ABSTRACT
Yorùbà devotional music for the orishas (deities) in Nigeria and the Cuban diaspora routinely intermeshes heightened speech, song, instrumental music, and dance, yet movement—in its full range of expressive manifestations—has received little scholarly attention within a growing body of comparative research in this field. Challenging the dominance of linguistic methods to comparative orisha research specifically and musical research more generally, Villepastour asserts the need for a holistic approach, which not only demands the incorporation of music's sonic components but gives equal importance to its bodily expressions including gesture, dance, and trance behavior.
