1 - Engendering Emotion and the Environment in Vietnamese Music and Ritual

Summary

This chapter examines how musical performance is bound up with displays and exchanges of sentiment in Vietnamese spirit possession rituals, known as len dong. It aims to show how the expression of emotion is culturally mediated through ritual practice and musical performance by exploring the affective modalities of mediumship from new perspectives. I also consider the ways in which emotional expressions in ritual practices are inflected by gender relations to the environment and discuss how the exchange of sentimental relations (tinh cam) among musicians and between musicians and their audience is a highly prized ideal during mediumship rituals and many other traditional contexts for musical performance.

Deeply felt sentiments are mediated, shared, and expressed in mediumship practices in numerous ways. The process of coming out as a medium, the special relationships mediums develop with certain spirits, the bodily experience of spirit possession, the enactment of ritual acts, divine utterances, and the music and dance performed during rituals are all invested with emotional associations and meanings. To explore these affective meanings, I examine the symbolic, bodily, and social aspects of ritual experience and performance and consider the religious framework of mediumship as a complex system of affect. In this system, linkages between emotion, the environment, gender, and ethnicity are encoded in the sonic and mythical identities of the spirits. Through expressive musical performance and ritual practice, a range of emotions and particular environments in the natural world are related to the ethnicity and gendered characteristics of incarnated spirits.