La Taranta (pt. 3)

Ernesto De Martino's fascinating 1961 ethnography of Apulian Tarantism, 'The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism' is strongly influenced by the idealist humanism of Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce.

Because of its optimist, positivist, rational, humanitarian, decent nature, one can read De Martino's ethnography in the way proposed by Roland Barthes in 'The Pleasure of Text': "The more decent, well-spoken, innocent and saccharine a story is told, the easier it is to invert it, the easier it is to blacken it, the easier it is to read it against the grain".

Reading of De Martino's ethnography against the grain is certainly easy- one can destabilize the book's idealism when it is creatively misread in a way informed by Lovecraftian paranoia and the Cthulhu mythos!

Just consider the following quotations from the chapter on the medieval origins of Tarantism:

"First of all, there is the problem of the phenomenon's origins, the period and historical climate in which tarantism came into being, with its own forms, on the ruins of the orgiastic cults and the mystery religions. In this regard, it is impossible for us to trace any useful indication of the symbolism of the taranta in the Phisiologus and medieval bestiaries, or in the prayers, spells and recipes collected by Pradel in Griechische und Süditalienische Gebete, Beschwörungen und Rezepte des Mittelalters. The same must be said for Arab writers. (...) Furthermore, in the De Venenis by Cristoforo Degli Onesti, a Florentine who taught medicine in Padua from 1379 to 1386, there is a chapter which treats De morsu tarantulae. Although this chapter appears in the index of the manuscript preserved in the National Library of Paris, [it] is missing from the text (...)".

Why is the chapter on the bite of the tarantula missing from De Venenis? Did De Martino check all Arab writers - or did he omit to mention that he found some blasphemous indications in the work of the mad one? Why did the authorities really close up the miraculous well at St. Paul's Chapel in Corso Garibaldi in Galatina in July 1959, the well to which those afflicted by Tarantism flocked every year? Doesn't the fact that Tarantism only runs in certain family point towards an Innsmouth-like atavism? And what about the 'Sanpoalari' - Southern Italian snake charmers and traveling healers? To which secrets are they privy? And why doesn't the spider which is held responsible for tarantism correspond to any arachnid of modern zoology? Is there any connection between tarantism and the spider-god Atlach-Nacha? Does the yearly cycle of Tarantism in any way correspond to the astronomical cycle of the planet Cykranosh (or Saturn, as we know it today), the planet from which this demonic deity is said to come? Do the caverns deep beneath Mount Voormithadreth, where the god resides, lead to the Apulian Monte Gargano, or even further south? What about the giant, bloated purple spiders of Leng, which are thought to be the children and servitors of Atlach-Nacha? Wasn't Tarantism mentioned in Unaussprechlichen Kulten by Von Junzt? Or was it Ludwig Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis?



Post scriptum

Only after writing this post, I read the passages in Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia on Hidden Writing.

La Taranta (pt. 2)

I stumbled on the documentary featured in the previous post when reading Ernesto De Martino's classic 1961 ethnography La Terra Del Rimorso (The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism). The book is the result of ethnographic research into Tarantism, conducted by an interdisciplinary team of historians, psychiatrists, medics, anthropologists and social workers. The fieldwork took place in Apulia, the state that forms the heel in Italy's boot, in the summer of 1959.

What is Tarantism? It is an affliction which the Apulians ascribe to the bite of the Tarantula spider, and which reoccurs in regularly repeating yearly cycles in those bitten. The symptoms include "...falling to the ground, a feeling of prostration, anguish, a state of psychomotor agitation with a beclouding of the sensory apparatus, difficulty in remaining standing, stomach ache, nausea and vomiting, various paresthesias and muscular pains, a heightening of sexual desire...".

The research team found out that - even though the symptoms vaguely resembled those of spider poisoning - Tarantism could be reduced neither to the bite of an actual spider nor to other causes, such as sunstrokes or psychic illness. On the contrary, in the course of the investigations Tarantism acquired the meaning of a mythical-ritual symbol, culturally conditioned in its functioning and efficacy.

The spatial and temporal distribution of 'spider's bites' made it highly unlikely that actual spiders were responsible for the phenomenon. There was an overwhelming prevalence of pubescent female participation in Tarantism, and the phenomenon afflicted certain families only. Once bitten, the victim would be affected in the summer for several years, the phenomenon obeying a strict calender. Furthermore, certain locations associated with specific Saints - such as the town of Galatina, of which the St. Paul church is featured in the film - provided immunity from the spiders' bite.

The spider which was held responsible for tarantism was a mythical creature which did not correspond to any arachnid of modern zoology. Instead, the Taranta assembled the characteristics of several different species of spider into a mythical whole. Different colors were attributed to the spiders - principally red, green and black - and the 'bite' of each respective spider caused different behaviour in the victim. Those bit by red spiders displayed martial, heroic behaviour; those bit by green spiders displayed eroticized behaviour; and those bitten by black spiders were fascinated by funerary paraphernalia. Furthermore, each color spider had its own repertoire of musical figures and dances: for example, those bitten by a green spider would only dance to a Tarantella tune associated with the green spider. Finally, the victims of the spider's bite were fascinated by pieces of cloth with the appropriate color. Thus, during the course of an exorcism different Tarantella tunes were played and different colors of clothes were given to the victim in order to determine which spider possesses her. Only the appropriate Tarantella tune, the appropriate color and the appropriate dance would cure the victim - at least for the time being, until the affliction re-occured a year later. Music serves at once as diagnosis and therapy.

Rather than the result of the bite of an actual spider, Tarantism was a mythical-ritual experience which was modeled on the medical symptoms of the actual bite of a poisonous spider. Examining parallels in ethnography and folklore, De Martino found structural similarities between Tarantism and Afro-Mediterranean and Afro-American (Vodou) possession cults. Furthermore, De Martino found antecedents to this religious formation in classical Greek mythology and rituals.

De Martino interprets Tarantism primarily as a form of psychological therapy. For his, the Tarantella is an exorcism, as a ritual eviction of the spider which possesses the victim. The spider symbolizes a traumatic event in the biography of the victim (specifically frustrated eros), and it is the memory of that traumatic effect which causes the affliction of Tarantism with its attendent symptoms. This memory is cast out my music, color and dance - the Tarantella. For De Martino, the symbol of the Taranta is a "mythical-ritual horizon of evocation, release and resolution of unresolved psychic conflicts (...). As a cultural model, the symbol offers a mythical-ritual order for settling these conflicts and reintegrating individuals into the group. The symbol of the taranta lends a figure to the formless, rhythm and melody to menacing silence, and color to the colorless in an assiduous quest of articulated and distinct passions, where a horizonless excitation alternates with a depression that isolates and closes off."

