Beyond the Roof of the World: Music, Prayer, and Healing in the Pamir Mountains - Softcover

Koen, Benjamin D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199798214 ISBN 13: 9780199798216

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011

Synopsis

While Western medicine has conventionally separated music, science, and religion into distinct entities, traditional cultures throughout the world have always viewed music as a bridge that connects the physical with the spiritual. Now, as people in even the most technologically advanced nations across the globe struggle with obtaining affordable and reliable healthcare coverage, more and more people are turning to these ancient cultural practices of ICAM healing (integrative, complementary, and alternative medicine). With Beyond the Roof of the World, Dr. Benjamin D. Koen unearths the Western separation of healing from spiritual and musical practices as a culturally determined phenomenon, and proves the relevance of medical ethnomusicology in light of the globally spreading ICAM healing practices. Using the culture found within the towering Pamir Mountains of Badakhshan Tajikistan, in a place poetically known as the Roof of the World, as the paradigm of ICAM healing, Koen shows spirituality and musicality to be intimately intertwined with one's physical life, health and healing. For the first time, Koen bridges the widespread gap between ethnomusicology and music therapy. Koen's extensive research and emersion into the Badakhstan culture provides the reader with an "insider" perspective while maintaining an "observer's" view, as he infuses the text with relevant scholarship.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin D. Koen is Professor of Medical Anthropology and Ethnomusicology at Xiamen University and Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology.

Review

"A fascinating exploration of the powerful intersection of music, prayer and healing in the remarkable cultural context of Tajik society in the Pamirs that suggests just how music and prayer may mediate therapeutic change. A telling illustration of the new medical ethnomusicology. An intriguing read!"--Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University, author of What Really Matters

"Dr. Koen has moved the emerging field of medical ethnomusicology forward with personal insight, models for discourse and cross-disciplinary scholarship. This text is not to simply be read, but to be studied and used as a template to discover what is fully possible when music, culture and medicine converge."--Michael Rohrbacher, Ph.D., MT-BC, Director of Music Therapy, Shenandoah University

"Benjamin Koen weds grounded ethnography to overtly experimental subject matter. His book challenges the reader with its proposals for social engagement and for an issue-oriented ethnomusicology."--Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music, Harvard University, co-editor of Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture

"A much needed, detailed, and insightful ethnography of the Muslim healing ritual." --Ethnomusicology

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0199798214
• ISBN 13: 9780199798216
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240