Songs for the Spirits

Barley Norton is a senior lecturer in ethnomusicology in the music department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His research on Vietnamese music and culture was the subject the documentary film A Westerner Loves Our Music (Nguoi Tay Me Nhac Ta). He is also a performer of the Vietnamese dan nguyet and dan day lutes.

"There is no better study that looks at Vietnamese mediumship music in a thorough, multidisciplinary manner."--Music & Letters "An exciting document of a locally diverse and unique ritual practice of the Viet people and their music. . . . A Vital work."--Asian Ethnology "Essential reading for scholars of Vietnamese religion, women's religion and culture, and spirit possession."--Religious Studies Review "The book is comprehensive in its analysis of cultural practices such as len dong, tracing the history of rituals, music and religion in Vietnam back to the early 20th century. . . . The inclusion of a DVD with video clips of mediums performing the spirit ceremonies and audio clips of the music played at the ceremonies makes turns an interesting book into a fascinating multimedia experience.” --Songlines "This book is at once reflexive, accessible, and consistently theorized. Barley Norton is closely attentive to the political life of performance and to the lived reality of rituals in a shifting socialist landscape. His writing is vivid and exacting, and the book's DVD invites a process of reading, watching, and listening that is wonderfully rewarding."--Deborah Wong, author of Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music "Barley Norton's foundational study provides an indispensable guide to the music that animates Vietnamese mediumship. Choice anecdotes and recordings introduce individual mediums and musicians, demonstrate the musicality of religious experience, and reveal how ritual music is learned, performed, and transformed in Vietnam."--Philip Taylor, editor of Modernity and Re-enchantment: Religion in Post-revolutionary Vietnam "Songs for the Spirits is the first extensive and accurate ethnomusicological study of the chau van possession rituals in contemporary Vietnam. This study is exceptionally interesting, and it demonstrates the vigor of an ethnomusicologist who is remarkably engaged in both fieldwork operation and post-fieldwork analysis."--Phong T. Nguyen, author of From Rice Paddies and Temple Yards: Traditional Music of Vietnam