Rethinking music and healing in the age of the ‘psychedelic revival’

The links between music and healing have long been at the heart of research in anthropology and ethnomusicology. We might think of Gilbert Rouget’s work on music and trance, Richard C. Jankowsky’s research on music, spirituality and healing in Tunisia, the development of medical ethnomusicology with Benjamin D. Koen, music therapy, or Tia DeNora’s research on music and well-being. At the heart of these questions concerning music and healing, the ‘psychedelic revival’ is gaining momentum, inviting us to revisit these topics from a different angle. In the ceremonies associated with medicinal plants and psychedelic substances that I have seen emerge on the American continent, music does not merely serve to accompany the experience. It gives the experience direction, shapes the course of the ceremonies, helps us recognise their spiritual, therapeutic or cultural context, and supports what is now referred to as ‘integration’ in the aftermath of the ceremony.

But what kinds of music are we talking about, and how do they find their way into these spaces? Sounds, instruments, knowledge, plants and substances circulate from one country and one community to another. These movements raise questions of appropriation and the emergence of new genres, whilst also giving rise to hybridisations, collages and sound assemblages. New repertoires and new practitioners are emerging, along with a new economy for the musicians themselves. These practices are also transforming the ways in which we listen and the relationships between sound, music and silence. Drawing on my research in Brazil and New York, I will present various healing spaces associated with medicinal plants. I shall then focus on an emerging phenomenon: that of ‘Jewish music medicine’, in which Jewish repertoires are recombined with spiritual practices and therapeutic knowledge drawn from diverse traditions.

Rémy Jadinon, coordination

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