Songs for the Spirits: Music and Mediums in Modern Vietnam. By Barley Norton.

Abstract

Songs for the Spirits is a study of chầu văn, a genre of ritual music that plays an integral role in possession ceremonies. These rituals and the people who practise them have had a complicated relationship with the Vietnamese polity throughout their history and continue to negotiate with the modern Vietnamese nation and state in subtle and delicate ways. Norton introduces chầu văn as ‘music of and for ritual’ (p. 1). Though he realizes that the current actuality is not so simple—his chapter on ‘Ritual and Folklorization in Late Socialist Vietnam’ (pp. 190–216) belies this—his concern is to focus upon and even to champion the music in its ritual setting. For him, the songs of chầu văn ‘evoke the spirit world and create a sonic environment for possession; they invite the spirits to descend to the human world and describe their formidable power and beauty; they recall the historic deeds of spirits, vividly bringing the past into the present’ (p. 1).