Signs of the Spirit: Music and the Experience of Meaning in Ndau Ceremonial Life - Softcover

Perman, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252085175 ISBN 13: 9780252085178

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2020

Synopsis

In 2005, Tony Perman attended a ceremony alongside the living and the dead. His visit to a Zimbabwe farm brought him into contact with the madhlozi, outsider spirits that Ndau people rely upon for guidance, protection, and their collective prosperity.

Perman's encounters with the spirits, the mediums who bring them back, and the accompanying rituals form the heart of his ethnographic account of how the Ndau experience ceremonial musicking. As Perman witnessed other ceremonies, he discovered that music and dancing shape the emotional lives of Ndau individuals by inviting them to experience life's milestones or cope with its misfortunes as a group. Signs of the Spirit explores the historical, spiritual, and social roots of ceremonial action and details how that action influences the Ndau's collective approach to their future. The result is a vivid ethnomusicological journey that delves into the immediacy of musical experience and the forces that transform ceremonial performance into emotions and community.

About this title

About the Author

Tony Perman is an assistant professor of music at Grinnell College.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252085175
• ISBN 13: 9780252085178
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280