For the Tumbuka people of Malawi, traditional medical practices are saturated with music. In this groundbreaking ethnography, Steven M. Friedson explores a health care system populated by dancing prophets, singing patients, and drummed spirits.

Tumbuka healers diagnose diseases by enacting divination trances in which they "see" the causes of past events and their consequences for patients. Music is the structural nexus where healer, patient, and spirit meet--it is the energizing heat that fuels the trance, transforming both the bodily and social functioning of the individual. Friedson shows how the sound of the ng'oma drum, the clapping of the choir, call-and-response singing, and the jangle of tin belts and iron anklets do not simply accompany other more important ritual activities--they are the very substance of a sacred clinical reality.

This novel look at the relation between music and mental and biological health will interest medical anthropologists, Africanists, and religious scholars as well as ethnomusicologists.

Subjects:

• African Studies
• Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
• Music: Ethnomusicology

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Orthography
Introduction: Ethnography as Possibility

1: To Dance and To Dream
2: God, Humans, and Spirits
3: Blood and Spirit: The Chilopa Sacrifice
4: The Musical Construction of Clinical Reality
5: In the Vimbuza Mode
6: Conclusion: An Ontology of Energy

Epilogue
Appendix A: Glossary of Vimbuza Spirits
Appendix B: Vimbuza Rhythmic Mottos
Appendix C: Vimbuza Song Texts
Notes
Bibliography
Index