(A short aside on formlessness. That De Martino associates the spider with formlessness certainly struck a chord with me: for Georges Bataille, the spider was an almost formless creature, an invertebrate that is not like anything: "To declare (...) that the universe is not like anything, and is simply formless, is tantamount to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spittle." (Documents 7, 1929). The relation between Bataille's thought and formlessness is the polar opposite of the relationship between De Martino's thought and formlessness.)

Gilbert Rouget, whose 1985 ethnography "Music and Trance. A theory of the relations between music and possession" was featured before on this blog, was highly critical of De Martino's interpretation of Tarantism. Rouget writes that De Martino's analysis makes one lose sight of the most obvious aspect of Tarantism: the identification of the afflicted with the spider. Rouget: "One of the dance figures of the tarantulees - the best known - consists, as we know, in imitating the spider's movements: back to the ground, body arched to a great or lesser degree, the tarantulee moves about like a spider on all fours. One can see this very clearly in D. Carpitella's film, and the sight is striking." (Rouget is mistakingly referring to La Taranta as Carpitella's film: Carpitella merely recorded the music). Rouget reproaches De Martino for making himself an heir to a Christian tradition which abjects possession and possessing divinities and thereby misinterpreting Tarantism. Rouget: "Despite appearances, the divinity responsible for the possession is not the one that is excorcised. On the contrary, it is the divinity concerned who, by allowing the possessing person to identify with him or her, provides the means of ecxorcising the illness - real or imagined - from which the person is suffering."

Whatever the case may be, De Martino's book is highly interesting for those who are interested in possession - whether for scientific reasons or because possession can function as a model for countercultural practices. In De Martino's book, possession is not the exotic practice of an exotic people in an exotic land: La Terra Del Rimorso presents ethnographic and historiographic material on a possession cult which takes place in Europe itself. What's more, Tarantism has its roots in the very soil from which Western civilization sprang: in classical Greece. We were already possessed in the cradle.


Post scriptum

Here is an indepth review of De Martino's book (link).

La Taranta (pt. 1)

The two YouTube videos embedded below together form the 1962 documentary La Taranta, which investigates a Southern Italian possession cult: Tarantism. The film, directed by Gianfranco Mingozzi, documents this fascinating peasant religious formation in which the victims of the bite of the mythical Tarantula require a ritual exorcism of frenetic dance, music and colors.

Even if you do not speak Italian, do watch the film, for it is convulsively beautiful. In my mind, its 19 minutes assemble Luis Buñuel's 1933 documentary on the grinding poverty of Spanish peasants Las Hurdes, Herk Harvey's 1962 existential horror film Carnival of Souls and Jean Rouch's 1955 documentary on the Hauka possession cult Les Maitres Fous. The documentary was filmed in a black and white which is so funereal it is almost Xasthuresque, and its music - the famous Tarantella - is haunting. In short: my highest recommendations!


*



The next post will provide indepth material on Tarantism!


Post scriptum

Some readers of this blog might be familiar with Mingozzi's name from the 1974 nunsploitation film Flavia, la Monaca Musulmana.

Possession (pt. 7)

French ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget in "Music and Trance. A theory of the relations between music and possession":

"[In] the famous epidemic of Saint Vitus' Dance (or Saint John's Dance or Saint Guy's Dance) that swept Europe and Germany during the Middle Ages, dance was of course the primary sign of trance. But was it the cause of this trance or, on the contrary, its effect? The second hypothesis would appear to be the right one. These dances did not, in fact, occur without music, and since the music was provided by musicians, the dancers were consequently musicated, that is, their trance was induced. This is clearly evident in a drawing by Bruegel the Elder, the Epidemic Dance in Moelenbeek, which depicts a woman falling into a trance as a result of the music being played for her by a bagpiper. I know nothing in Europe that is as close to a black African possession scene. Except for the costumes and the particular instruments being used, one would think it depicted a ndöp ceremony in Senegal. There, we need not hesitate, the subject is a musicated person, and we are indisputably on the side of possession. But a question does arise. Whereas in Bruegel's drawing we are undoubtedly in Christendom, we are not necessarily within Christianism and transcendence."

Interestingly, Rouget's analysis tallies with that of German physician Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker's analysis in his 1832 book 'The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages'. Hecker hypothesized that the Saint Vitus dance originated from pre-Christian customs. "Bacchanalian dances, which have originated in similar causes among all rude nations of the earth, and the wild extravagances of a heated imagination, were the constant accompaniments to this half-heathen, half-christian festival." The dire living conditions of the late Middle Ages - natural disasters, the Black Death, famine, social unrest - made Medieval Europeans seek relief in 'the intoxication of an artificial delirium'.

In analyzing Saint Vitus's Dance as a possession ritual - that is: as a cultural phenomenon, perhaps related to Tarantism - Rouget discredits theories which ascribe the Dance to neurological disorders (apraxia, chorea), to ergot poisoning or to mass psychogenic illness.

This has the great advantage of providing an explanation for the long period in which Saint Vitus' Dance was prevalent: it occurred to thousands of people from the the 14th to the 17th century. It seems highly unlikely that rare medical disorders or poisoning with a psychedelic fungus could cause the relevant symptoms on such a massive scale for such a long period. Furthermore, in the Middle Ages the effects of ergot poisoning were well known under the name of 'Saint Anthony's fire': thus, Medieval Europeans were well able to distinguish ergot poisoning (associated with Saint Anthony) from dancing mania (associated with Saint Vitus). The diagnosis of 'mass psychogenic illness' or 'mass hysteria' is a sorry excuse for the want of a better (dynamic sociocultural) explanation and as a 'diagnosis' it deserves to go the same route as female hysteria.






