Indigenous Religious Music

Part of the renowned SOAS Musicology Series (University of London) and celebrating the diversity of indigenous nations, cultures and religions, the essays which comprise this volume discuss the musics performed by a wide variety of peoples as an integral part of their cultural traditions. These include examinations of the various styles of Maori, Inuit and Australian Aboriginal musics, and the role of music in Korean Shaman rituals.  Indeed, music forms a key component of many such rituals and belief systems and examples of these are explored amongst the peoples of Uganda, Amazonia and Africa. Through analysis of these rituals and the part music plays in them, the essays also open up further themes including social groupings and gender divisions, and engage with issues and debates on how we define and approach the study of indigeneity, religiosity and music.

With information on available recordings, and including a CD of music from many of the traditions represented, this is a book which gives readers the opportunity to gain a richer experience of the lived realities of indigenous religious musics.Music can and does change our perception of our "selves" and our world. This text concerns particular musics of particular people at particular times or events. It interfaces music and religious traditions, using multi- and interdisciplinary approaches. The book considers what the terms "indigenous", "religious" and "music" actually mean with regards to this academic study.

KAREN RALLS-MacLEOD, PhD, FSA, medieval religious historian, was Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh for six years and is now based in Oxford, England, conducting further specialised research. A member of the American Academy of Religion,  her publications include The Templars and the Grail, The Knights Templar Encyclopedia, The Quest for the Celtic Key, and Music and the Celtic Otherworld (Edinburgh University Press/Palgrave Macmillan). She plays the flute and harp. GRAHAM HARVEY is Reader in Religious Studies at King Alfred's College, Winchester. His publications include The True Israel (Brill, 1996), Listening People, Speaking Earth (Hurst, 1997) and Indigenous Religions (Continuum 2000)