ABSTRACT

The two ethnographic examples in this chapter present many aspects and are so geographically distant that any comparison between them should only very carefully be advanced. However, they both do suggest that music is not only a means to engage in embodied interactions in the social domain but also with "sonic agents"— that is, with persons, deities, spirits, animals, and other types of intentional entities. In the small and intimate Gypsy parties, corporeal behaviors are certainly less spectacular, even though the processes resemble each other: Musicians undergo an emotional crisis, expressed by tears, when the personal melodies of their family members are played. Candomble rituals are always collective. In Gypsy celebrations, the aim is to construct a "shared body" among "brothers", and the emotional crisis always happens in a context of heightened corporeal and emotional interactions among participants. In both cases, therefore, two simultaneous forms of embodied musical interaction take place in the same space and time.