LISTENING TO THE INAUDIBLE: MUSIC, SPIRITS, AND NONHUMAN BEINGS IN INDIGENOUS RITUAL PRACTICE

Abstract

Ritual sound is approached as a medium of relation between humans and non-human beings in indigenous musical cosmologies. Starting from Blacking’s idea of music as “humanly organized sound,” the analysis expands toward relational sonic agency. Songs, chants, sacred instruments, and musicalized speech are understood as means through which spirits, plants, animals, ancestors, and hidden forces become ritually perceptible. “Listening to the inaudible” designates a culturally trained form of hearing through which sound becomes knowledge, mediation, memory, and transformation.