5 - Sound, solitude, and music

Summary

The main images that recur in possession are based upon an overarching opposition between sound and solitude, and relate to the Tuareg conception and exercise of power. Among Tuareg, possession illuminates the inherently contrary and conflictual aspects of experience and action. The interaction among patients, musicians, and audience, and the reactions to the dance motions of trance and its accompanying music reveal the multiple meanings the event has for participants and non-participants. The aesthetic processes that occur during the rituals and the commentary that follows them provide new meanings in changing contexts for men and women of different ages and social strata.

The possession event draws upon different aspects of Kel Ewey social roles, especially gender, within and outside the context of trance. Possession thus informs anthropological attempts to grapple with the distinction between official and unofficial ideology, and how this comes to bear upon the choice of cultural and subcultural styles (Bakhtin 1960; Baxandall 1972; Hebdigé 1979). Tuareg possession encapsulates the contrast between the official ideology of descent, religion, and stratification, and the unofficial embodiment of illicit female sensuality in possession performance. Because it is enacted in performance, this contradiction is expressed simultaneously rather than sequentially, and evokes important themes in Kel Ewey Tuareg culture.