Transforming Vòdún Musical Change and Postcolonial Healing in Benin's Jazz and Brass Band Music

• Main Author: Politz, Sarah (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: University of Michigan Press 2023
• Series: Musics in Motion
• Subjects: Music; Theory of music & musicology; Religion & beliefs; Benin, vodun, African jazz, Gangbe Brass Band, Eyo'nle Brass Band, Jomion and the Uklos, Dahomey, religion, spirituality, economics, entrepreneurship, liveness, livelihood, transformation, translation, ethnomusicology, postcolonial trauma, healing, musical change, temporality, migration, popular music, value, ethnography
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Summary

Transforming Vòdún examines how musicians from the West African Republic of Benin transform Benin's cultural traditions, especially the ancestral spiritual practice of vòdún and its musical repertoires, as part of the process of healing postcolonial trauma through music and ritual. Based on fieldwork in Benin, France, and New York City, Sarah Politz uses historical ethnography, music analysis, and participant observation to examine three case studies of brass band and jazz musicians from Benin. The multi-sited nature of this study highlights the importance of mobility, and diasporic connections in musicians' professional lives, while grounding these connections in the particularities of the African continent, its histories, its people, and its present.

Physical Description

1 electronic resource (256 p.)

ISBN

mpub.12221588
9780472075966
9780472055968

Access

Open Access