Post scriptum

Here is a video for 'Saint Vitus', performed by legendary Doom Metal band Saint Vitus:




Interestingly, the lyrics to this song make no reference to the possessed dance for which the Saint has become most famous. Instead, the song focuses on Saint Vitus' martyrdom under Diocletian, giving the Saint's story a very America anti-government meaning:


Saint Vitus

Saint Vitus was a young lad
No one knows how old
'till the kingdom took his life
for the things he told
The world is full of wickedness
So Vitus says
"If you believe in god above,
you will all be saved"
Lust can breed corruption
So wash it from your life
Don't believe in the government
Let your soul decide
And so the king grew angry
He saw his end in sight.
Young Vitus must be stopped
The little child must die

Saint Vitus – hear his distant scream
Saint Vitus – died for his belief

So if you're breeding wickedness
Keep this in mind
Vitus' soul is watching you
Through the veils of time
Well, people always stay the game
They never seem to learn
'till they all have lost their faith
and their souls have burned

Shock Xpress - John Waters (pt. 1)

From an interview with John Waters by Damon Wise in the first Shock Xpress book:

"I think the best thing I've done lately, y'know that kind of thing of ultimate voyeurism was... I was just driving down the street and I saw this tiny little church, but I mean really black. Really Southern, where people were speaking in tongues and had 'the spirit'. They had nurses there to help people who were speaking in tongues. I just pulled over and as I walked up I thought, I can't go in. I was like a Martian. And then this nurse came out and she said, (blandly) 'Come in, son. Would you like to witness?' So I went right in and set down. There was a lady right next to me, completely speaking in tongues, like her head was gonna start spinning round. (...) And she was going, like, 'AIIIYEEAAYAIIEE.' It was so great. Then one turned round and said, (softly) 'You're the movie man, aren't you?', and I thought, 'I can't believe I'm recognised in this place!' But it was really great and only in Baltimore, I think, it is that open. I mean, somewhere that you really... it's almost rude to go in. I would never have gone in unless I'd been invited. But once I was in there ... it was like Wise Blood, y'know? There was, like, one old, dirty, crooked sacred hart on the wall. That was the only decoration. It was really poor. But there were people really dressed up. Older black ladies with big hats on. It was really nice. (...) I stayed a half hour. It seemed long. I thought, I just want to get out of here before one person, maybe, doesn't like that I'm here. But I felt throbbing voyeurism! I was so interested I couldn't leave. And I was with somebody who was out in the car, saying, I don't believe he went in there!"


Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)




Polyester (John Waters, 1981)

Possession (pt. 6)

In the post about artists as men possessed, which inspired this series of posts, Mark K-Punk wrote about Joy Division:

"The most disquieting section of the Joy Division documentary is the cassette recording of Curtis being hypnotised. It's disturbing, in part because you suspect that it is many ways the key to Curtis's art of performance: his capacity to evacuate his self, to "travel far and wide through many different times". You don't have to believe that he has been regressed into a past life in order to recognise that he is not there, that he has gone somewhere else: you can hear the absence in Curtis's comatoned voice, stripped of familiar emotional textures. He has gone to some ur-zone where Law is written, the Land Of The Dead. Hence another take on the old 'death of the author' riff: the real author is the one who can break the connection with his lifeworld self, become a shell and a conduit which other voices, outside forces, can temporarily occupy."

The Law of Curtis

K-Punk: "He has gone to some ur-zone where Law is written, the Land Of The Dead."

The lyrics of Shadowplay open with the image of a crossroads, which in many cultures is an Interzone, a location "between the worlds", a place where spirits can be contacted, a dangerously sacred place, "No place to stop, no place to go".

Hecate, 'Queen of the Night', who sometimes traveled with a following of ghosts and other social outcasts, was the goddess of crossroads in ancient Greece. Oedipus met his father at the crossroads and killed him there. In Voodoo, crossroads are regarded as a favorite haunt of evil spirits and propitious to magic devices. At crossroads, the most powerful Voodoo divinity, Papa Legba, receives the homages of sorcerers and presides over their incantations and spells. Many magic formulae of Voodoo begin with the words: 'By the power, Master of the Crossroads.' The bluesman Robert Johnson reputedly sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads.

Crossroads are a locality where two directions touch and annihilate each other, a directionless place ("...so plain to see..."), a nowhere, a no-man's land. In anthropological terms, crossroads are a liminal place, a "threshold" of or between two different existential planes, a place characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy.

This non-place, which is a non-time as well, is where Curtis receives his stone tablets with his bitter Law.

However, Curtis does not bring back Ten Commandments from the wilderness, from his personal Mount Sinai. The Law he brings back from the Wilderness (Curtis' shamanic Otherworld), it is primarily a descriptive law, not a presciptive law. Curtis' vision quest in the Wilderness aim to describe, understand and predict the cruelties of social life: travelling "...far and wide to many different times...", Curtis brings back visions which underline his proposition that social life invariably, unchangingly is cruel. In Wilderness, the laws of Curtis are statical (not dynamical) laws of social existence.

In Wilderness, prescriptive law plays only an indirect role, showing through in his feelings of indignation, guilt, and shame at seeing moral laws transgressed. Nevertheless, the fact that these feelings show through so strongly indicate that the relation between the two types of law is highly relevant in understanding Curtis' situation. For Curtis descriptive law (the cruel laws governing social life) and prescriptive law are fundamentally incongruous, conflicting: the laws of social life ordain that the laws of morality will always be trampled underfoot.

In fact, I am reminded somewhat of the Marquis De Sade's 1787 novel 'Justine (or The Misfortunes of Virtue)'. In this novel too the descriptive and prescriptive laws are at odds. Justine's morals, the virtuous protagonist's prescriptive laws are confronted with the descriptive (metaphysical) law which makes those who live a life of evil and vice prosper, whilst the morally pure suffer. A Sadean reading of Joy Division - perverse pleasure at Curtis' dejection - is entirely possible, though in all probability quite rare.

Curtis takes an intermediate position between Marquis De Sade and Justine. Justine, though confronted with wickedness, perversions and crimes at every turn, blindly clings to her moral laws, remaining unaware of the evil character of Nature. Marquis De Sade on the other hand is conscious of the monstrosity of Nature, and this consciousness leads him to embrace all evil. Curtis, unlike Justine and like De Sade, is painfully aware of the corrupt nature of social life; but like Justine and unlike De Sade, he does not reject prescriptive law.

What strikes me about the lyrics of Wilderness is that they employ imagery of a Christian nature - surprising for a band which has a nihilist reputation. The lyrics mention saints, the Cross, sin, the blood of Christ, and martyrs. In this context, the 'one-sided trials' seem to refer to Pontius Pilate's trial of Jesus and subsequent trials of Christian martyrs.

In fact, there is something Christian about Joy Division's lyrics, which insistently extol suffering, which present us with a "mortification of the mind". Furthermore, Pilate's executioners may have nailed Christ to the Cross, but the crucifixion was a sacrifice of God. In the sacrifice of Christ the position of the victim is sanctified, while the position of the sacrificer is disavowed. If I examine Curtis' lyrics with the scheme of sacrifice in my mind, Curtis presents himself primarily as the victim, not as the sacrificer. The sacrificers are generally external agents: the leaders of men, the architects of law, the conquistadors who took their share, the figures from the past, the people who pay to see inside asylums with doors open wide, the 'you' in whom 'I put my trust', the 'you' who 'treats me like this'. Like Christian thought, Curtis disavows the sacrifiers.

