Un sacré bazar - musique, possession et ivresse en Inde centrale Musique, possession et ivresse en Inde centrale

Description

This book is an ethnographic account of a two-day ritual in Bastar, in central India. By imposing the classical rule of the three unities (time, place, and action) on his scholarly narrative, the author paints portraits of the ritual's protagonists-humans, gods, and ancestors-presented in the immediacy of their interactions, as they appear throughout the ritual.

By gradually introducing the elements necessary to understand the social and religious system, the book reconstructs-condensed into two days-the winding paths of a long ethnomusicological investigation, marked by missteps and back-and-forth movements, in search of the meaning of the music at the heart of this possession ritual. Over the course of these two intensely experienced days, the logic and dynamics of a system that is at once musical, ritual, social, and cosmological progressively come into view.

Starting from what initially appears to the ethnologist's eyes and ears as a "sacred mess," the reader is gradually led to an interpretation of this ritual known as deo bajar, which might more aptly be described as a "sacred marketplace" or "market of the gods."

Through the lens of music, this work offers a new perspective on a widespread form of local Hinduism that is too often described in India as "tribal animism." More broadly, it contributes to an understanding of the close relationships that exist worldwide between possession trance phenomena and music. Finally, by comparing music and alcohol as substances, the author shows how they act in complementary ways on human beings, such that intoxication itself becomes a form of possession.