Remains of Ritual: Northern Gods in a Southern Land

Steven M. Friedson

Published by University of Chicago Press 2009

Remains of Ritual

Northern Gods in a Southern Land

Steven M. Friedson

In the series Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology

https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226265063

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Steven M. Friedson is Regents Professor of Music and Anthropology at the University of North Texas and the author of Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

“In his Remains of Ritual, Steve Friedson has given us a pathbreaking work on the nature and dynamics of ritual practice. This sensuously contoured and theoretically nuanced tale of how the northern Gods came to possess Ewe mediums in Ghana’s southern lands underscores powerfully how the fusion of sound, movement, and meaning evokes central themes of Ewe history and culture. In so doing, Friedson demonstrates how history and culture are reckoned and passed from present to future. This work is ethnography at its very best.”

— Paul Stoller, West Chester University

“Beautifully written, with a deft integration of history, theory, interpretation, and fine-grained ethnographic detail, Friedson’s narrative-style analysis of Ghanaian Ewe shrine rituals and their music is compelling reading with breathtaking insights in every chapter. Integrating the phenomenological approaches of Heidegger with his sustained field research, Friedson presents the reader with more than just a fresh look at Ewe trancing, drumming, dancing, and singing—he teaches us how to conceptualize gold-standard fieldwork. Without didacticism, Friedson demonstrates the importance of long-term field research and how he negotiates his own role as a participant in the most intimate of Ewe shrine rituals without actually becoming a member. Efficacy is in the doing, not in the believing. He has appropriated and reinterpreted a philosopher from the European past to present a strangely beautiful and haunting tale of a contemporary West African musical/religious practice.”

— Judith Becker, University of Michigan

“Friedson guides the reader through the complex realities of Ewe shrines, their gods, fetishes, and priests. The ontology underpinning the various kinds of engagement that Ewe have with their gods is revealed in the brilliant sensitivity of Friedson’s exposition. He shows how the forces of the shrines and the powers of their priests must be grasped in the dynamics of participation. Here music is central, and Friedson reveals the exciting new terrains of understanding that become manifest in it. This is a masterly work that constitutes a major contribution to the anthropology of ritual performance and will have significance for knowledge well beyond the West African world that is the basis for Friedson’s many, many insights.”

— Bruce Kapferer, University of Bergen

"This volume consists of an engaging and well-written text that incorporates layers of anthropological, ethnomusicological, and philosophical analyses of increasing complexity, augmented by extensive endnotes, which make it accessible to a wide general audience."

— Choice

“Remains of Ritual successfully demonstrates the potential of the discipline of ethnomusicology to be at the forefront of scholarly discourse on culture, rather than a junior sister to disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy.”

— David Locke, Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology

“Remains of Ritual is a superbly written study of the rituals and music associated with the southern Ghanaian Ewe worship of gods who originally came from northern Ghana. . . . [This] is sure to be a major contribution to the study of Ewe and African music and ritual.”

— African Studies Review

“The great merit of this book is that it expresses beautifully and graphically the being-there and being-away of ethnographic experience, as well as giving us vivid glimpses of Ewe life.”

— Wyatt MacGaffey, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
On Language Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Note on Transcriptions Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Southern Lands Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Northern Gods Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
Brekete Pantheon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
1. Where Divine Horsemen Ride Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
2. Salah! Salah! Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
3. The Poured Gift Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
4. Deadland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
5. The Rhythm of the Crossroads Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
6. Burials Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Coda: Opening the Door Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Postlude Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231

Language: English
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 272
Illustrations
- Other: 2 color plates, 25 halftones, 3 line drawings, 23 musical examples
Keywords: music; ritual; tradition; rite; ceremony; folk belief; ewe people; africa; brekete; gorovodu; religion; spirituality; history; ethnography; anthropology; ghana; coast; medicine; shrine; nonfiction; musicality; dance; possession; prayer; chants; animal sacrifice; wake; drums; spirits; pantheon; burials; funerals; death rites; piety; devotion; supplication; divinity; gods; intercession; community; tribe

eBook

Published: July 15, 2010
ISBN: 9780226265063