on its head are
representations of the buchu and
edgehe (shaman's advising
spirits).
Shaman and his tiger spirit
Shaman as a spirit rider
Shamanic fly
Shamanic fly
Shaman’s soul transformed into a bear
The language of the animals
 During the trance, the shaman imitates the sounds and voices of the
animal helping spirits
 He speaks a secret sacred language, called the "language of the
animals"
Learning from the bear helping spirit
Animal-spirits have knowledge
 In the beginning of all things, wisdom and
knowledge were with the animals;
 for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to
man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he
showed himself through the beasts, and that
from them, and from the stars and the sun and
the moon, man should learn
 Tirawa spoke to man thought his work
 Chief Letakofts-Lesa (Pawnee) to Natalie Curtis, 1904
Lakota bear doctor’s song
 “A root of herb you will eat
At that place it stand
A bear said this to me”
The bear is the herbalist of the
natural world
It eats the same plant and roots
the humans eats
It knows about the healing
plants and roots
The Great Bear of the First Creation: a powerful helping spirit
 If a man is sick,
 I turn into a bear,
 the Great Bear of the First Creation.
 My fur is all white,
 but no polar bear,
 I'm the Bear of the First Creation.
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I lick my paws all over,
seize hold of that man,
squeeze him tight
wherever it hurts him,
 then I blow all over his body,
 with my healing breath,
 the First Breath of the First
Creation.
 Reindeer Chukchee c.1900
The bear hibernation as a model for the trance
 Hibernation as trance
 Deep trance: voyage in the
dead world
 Travel in the underworld
 Awakening
 Return of the shaman in the
world of the living beings
Bears in the sky
Blackfoot bear shaman (George Catlin, 1832)
Nanai Bear shaman
Nanai bear shamans
Bear helping spirit (Nanai)
Shamanic bear session
 From the Cd:
 Shamanic and narrative song of the Siberian artic – Nganasan
 Musique du monde – Siberie1 – track 12
 Where? Kirjasto 10
Shamanic fly
Shamanic soul-fly
Hole of the world – Axis (pole)
Hole and axis (Australia)
World tree (maya)
Axis mundi - mushroom
Tree, mountain, axis mundi (vertical)
Dark - Light, female - male (left – right)
“Psychopomp” rituals (Nanai, Kasa Taori)
River going to the Buni (realm of the dead)
Cataleptic trance
Figurative trance
(acting, playing, telling singing during the fly)
Shamanic ritual in Tuva (Siberia)
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AM1_erwOMY&NR=1
Ulla Pirttijärvi - De juoiggas
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI1ccC1XIQM&feature=related
 ARTIST: Ulla Pirttijärvi SONG: "De juoiggas“ (Hear the sound of the
yoik) ALBUM: "Máttaráhku Askái"( In Our Foremother's Arms)
released in 2002 on Warner/Finlandia.
Gjallarhorn - Suvetar
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjLTrKuK_Wg
Ritualized possession trance
 During the rituals (candomblé, santeria, vodoun)
 The spirits, animal or divinities … visit the human world … entering into
the heads and the bodies of the possessed
 The possessed acquires the dance steps, the voice, and the behaviours of
the spirit (divinities, animals and so on) … the trance is extremely ritualized
 The possession is voluntary. The possessed is trained to “welcome” the
divinity
 Generally the possessed don’t play instruments
 The are skilled musicians playing … certain rhythms at the right moments …
 The possessed could sing
 The possessed is the ”horse” of the spirit, it is controlled by the spirits
 After the possession, the possessed don’t remember his acts
Candomblé: Possessed by Iemanjá
(goddess of the sea)