SOCIOLOGY OF SINGING Singing and Wellbeing: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Proof. By Kay Norton. New York: Routledge, 2016. [xxiv, 202 p. ISBN 9781138825314 (hardcover), $135; ISBN 9781138825321 (paperback), $44.95; ISBN 9781315740065 (e-book), varies.] Music examples, illustrations, references, index.Norton describes her project in Singing and Wellbeing as an attempt to synthesize recent scholarship on social and historical importance of singing with medical evidence of music's health benefits. Her work, which combines fields of music, medical humanities, and medicine, is timely given rise in prominence of work of Oliver Sacks (especially his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and Brain [New York: Knopf, 2007]) and 2014 film Alive Inside, which documents power of music to activate neural pathways, especially in Alzheimer's patients. (The clip Henry Wakes Up went viral on multiple social media platforms.) The task of combining these three disciplines is daunting, given that all are highly specialized.In industrialized West, fields of music and medicine exist in separate worlds, but historically they have been inextricably linked. (It is not by chance that Apollo was god of music and medicine.) In recent centuries, Western culture and science created a false dichotomy that separated activities of mind and those of body. According to medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, before seventeenth century, human consciousness was not only collective but also a bio-psycho-spiritual unity. With rise of scientific thought, that consciousness split, and we were suddenly simultaneously [aware of] being a body and having a body, a phenomenon that is associated with the rise of a discursive, metatheoretical 'modernist' orientation to self that is secular, self-reflexive, and ironic (Arthur Kleinman, Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to Personal Experience [New York: Free Press, 1988], 50). What is most important for purposes here is that this new split in consciousness interferes with total absorption in lived (ibid.) . It is precisely this total absorption in a lived experience that is central to act of singing, especially group singing. A hyper-individual and self-reflexive consciousness (as found in West) may lead to discomfort with reuniting art of singing and scientific study of medicine. But non-singing Western doctor is in minority; vast majority of healers-across cultures and throughout history-have employed an inflected human voice in some way during healing process, whether through chant, prayer, or song. Western skepticism is one of main challenges that Norton faces in her work.A second challenge is Western tendency toward discipline-specific specialization. Norton's research is not just about music and medicine, but also music and wellbeing. Wellbeing involves far more than just physical health; it is a complex balance of physiological, psychological, social, and political elements. In some ways, this book addresses all of these-from how music changes our physiology to how music can be used to identify with others. Of course, studying such a complicated and multifaceted phenomenon as wellbeing requires expertise in a wide variety of fields. Disciplinary integration creates profound challenges for modern Westerner. Norton recognizes and indeed embraces her own limitations, and so my review must do same. Both Norton and I are trained in field of historical musicology; neither of us is a scientist, psychologist, sociologist, or medical practitioner, but we are both deeply interested in connection between music (singing specifically) and wellbeing in its broadest possible definition. Indeed, Norton's work here extends beyond fields of music and medicine in order to study significance of human singing voice using evidence from fields of anthropology, evolution, world history, psychology, theology, and philosophy. …