Musical Ethnology of Central Africa

Abstract

“And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers, when they are under the influence of Dionysus, but not when they are in their right mind.” Thus did Plato, in his Ion, 1 refer to the elements of trance and other-wordly contacts sometimes present in the making of music, dance, and poetry. The hypnotic, intoxicating atmosphere that is so integral a part of certain types of musical activity is as much engendered by the music itself as by the infusion of spiritual-mystical qualities formed in the minds of the participants. How vitally important, then, does the music belonging to ritual become in its double-duty character as emotional intensifier and as religious emblem.