MUSIC, TRANCE, AND TRANSMISSION IN THE SANTO DAIME, A BRAZILIAN AYAHUASCA RELIGION.
Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (University of Maryland College Park) January 1, 2015 Benjamin Nye Blocksom 1 citation
The core values of Santo Daime communities are transmitted and practiced during rituals through an inseparable blend of doctrine and music. Santo Daime, a Brazilian ayahuasca religion, combines sacramental use of the psychotropic tea ayahuasca with collective shamanism and music performance—singing, dancing, and playing instruments—to achieve religious ecstasy. Using ethnography, an expansion of Judith Becker's trance categorization, and musical and phonological analysis, the thesis argues that doctrine and music together produce and guide the altered states of consciousness experienced collectively in rituals.