However, unlike Christian suffering, Curtis' suffering brings him no interior peace, no spiritual joy, no salvation. Curtis is like Benjamin's Angel of History, who also looks backwards and not towards a future redemption: 'His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet.' 'No future' means 'No Redemption', means 'No Kingdom Come'; teleology and salvation have slipped from our grasp.

Furthermore, in some lyrics the conflict of prescriptive and descriptive law rages even within Curtis himself. In these lyrics, Curtis no longer disavows the sacrificer, but experiences himself as guilty. Humanity's guilt of killing Jesus Christ assumes an unlimited nature. The leaders of men, the conquistadors who took their share, and all the others are no longer the only actors in the drama of sacrifice, since the fault devolves on all humans. In the end, even Curtis, even Christ himself, is tainted. In these lyrics, Curtis' torment takes on a tragic dimension.

Mother, I tried, please believe me
I'm doing the best that I can
I'm ashamed of the things
I've been put through
I'm ashamed of the person I am

Isolation (3)

But if you could just see the beauty
These things I could never describe
Pleasures and wayward distraction
Is this my wonderful prize?

Isolation (5)

Possession (pt. 5)

In his very inspiring post on Mark Stewart, Ian Curtis and Mark E. Smith as possessees by 'other voices, outside forces', Mark K-Punk writes on Joy Division:

"The most disquieting section of the Joy Division documentary is the cassette recording of Curtis being hypnotised. It's disturbing, in part because you suspect that it is many ways the key to Curtis's art of performance: his capacity to evacuate his self, to "travel far and wide through many different times". You don't have to believe that he has been regressed into a past life in order to recognize that he is not there, that he has gone somewhere else: you can hear the absence in Curtis's comatoned voice, stripped of familiar emotional textures. He has gone to some ur-zone where Law is written, the Land Of The Dead. Hence another take on the old 'death of the author' riff: the real author is the one who can break the connection with his lifeworld self, become a shell and a conduit which other voices, outside forces, can temporarily occupy."

In "Music And Trance", French ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget distinguishes possession and shamanism as two diametrically opposed spiritual systems:

"Whether we examine menadism in ancient Greece or demoniac possession during the Renaissance, the zār cult in Ethiopia or the rab cult in Senegal, the orisha and vodun cults in the Gulf of Guinea and Brazil, basangu in Zambia or hàù bóng in Vietnam, or any of the various forms of trance to be found in Bali, nowhere do we find any evidence of trance being viewed as a journey made by man into the spirit world. In every case it is interpreted as involving the arrival of a spirit or god in the world of men. This difference is a radical one: in the first case we have shamanism, in the second, possession. Since in both cases the event is experienced from the viewpoint of the human involved, in the first case a journey is taken and in the second case a visit is received - considerable distinction indeed.

...

I [have] tried to isolate the difference between shamanism and possession and come to the conclusion that it could be expressed by a series of three oppositions: journey to the spirits/visit by the spirits; control over the spirits/submission to the spirits; voluntary trance/involuntary trance. This triple opposition could be further condensed into only one: acting/undergoing. Shamanism appeared to be, if one may say so, essentially acted, possession as undergone.

To use Pouillon's terms ... "the orientation of the relation" between subject and trance appeared to be diametrically opposed in the two cases. ... Moreover, in possession the subject goes into trance because he changes identity; in shamanism he goes into trance because he changes worlds."

In the lyrics to Wilderness, the Joy Division song to which Mark K-Punk refers, Ian Curtis does not change identities, he changes worlds:

I traveled far and wide through many different times,
What did you see there?
I saw the saints with their toys,
What did you see there?
I saw all knowledge destroyed.
I travelled far and wide through many different times.

The same is true for the lyrics to Shadowplay:

To the center of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you,
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you,
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you,
In a room with a window in the corner I found truth.

Ian Curtis' (involuntary, uncontrolled) epileptic fits have defined his image, as if the lyrics to 'She's Lost Control' did not refer to some unnamed female but to Curtis himself. However, in the lyrics to Wilderness and Shadowplay, Curtis presents himself as a mobile agent who actively seeks out his chosen destination. Where the possessee is visited by beings from the invisible world, Curtis goes out to the invisible, liminal world to visit these beings. Curtis is one to “step outside” or “take a ride out”, not one to invite the Other in. Rather than a "shell and a conduit which other voices, outside forces, can temporarily occupy", rather than a possessee, Curtis is like an Inuit shaman, who undertakes his journey "in the depths of the ocean ... to seek out his patient's soul and bring it back to his or her body" (sourced here).




Post Scriptum I: Epilepsy and possession

In Rouget's 'Music and trance. A theory of the relation between music and possession', the author rejects theories that pose that possession can be regarded as 'musicogenic epilepsy', that is epileptic seizures caused by acoustic stimuli:

"In Senegal (...), the first duty of those responsible for ndöp séances is to ascertain, in the case of nonritualized [possession] crisis, whether this is the result of epilepsy or, on the contrary, attributable to possession."


Post Scriptum II: Wilderness



Post Scriptum III: Shadowplay

Possession (pt. 4)

I

It might seem bizarre to write, as I did in the previous installment of this series of posts, that Mark Stewart was a man possessed by the spirit of the Thatcherite Great Britain of the 1980s, a man communing with the military-industrial entertainment complex, a man in communion with the capitalist, proto-fascist, paranoid, surveillance-obsessed oppressor, a man in unio mystica with Babylon, with the enemy. Bizarre: wasn't Stewart an anti-fascist, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist activist?

But there is an interesting antecedent: the West-African Hauka movement. From Michael Taussig's "Mimesis and Alterity":

"Those involved in this rapidly growing movement, begun among the Songhay people in 1925, would dance and become possessed by the spirit of the French major who had first taken the offensive against him, who imprisoned those who had begun the movement, who slapped them around until they said there was no such thing as Hauka. Thus deified as "the wicked major," his spirit got into the first floor of the Hauka pantheon as one of its most violent spirits. Thus possessed, the Hauka would mimic the white men (and sometimes their wives, too) and acquire strange powers.

(...)

But in addition to the conscious play-acting mimicking of the European, conducted with wit and verve, there is bodily possession - which is what makes the mimicry possible yet generally works at a less than conscious level with special, even disturbing, bodily effects: frothing at the mouth, bulging of the eyes, contorted limb movements, inability to feel pain. Strange "Europeans" indeed. And surely that's the point - they so clearly are and are not Europeans. It's the ability to become possessed, the ability that signifies to Europeans awesome Otherness, if not downright savagery, which allows them to assume the identity of the European and, at the same time, stand clearly and irrevocably eye-bulgingly apart from it."

