RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARCHIVE: TRANCE & RITUAL MUSIC (RIAFC163)

Between 1969-1970, Annea Lockwood curated a series of short programs for BBC Radio 3 called "Trance and Ritual Music". The music was exotic, beautiful and strange. The titles were otherworldly – “Warning for impending ceremony of flying witches, New Guinea”, “Malayan black magic healing ceremony”, “Shaman exorcism, Korea”, “Rites of the Nightwatchers of Porto Novo, French West Africa”. Broadcast during the intermissions of symphony concerts, these programs were something like a surrealist ethnomusicology that forced the “wild man” unexpectedly into the evening pauses of polite society.  

The series itself delved into global traditions of music that induce trance states or serve ritual purposes, drawing from diverse cultures to explore how sound and rhythm facilitate spiritual healing and transformative experiences. Themes included witchcraft, cults of affliction, spirit possession, healing rites, secret mystic societies, the invocation of gods, life and death. The emphasis was always on how people blend with the music — becoming the action, sound, and invocation itself. Lockwood incorporated lost and forgotten field recordings in the archives from regions like New Guinea, Malaya, Korea, the Himalayas, British Guiana, West Africa, India, Borneo, Burma, and the Philippines, sometimes interweaving them with sounds from her own work, especially "The Glass World of Anna Lockwood."

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Program 1 "Sound travels constantly through your body, building up as music, stretching you in the long passing of a jet. That's a sound which sucks the mind up and leaves you with a feeling of helplessness. Sound travels, leaves ripples in the mind. What ripples? The ear transmits and the body vibrates, and then..."[ Tibetan dawn and evening music -- Indonesian Funeral Gongs -- Malayan trance fighting dance -- Indian conch call and Indian Sanskrit prayer to the sun -- Thailand Temple Bells -- Colombian ‘Sihoo’ flute solo -- Glass Sounds from “Glass World”]

Program 2 "'I like it, but I don't understand it', has never been said of this music, which is there not to be taken out and looked at, but to be experienced, in such a way that the sound, its effect, its hearer, its player, and its surroundings are all blended, exist in one instant; the now instant, and with this music, now extends and extends, and extends. Music felt as a force of nature, direct as lightning, mysteriously potent, and as necessary as water, food, and sleep."[Tamil firewalking procession -- Mevlevi dervish dancing -- Moroccan women chanting work song -- Hasidic dancing in a synagogue, Eastern Europe  -- Spring ritual dancing in Santanda -- Korean ceremonial mask dance -- Flute music by Colombian forest Indians with sounds of glass from “Glass World” ]

Program 3 "Witchcraft music, spirit healings, exorcisms, secret mystic societies, séances, invocations of gods, health and life. People form rituals, their music, and its momentum within themselves; form their gods in their minds; use their music to carry them from one self through to another, more buried self. In the end, it is ourselves who we invoke.”[ Warning for impending ceremony of flying witches, New Guinea -- Malayan black magic healing ceremony -- Shaman exorcism Korea -- Himalayan tribesmen blowing silver horns, India -- Spirit seance in British Guiana -- Malayan magic religious ceremony with glass sounds from “Glass World” -- Rites of the Nightwatchers of Porto Novo, French West Africa ]

Program 4 “What has thinking to do with music? Music is as intangible as fire and as powerful. Its effect is profound. It moves in your mind, your body, as your blood does. We think we make music. It makes us, more mysteriously.” [ Dance of Kali, India -- Indonesia Dyak wedding dance -- Ceylonese house worshipping ceremony -- French Guinea tribe dance -- Congolese ‘Kondo’ ancestor dance -- Moroccan tribal dance -- Bulgarian Young Goat’s dance --  Korean Confucian spirit ceremony -- Colombian Indian flute duet with glass sounds from “Glass World” ]

Program 5 “In the end, there are no listeners. At a concert, you are either in the hall, aware of people and extraneous noises, or within the space created by the music. In these rituals and ceremonies, all are blended with each other; their hearts with the drumming and all its subtleties; the rhythm of the brain with the pulsing of a single note, somewhere. The people are the action, are the sound, and invocation.”[ Indian lullabye, Columbia -- Sacred flute music, New Guinea -- Dance of the Dusun tribe, North Borneo -- Bell from Buddhist monastery, Burma -- Indian jaltarang solo -- Fish dance, Philippines -- Morning call to prayer, Malaya -- Nadaswaram solo, India with sounds of glass from “Glass World” ]

Program 6 “Music is a force, not an art only. Ritual music, in which the sounds and movements create a state of trance, ecstatic, or just of great well being after sickness, not by chance, but from the knowledge that sound, like the other energies of the world, shapes us with great power irresistibly. And if we don’ t feel this, we are left whole.”[ Chanting in the Taj Mahal and twin conch solo, India -- Ceylonese Buddhist priest chanting sutras -- Ceremonial drum rhythm from Indian tantric ceremony -- Motilon puberty ceremony, Colombia -- Dance of the horse, Malaya -- Ashanti ceremonial drumming, Ghana -- Armenian dance with glass sounds from “Glass World” ]

Program 7 “Jaw’s harps, flutes, are the universal and ancient instruments, or, no, the body is the universal instrument; our original instrument. It’s a strange experience to sit entirely still in an empty silent room. You gradually become aware that the sounds within your body are deafening, a cataract of throbbing, humming, continuous sound. The most insistent and the most protected is your heart. It begins with the heart.”[ Human heart beat -- Afghan Battle rhythm on drums -- Indian tantric drum rhythm -- Indian friction drum -- French West African Chieftain’s drums -- Baluchistan dance song -- Malayan big drum and birds -- Israeli Doira drums -- Ceylonese royal court drumming -- Beating of Kertok, Malaya -- Ceylonese kandyan drumming -- Nigerian master drumming -- Nigerian Ju Ju ceremony -- Human heart beat ]

Program 8 “They have such intensity of purpose, these sounds. Sounds which are as if blown through your skin. They are invocations, evocations of you. There, not to make music but to invoke man to himself. This music, which is a music for sorcery and ritual, sets things in motion within and without. And movement is the pivot of being.”[ Glass sound from “Glass World” -- Otomi religious music, Mexico -- Colombian Indians summoning gods with osiri and pipana flutes -- Divination song from Tangyanika -- Black magic ceremony, Malaya -- Austrian jew’s harp solo -- Chilean witch doctor’s chants -- Nose flute trio, Fiji -- Ceremonial music for hanging of minister, French Equatorial Africa -- Bo music, Southwest India ]