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.

Gitksan shaman with rattle
Stepanida Borisova is the Yakut folk singer