In the Hauka cult, the Europeans discovered "... the presence of an open dissidence, a society the members of which openly defied the social, political and religious order. It his here that we discover the most original aspect of the Hauka movement: their total refusal of the system put in place by the French." In embodying the enemy the Hauka appropriated his power. In this case, possession was anthropophagy.

Like the Hauka, Stewart embodied the enemy: in his case, the enemy was not the colonial authorities but the grey and hopeless Great Britain of the 1980s, the Babylon that Rastamen denounce, the "wicked major" Margaret Thatcher. And like the Hauka, the fact that Stewart embodied the enemy didn't keep him from refusing all cooperation with the authorities.


II

Reflecting on a specific moment in "Les Maîtres Fous" ("The Mad Masters"), a 1955 ethnographic film by Jean Rouch (1917-2004), Taussig writes:

"A man possessed by a Hauka spirit stoops and breaks an egg over the sculpted figure of the governor (a little statue not unlike the Mbari shrine of the white man) that presides over the day's events of Hauka possession. Cracked on the governor's head, the egg cascades in white and yellow rivulets. Then the film is abruptly cut. We are transported to a big military parade in the colonial city two hours away. The film hurls at us the cascading yellow and white plumes of the white governor's gorgeous hat as he reviews the black troops passing. Those of us watching the film in a university lecture hall in New York City gasp. There is something immensely powerful released at this moment, begging for interpretation."

Mark Stewart's version of William Blake's "Jerusalem" somehow parallels this moment in Rouch's film. Regarded as the high point of Stewart's career, the song was played on a regular basis by John Peel and constantly being asked for by listeners. Stewart's "Jerusalem" is more than a parody of the patriotic 1916 hymn, written by C. Hubert H. Parry: it is also an anthropophagic appropriation of the affective power of Brass band patriotism and militarism for anti-nationalist and anti-militarist purposes. But "Jerusalem" is even more than parody and appropration: the rough, almost Dadaist juxtaposition of incongruent sonic material (Industrial, Dub Reggae, Punk Rock, Brass Band, Song) mimics the tensions present in the British social and cultural life in the 1980s.

But Stewart's "Jerusalem" is yet more than a parody and an appropriation and mimesis: the song wrests Blake's poem "...away from a conformism that is about to overpower it". In "Jerusalem", Mark Stewart is a "...writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, [he] is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious" (Benjamin).

To paraphrase Taussig's analysis of Rouch's film: the deep Industrial Dub of "Jerusalem", with its ability to explore the sonic unconscious, to come close and enlarge, to frame and to montage, creates in this sudden juxtaposition a suffusion of mimetic poetry. Blake's poetry is allowed to flower in the grey Thatcherite Great Britain of the 1980s.

Mark Stewart's "Jerusalem" is to C. Hubert H. Parry "Jerusalem", what the rivulets of egg are to the governor's hat.


Post scriptum

I've posted Rouch's film before, but feel compelled to watch it. Even though I first saw it several years ago the film is still bending my mind into shapes that are "abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours" (Lovecraft). As Wizard Eibon commented on the earlier posting of the film: "a classic masterpiece you can't forget once you've seen it".









A fascinating review of Rouch's film: here.

Possession (pt. 3)

I

In Greek antiquity, Aristotle observed that "enthousiastic" melodies (associated, as their name indicates, with possession) used the (ancient Greek) Phrygian mode exclusively. The Phrygian mode was said to originate in Phrygia, a kingdom in what is now modern-day Turkey. Also, the aulos was regarded as the instrument specific to Dionysian ecstasies. It was a flute-like wind instrument, which also was seen as coming from the Phrygian kingdom. The music of Dionysian ecstasy was regarded as coming from Phrygia.

Gilbert Rouget in "Music and Trance": "It was indeed from Phrygia (or Thrace, but in any case from Asia Minor) that the Dionysus cult spread (...), or, as the Greeks themselves believed, that it originated. We are therefore justified in saying that, although Dionysian music was Phrygian in instrumentation and mode, it was not because the musical characteristics of this instrumentation and mode in and of themselves (that is to say, their particular timbre or set of intervals) were thought to have any remarkable effect on triggering trance, but rather because they were the clearest sign of Dionysus' identity. This would in any case concur with the general logic of possession. For in fact what is possession other that the invasion of the field of consciousness by the other, that is, someone who has come from elsewhere? Insofar as he is the other, Dionysus is at the same time an elsewhere. This is how he was thought to be, and how his music was experienced. In Dahomey, people of Gun or Fon origin speak Nago when they are possessed by a vodun of Nago origin. Elsewhere, people who ordinarily speak a given African language talk in Arabic if the spirit possessing them is thought to be of Arab origin. When she was possessed by Beelzebub, Jeanne des Agnes spoke, it is said, in Hebrew (...). What is true of speech could also be true of that other language, music."

Rouget's analysis puts in mind Michael Taussig's 1986 ethnography "Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man. A Study in Terror and Healing". In the book, white colonists visiting Indian shamans to be cured of the sorcery believe that the 'wildest' Indians, those Indians who live in the most geographically remote region, have the most powerful healing capabilities. The Indians on the other hand visit markets in Colonial towns to buy 'exotic' Western European grimoires. Here too, the magically powerful Other originates from the mysterious "elsewhere".


II

So what about the music of Mark Stewart, whom Mark K-Punk described as a man possessed, as "a shell and a conduit which other voices, outside forces, (...) occupy.". K-Punk dic not examine too closely which voices, which forces Mark Stewart channels: Stewart's loa was cursorily described as "...rage and utopian longings...". This raises the question: where, for Mark Stewart's, is the "elsewhere" that haunts him?

Even if the sources of inspiration for his music are diverse, Mark Stewart's first "elsewhere" is no doubt Jamaica: possessed by the dubby or duppy ghost, the Caribbean island's music has thoroughly invaded his field of consciousness.

"Dub arose from doubling—the common Jamaican practice of reconfiguring or "versioning" a prerecorded track into any number of new songs. Dub calls the apparent "authenticity" of roots reggae into question because dub destroys the holistic integrity of singer and song. It proclaims a primary postmodern law: there is no original, no first ground, no homeland. By mutating its repetitions of previously used material, dub adds something new and distinctly uncanny, vaporizing into a kind of doppelgänger music. Despite the crisp attack of its drums and the heaviness of its bass, it swoops through empty space, spectral and disembodied. Like ganja, dub opens the "inner door." John Corbett even links the etymology of the word "dub" with duppie (Jamaican patois for ghost). Burning Spear entitled the dub version of his great Marcus Garvey album Garvey's Ghost, and Joe Gibbs responded to Lee Perry's production of Bob Marley's "Duppie Conqueror" with the cut "Ghost Capturer." Perry described dub as "the ghost in me coming out." Dub music not only drums up the ghost in the machine, but gives the ghost room to dance." (sourced here).

