ABSTRACT
Warao healing performances also point out the need to rethink a common association between denotative content and conscious accessibility on the one hand, and non-denotative elements and unconscious or subconscious processes on the other. John Blacking and Gilbert Rouget have argued, that music is only capable of inducing trance when its use is rooted in a belief system that create a predisposition toward trance and a performance setting that occasions it. Tambiah argues that these " nonsense elements" help differentiate ritual from " ordinary conversation" and contribute to its performative efficacy. The rattle rhythms and the hand and body motions that produce them, the use of vocables or " meaningless" words, the musical structure of the songs, and the poetics of the text. Use of the rattle is associated not only with the production of sound but with movement of the curer's body and arms. The changing locus of the therapeutic action is signaled by the curer's movement from a seated position.
