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The Mescalero Apache Girls' Puberty Ceremony: The Role of Music in Structuring Ritual Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Anne Dhu Shapiro  and
Inés Talamantez
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Extract

Music plays a central role in the ceremonies of many native-American groups. Ritual practitioners are often called Singers, and the most important words of the ceremonies are uttered musically. While the music is used in obvious ways—accompanying dance, for instance, or making text audible—a less obvious but much more important function is that of structuring the time-frame of the ritual. This is a particularly necessary function in those ceremonies which last over a period of several days and must therefore sustain over time the experience of transcendence. The purpose of such a ceremony is to effect ritual transformation within a socially regulated framework. In this paper, we will be describing the role of music in the Mescalero Apache girls' rite of passage, an eight-day ritual in which a young pubescent girl is transformed into the female deity of the Apache, Isdzαnadl'esh, and is literally “sung” into womanhood.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 18 , 1986 , pp. 77 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 by the International Council for Traditional Music

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References

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