It should be noted though that Rastafarianism - unlike many Afro-Caribbean religions such as Vodou - is not a possession cult. As far as I am aware, there are no rituals in Rastafarianism in which, during trance, the subject is thought to have acquired a different personality: that of a god, a deity, genius or ancestor who takes possession of the subject, substitutes itself for him, and acts in that subject's place. Furthermore, alcohol, which has an important role in many Afro-Caribbean possession rituals, is tabooed under Rastafarian food laws (I-Tal).

"[Rasta] has little in common with Haitian voodoo, Cuban santeria or the other Africanised remixes of Catholicism. Instead of a panoply of spirits, Rasta has just the one God, the stern patriarch of the Old Testament - not someone with whom you can cut deals, as you can with voodoo's loa. If anything, Rasta is Afro-Protestant, sharing with mainland America's fundamentalists an emphasis on close reading of the scriptures and a millenarian belief in an End of Time whereupon the righteous get transported to the promised land." ("Tangets #2. Back To The Roots", by Simon Reynolds, Wire, September 2000).

Nevertheless, in Rastafarianism communion or 'communial trances' do play a role. "Rasta mystical experience emphasizes the possibility of the immediate presence of Jah within the "dread," or "God-fearer." God's presence brought on an understanding of the fundamental unity of all humanity, expressed in the pronoun "I&I" (which can mean I, we, or even you, with Jah present). Discerning the will of God is an almost Talmudic process, achieved through night-long "reasoning" sessions, part theological debate, part prayer meeting and meditation, which lead to an "overstanding" (rather than understanding) of the truth through union with Jah." (sourced here).

“In fact, one of the most common Rastafarian rituals involves reading a chapter of the bible everyday. The version most commonly read is that of King James. The Rastafarians claim, however, that King James distorted the true content of the bible party because of his inability to translate the Amharic Ethiopian text accurately, and also as a deliberate ploy to perpetuate the suppression and oppression of the black race. So, although the bible is read and venerated, the Rastafarians only choose to read those passages which they ‘intuitively’ feel are correct.” (sourced here).

Many tenets of Rastafarianism, such as the I-Tal diet and the wearing of dreadlocks, are the result of an at once inspired and paranoid reading of the Scriptures, the result of a Ganja-entranced communion with Jah.

Employing Rouget's typology of types of mystic trance, we can describe Reasoning as a mystic religious practice in which "... the relation between divinity and subject is seen as an encounter which, depending upon the individual, is experienced as a communion, a revelation, or an illumination." For Rouget, this type of non-identificatory mystical trance is possession without the embodiment of the deity. Other examples of such non-identificatory possession are the (Protestant) Shakers of Saint Vincent in the Antilles, the Dervishes, the Schlustes (a Russian sect of dancers and flagellants) and the Camisards.


III

Mark Stewarts music can be described as a non-identificatory possession, directed not at communion with Jah but at communion with the Thatcherite Great Britain of the 1980s, at communion with the Babylon that Rastamen denounce.

Using his politically militant music his to reveal the Western world as a greedy, proto-fascist, paranoid, surveillance-obsessed society, Mark Stewart's use of Dub is informed by late-1970s Western interpretation of Jamaican culture:

"Reggae fans, black and white, (...) looked to the music for "a solid foundation" (as the Congos sang it), for certainty and truth, militancy and motivation. 'Roots rock rebel' neatly condenses how Jamaican music was seen both by rock and by reggae itself. Reggae was anti-imperialist: Rasta's Pan-Africanism connected with the period's post-colonial struggles (...). Reggae was anti-capitalist (...). And reggae was anti-fascist, (...) bringing radical chic to countless student digs with its poster iconography: Peter Tosh, a Che Guevara with natty dreads and black beret; Medusa-headed spiritual warriors Black Uhuru, Burning Spear, and Culture; Steel Pulse preaching about "Handsworth Revolution"." (from: "Tangents #2: Back to the roots", Simon Reynolds, Wire, September 2000 issue)

Stewart's mid-1980s music also looks forward to the mid-1990s discourse on Dub: "For simplicity's sake, this cluster of ideas can be described as the Afro-Futurist discourse, but it actually has multiple facets: dub as deconstruction (of the song, of the metaphysics of musical presence); the producer as mad scientist, dark magus, shaman, trickster; the 'Macro Dub Infection' notions of dub as post-geographical virus and of dub's sonic instability as an education in 'insecurity'." (ibid.)

Mark Stewart's image as a paranoiac can be compared to Lee Perry's image as a 'mad scientist', a madness which in the 1990s was exalted in terms derived from Deleuze and Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus". Like Perry, Stewart has been portrayed in the press as being dangerously paranoid, and rumours abound as to "no-shows" at On-U Sound concerts being due to hospitalization. In a 1988 article in NME, the artist was presented as suffering from delusions:

"Sure enough our conversation slid rapidly into the realms of the bizarre. 'Of course I know people who are under surveillance,' he claimed at one point, getting up to close the door, 'I'm under surveillance because my Dad has Grade A security clearance and access to uranium.' You mean you're being watched? 'I'm not under surveillance,' he countered, donning a pair of mirror shades, 'I'm a vegetarian'. Looking straight over my shoulder, he laughed with a sudden, unexpected burst."

Mark Stewart's music interrogates his socio-cultural environment like a Rastaman interrogates the Scriptures: in a state of bleary-eyed Ganja-induced paranoid trance, finding unorthodox meanings occulted behind conventional signs. But where Rastafarians unearth the law of Jah in the Bible, Stewart uncovers the secret workings of Babylon in British society, a society which is nothing more than an cancerous outgrowth of the military-industrial entertainment complex; where Rastafarians find ‘a solid foundation’, Stewart finds semiological quicksand, seeing signs and portents which make him suspect the pavement on which he walks hides concrete bunkers; where Rastafarians expect the End Times to bring a repatriation to the Promised Land of Ethiopia, Mark Stewart anticipates - even desires - a nuclear Rapture.

Like Rastafarian Reasoning, Stewart's music conflates several semiological genres in a musical montage: his work is part political harangue, part invocation of the military-industrial complex and part divination aimed at discovering cryptic/encrypted knowledge by the entranced interpretation of the urban environment. Concealed beneath the city streets Stewart sees a veritable labyrinth of missile silos, blockhouses, ventilation shafts, corridors, and "...cathedral-like vaults with hydraulic platforms resembling Piranesi's prisons, endless concrete galleries leading to vertical shafts and even further galleries (...)" (from here).

