Abstract
Steven Friedson has been keenly involved, in the past fifteen years, with research on indigenous healing and medicinal practices in selective areas in East and West Africa. Dancing Prophet is devoted to the Tumbuka [End Page 213] people of Malawi, East Africa, and pays attention to the significance of music and dance and their mutual interaction with costume, symbolism, belief, and ritual performances. There are many research assumptions and theoretical constructs that shape the structure and content of this book; the following chapter headings of the text will give the reader an idea: "Ethnography as Possibility"; "To Dance and to Dream"; "God, Humans, and Spirits; Blood and Spirit: The Chilopa Sacrifice"; "The Musical Construction of Clinical Reality"; "In the Vimbuza Mode"; "An Ontology of Energy." These titles, however, begin to fade as we are confronted with more subtle and metaphorical allusions in subheadings: "phenomenology of blood"; "sacrificial axis"; "technology of trance"; "electric Nyanga"; "drum time"; and others. Before we discuss the theoretical importance and relevance of this work, this review will first lay out the basics for the reader.
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