| Abstract |
"In forest glade and street procession, in darkened concert hall and torch-lit temple court, mankind continuously sings, dances, and plays instruments of fascinating invention. For the wealth of musical events there is as rich a variety of reasons for their celebration. A birth, a harvest, an initiation rite, or a farewell ceremony-all of these occasions sometimes require music for their proper observance. It is the interesting dynamics of these musical occasions with which we are concerned in this study; especially, musical behavior with regard to magic and ritual. Magic is generally unacknowledged by Western European intellectuals to exist or function in their world. Although amusing, this attitude is understandable in light of the position adopted by Europeans and Euro-American cultures from the Age of Enlightenment to the present, i.e., any processes which cannot be replicated with a fair degree of exactitude under certain laboratory conditions or any qualities of things which cannot be objectively measured are thought to have no real existence. Thus many customs and beliefs of European cultures came to be considered invalid and were either discarded or were redefined as only being of interest to children or persons of 'child-like' mentality. At the same time, any magical acts performed by practitioners of the established Western religions were termed acts of worship, whereas similar practices found in other religions were considered superstitious, paganistic, idolatrous, or demonic. Related to that rationale was an effort to develop a 'scientific' explanation of European traditions too deeply rooted to eradicate although they defied classification under rules of the new empiricism." --from Introduction. |