The concrete bunkers which Mark Stewart knows beneath the city streets are his second, his true 'elsewhere'.


IV

Here is a trailer for a documentary on Mark Stewart,"ON/OFF: Mark Stewart - from the Pop Group to the Maffia" by Tøni Schifer. The DVD will be released by Monitorpop in october/november 2008.

Possession (pt. 2)

In the August 2008 issue of the Wire, Mark Fisher continues his exploration of artists channeling "...other voices, outside forces..." in an interview with Adrian Thaws, better known as Tricky.

"Saying that Tricky 'writes from a female point of view' fails to capture the uncanniness of what he does, since he also induces women to sing from what seems to be a male perspective. Gender doesn't dissolve here into some bland unisex mush; instead it resolves into some unstable space into which subjectivity is continually sliding from male to female voice. (...)

His own weakened, recessed voice - all these croaks, mumbles and murmurs - has always suggested a presence that was barely there, something supplementary rather than centred. But the main - usually female - voice on his songs also sounds absented and abstracted. What the voices of his female singers - flat, drained of ordinary affective cadences - most resemble is the sound of a medium, a voice being spoken by something else. (...)

It is not that Tricky possesses female singers; more that he induces them into becoming possessed, into sharing his trance states. The words that come to him from a lost female source [i.e. Tricky's suicide mother] are returned to a female mouth. (...)

The one who is possessed is also dispossessed - of their own identity and voice. But this kind of dispossession is of course a precondition for the most potent writing and performance. Writers have to tune into other voices; performers must be capable of being taken over by outside forces (and Tricky is a great live performer particularly because of his capacity to work himself up into a state of head-shaking shamanic self-erasure. Like the occult, religion provides a symbolic repertoire which deals with the idea of an alien presence using the tongue, and Tricky's language has always been saturated with biblical imagery."

Where, in his post on Mark Stewart as a man possessed, Mark K-Punk kept rather vague by whom or what Stewart was possessed, he now dares to name explicitly the voice, the force that possesses the artist. In the case of Tricky, it is his suicide poet mother who rides her son as a loa rides its cheval. "I was always my mum's ghost" Tricky says in the interview. Here we see a clear case where the roleplaying so common among Western musicians has transfigured into the dramatic 'characterization' of possession.

Nevertheless, Fisher omits to mention that Tricky's mother suicided when he was four years old, and that he hardly has any recollections of her. So it is in a sense a possession in the second degree - he is not so much possessed by a ghost of his mother constructed from his own memories, as by a ghost of his mother constructed from other people's memories - principally those of his grandmother, who raised him and would say to Tricky that he resembled her dead daughter, his mother. Obviously, the importance of this fact for Tricky's 'characterization' of his mother is immense: he isn't channeling the ghost of his mother, he is channeling the ghost of his grandmother's daughter.

It seems very unlikely that Fisher is unaware that Tricky mother died when her son was still at a very tender age. So it is not that that Fisher is loathe to investigate the context of possession, he does not present to the reader the results of the investigation. It is not that he is hesitant to slice open the Mexican jumping bean, it is that he doesn't show us the wondrous Cydia deshaisiana within - which is a pity, as it diminishes the uncanny power of Tricky's music. The notion of Tricky's mother being not his mother but the reflection of the memories of his grandmother - the reflection of a reflection reflected by Tricky's vocalists - adds yet more mirrors to Tricky's already complex mirror maze, making it still easier for us to lose ourselves in it, making errantry in his music still more seductive.



Post scriptum

- I've just bought "Music and Trance. A theory of the relations between music and possession" by French ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget, a book which seems highly relevant to the issue at hand.

Fisher's interview presents Tricky as a Triphop Xasthur - or is Xasthur a Black Metal Tricky?

Possession

In a beautifully written and highly interesting recent post on his interview with Mark Stewart for The Wire, Mark K-Punk writes:

"...one link between the post-punk trio I wrote about in the July issue (Stewart, Mark E Smith, Ian Curtis) is channeling. In order to get at what is at stake in so-called psychic phenomena (and its relationship to performance and writing), it's necessary to chart a middle course between credulous belief in the supernatural and the tendency to relegate any such discussion to metaphor: being taken over by other voices is a real process, even if there is no spiritual substance. (...) Hence another take on the old 'death of the author' riff: the real author is the one who can break the connection with his lifeworld self, become a shell and a conduit which other voices, outside forces, can temporarily occupy."

K-Punk addresses an issue which is close to the concerns of this blog: that of possession cults in relationship to contemporary artistic practices. Inspired by Current 93's concert at the Roadburn Festival, I wrote a post which implied that Walter Benjamin's Angel of History was dancing in the head of David Tibet.

I would agree with K-Punk that the author can indeed become a conduit for "...other voices, outside forces...". One does not have to accept any supernatural content to accept that more is at stake than mere illusion: the sense of being 'ridden' corresponds to a definite experience. However, in his post, K-Punk does not examine too closely which voices, which forces Mark Stewart channels: Stewart's loa is cursorily described as "...rage and utopian longings...".

Perhaps K-Punk doesn't examine these voices and forces more closely for ideological reasons, to avoid giving in to "...the dreary certainties of capitalist realism"? Perhaps K-Punk fears ruining the music's mystery?

I'm reminded of the "incident of the Mexican jumping bean", an interesting episode from the history of Surrealism. The incident "...involved a crisis about the proper methodology for inspecting freshly arrived objects into the Surrealist orbit, a pair of jumping beans. Caillois wanted to slice them open, to see what made them jump; yet out of principle, as he recounts, Breton refused to do so, for this would have destroyed "the mystery"." (sourced here). Caillois strove for a form of the Marvelous that does not fear knowledge, but, on the contrary, thrives on it.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that I come down on Caillois' side in this debate. We must slice open the Mexican jumping bean to examine the "...other voices, outside forces...". Using the proper methodology, a Marvelous bean stalk will grow from the eviscerated bean.

Pierre Verger - Retratos Da Bahia

Last Saturday, I was finally able to buy a book of photographs by Pierre Verger: 'Retratos De Bahia' ('Portraits Of Bahia'). It is a very beautiful oblong, clothbound book, printed in Bahia, Brazil, itself in 1980 by publishing house Editora Corrupio. The book contains more than 250 black and white photographs of Bahia and its people by this enigmatic photojournalist, ethnographer gone native, and Candomblé priest.

