Shamanic music

In the West, shamanism has served as an imagined background to music meant to alter a listener's state of mind.

Fourth, any theatrical elements that are added to impress an audience are of a type to make the contact with the spirits seem more real and not to suggest the performer's musical virtuosity.

[3][4][5] The rhythmic dimension of the music of shamans' rituals has been connected to the idea of both incorporating the rhythms of nature and magically re-articulating them.

[11] This idea of semiotics of the sound material would imply a symbolic language shared between the shaman and the surrounding community.

[22] Korea is the only country where shamanism appears to have been a state religion practiced by the literate classes, during the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC – 668 AD).

Under successive dynasties, shamanism was gradually relegated to a popular or folk status with the arrival of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.

Furthermore, since the emergence of Korean contemporary nationalism, there has been a strong and sustained state intervention to preserve artistic traditions.

[23] All of these factors make it uniquely difficult in Korea to distinguish the 'pure' from hybrid and concert forms of shamanic ritual music.

For example, Sinawi is a musical form that can be used in shamanic rituals or accompany folk dances, or for urban concert performances.

In the ritual context Sinai, is often performed by a small ensemble with the change hour-glass drum and two melodic instruments, often the Taegu flute and the piri oboe.

In concert the ensemble is augmented with stringed instruments[24] Modern Sinai is played in a minor mode in 12/8 time.

[28][29][30] The practice of giving a sonorous identity to deities, of calling them and sending them back by means of sounds, may well have entered Tibetan Buddhist ritual from Bön tradition.

[36] Meanwhile, the British-Tuvan group K-Space developed ways of combining improvisation, electronics, and experimental recording and montage techniques with the more shamanic side of Tuvan traditional music.