ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that how music is used, and has been considered to be used, within shaman rituals. It argues that any description of shamanism needs to be more flexible than the classic 'archaic technique of ecstasy' proposed by Mircea Eliade. The chapter shows that how musicologists have sought to capture 'shamanistic' music. It also explores relationships between music and trance. The chapter looks at the use of drums and other instruments in rituals. A particularly well-known instrument is the Shona mbira a lamellaphone resonated in a large gourd with rows of hand-forged, tuned metal keys bound to a wooden soundboard. Rodney Needham, returning to African ethnographic accounts, has suggested that percussion instruments have the greatest sensory affect. Frame drums are the most widely-reported instrument in central-Asian and Arctic shamanism, but, and in keeping with Blacking and Gilbert Rouget, it is as much the symbolism enshrined in them as their sound that lends them significance.