Pierre Verger (1902-1996) is now best known for his photographs printed in two books by Surrealist dissident Georges Bataille: photos of bloodspattered Voodoo ceremonies, printed in Bataille's 1957 book L'Érotisme and his 1961 art book Les Larmes d'Eros. These photos were taken in 1948 in Haiti, where Verger was living in the Centre d'Art, an institution in Port-au-Prince which supported Haitian folk artists. Photos from the same period can be found in the classic 1958 ethnography "Le Vaudou Haitien" by Bataille's and Verger's close friend, the ethnologist Alfred Métraux. Bataille, who did not know Verger personally, called him "one of the most remarkable - and most famous - photographers of these times".

A remarkable figure indeed: after a career as a globetrotting wartime journalist, photographer and ethnologist, Verger between 1953 and 1956 gradually converted to the faith of the black descendants of slaves in Bahia. He was initiated into Candomblé and in the African Ifa divination cult, where he received the name "Fatumbi" and the title of "Babalaô" (The Father of Secrets), allowing him access to the orally passed-on wisdom of the Yorubá. As an ethnologist, Verger "went native", giving in to the attraction of the Other, losing all critical distance between himself and the subject he studied. 'Going native' is the ethnographer's eroticism.

'Retratos De Bahia' contains no photos of gruesome Voodoo rituals: instead, it is a testament to Verger's love for the vibrant black people of Brazil. The book collects photos of street vendors, Capoeira dancers, people celebrating Carnaval, fishers, musicians, people Candomblé rituals, people sleeping in the street, and so on. Many of these exquisitely beautiful photographs can be found on the excellent website of the Pierre Verger Foundation.

Below, you'll find a YouTube slideshow of photographs by Pierre Verger and his biography as found in 'Retratos De Bahia', amateurishly translated from Portuguese into English by myself.

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Biography

"Pierre Fatumbi Verger, born Pierre Edouard Leopold Verger, on November 4th 1902, in Paris. French photographer, ethnologist, Candomblé priest, he used to explain the facts of his life as a series of accidents.

In the nineteenthirties the first important accident happens: he loses his mother, his last remaining direct relative. Without any identity rooted more deeply with the social context in which he was living, he then decides to abandon that context. With a backpack and a camera he parts to find new experiences and especially to be forgotten by too many others. Thus, he leaves Paris in 1932 and heads for the Pacific Islands.

For fifteen years he travels through different regions of the world, photographing that which took his interest. Bit by bit he collects precious documentation on ancient civilizations which are on the brink of disappearance, or were suffering a profound transformation of their cultural traditions. Examining these materials reveals his talent as a researcher.

This period takes him to the United States, Japan, China, the Philippines, Sudan (now Mali), Togo, Dahomey (now Benin), Nigeria, parts of the Sahara, the Antilles, Mexico, Guatamala, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentinia and Brazil. Besides reporting, he is also charged with the photographic laboratory of the Musée D'Etnografie (now Musée de l'Homme), in Paris. While a wartime correspondent in China for Life magazine, he also collects photographic documentation for the Museo Nacional de Lima in Peru.

A second important accident precipitates Verger definitively into research: the discovery of Bahia in 1946.

Drawn to Bahia by reading Jorge Amado's book Jubiabá, he is pleased by the city and especially by the people living here. He installs himself, and lives in an intense way with Bahia's people. He commences to tirelessly research the worship of Orixa deities and the way trafficking slaves has influenced economy and culture.

From then on, between 1949 and 1979 he makes several journeys between Bahia and Africa's west coast, mainly Dahomey and Nigeria. He visits every Yoruba stronghold of the New World. He intensifies his research on its ethnicity, on its influence on Bahian culture and on the ties which are established between them.

The relationship between Verger and black culture bit by bit starts to surpass mere intellectual interest. He involves himself deeply in the Candomblé, is initiated and starts to fulfill religious functions. In Bahia, he is an Ogã priest in the Opô Afonjá temple of Miss Mãe Aninha, and in the Opô Aganjú temple of Balbino, in Lauro de Freitas. In Dahomey, he is initiated as a Babalaô when studying Ifa divination, and receives the name of Fatumbi - which means 'Reborn' in Ifa.

As a Babalaô, he has access to the cultural heritage of the Yorubas, their mythology, their botanical therapies and the liturgy of their possession cults.

Verger creates, as photographic reporter, an important body of historical and ethnographic work. His acute powers of observation, the use of austere equipment, his intellectual humbleness, and his human wisdom - based on simplicity, respect and truth - certainly facilitated his task.

In 1966, the development and the talent of Verger's work is officially recognized by science: at the University of Paris, through the Sorbonne, granted him the title of Doctor, even though Verger abandoned his academic studies 17 years earlier.

Currently living in Bahia, Verger tirelessly works on his documentation, collected during 34 years of research. He focuses on the dissemination of his work, preparing books and articles for journals and conferences, answering the requests that come from various parts of the world.

Pierre Fatumbi Verger is the "free and available" man of which his friend Théodore Monod speaks. True to his calling, his profound work corresponds to loneliness and freedom."


Links

Here is a link to an exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, called 'Black Gods in Exile'.

Current 93 - Live at the Roadburn Festival

Last Sunday - April 20th 2008 - I saw Current 93 (David Tibet supported by no less than eleven musicians) live at 013 venue in Tilburg, the Netherlands.

Tibet's performance and its psychological effect on myself, reminded me strongly of the 1958 ethnography 'Voodoo In Haiti' by Alfred Métraux:

"The explanation of mystical trance given by disciples of Voodoo is simple: a loa moves into the head of an individual having first driven out the 'big good angel' (gros bon ange) - one of the two souls that everyone carries within himself. This eviction of the soul is responsible for the tremblings and convulsions which characterize the opening stages of trance. Once the good angel has gone the person possessed experiences a feeling of total emptiness as though he were fainting. His head whirls, the calves of his legs tremble; he now becomes not only the vessel but also the instrument of the god. From now on it is the god's personality and not his own which is expressed in his bearing and words. The play of his features, his gestures and even the tone of his voice all reflect the temperament and the character of the god who has descended upon him.

(...)

The preliminary crisis has a contagious effect, particularly upon people who are nervous or unstable. That is why the sight of a possession often has the effect of provoking others, not only among the hunsi who are ready to be ridden by the gods but also among the spectators who have come as visitors or out of curiosity.

(...)

Unlike an hysteric who shows his own misery and desires by means of a symptom - which is an entirely personal form of expression - the man who is ritually possessed must correspond to the traditional conception of some mythical personage."

And by which mythical personage is the man ritually possessed? By Walter Benjamin's angel of history:

"A Klee drawing named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."

Post scriptum

I also met these very nice people (not familiar with their music, though).