Music and Shamanism: The Main Methodological Approaches in Contemporary Anthropology and Musicology
ТРАДИЦИОННАЯ КУЛЬТУРА April 24, 2021 Галина Борисовна Сыченко
This article reviews the main approaches to studying music in shamanism within modern anthropology and musicology. The author describes the chronological development of scholarship, beginning with musical-ethnographic and musical-theoretical approaches, which remain in use. A more recent integrative and textological approach builds on these textually-oriented methods. Later, context-oriented approaches emerged, applying musical-anthropological and culturological methods to explore conceptual and functional aspects of shamanic and sacral music. Most recently, a music-psychological approach has grown, with directions ranging from culturological to neurophysiological, primarily in studies outside Russia. The author identifies the most relevant current research areas: comprehensive study of verbal-musical texts of shamanic rituals, their relationship to altered states of consciousness, comparative regional traditions, and future development of comparative-historical methodology for the musical component of shamanic traditions.