Medical ethnomusicology in the Pamir mountains : music and prayer in healing

Abstract

present study arises from a broader,ongoing research program within the emerging area of medical ethnomusicology,1 which endeavors to explore music and healing from a holistic perspective, and which often de mands collaborative, integrative methods for field and lab research.2 In the Pamir Mountain region of Tajikistan, special genres of music and prayer are performed to facilitate healing. Each genre has unique functions in Pamiri culture and specific effects on patients, which can be viewed as preventive and/or curative in nature.The present article explores one such genre, mad d?h devotional music, and its role in healing among madd?h performers and participants in Pamir. By examining the meaning of madd?h, conveyed through culturally specific sounds, symbols, metaphors, and beliefs, the article investigates the performance of music and prayer as a medical intervention. Notably, for Pamiris who participate in madd?h, the majority of whom are Isma'ili Muslims, music is not forbidden. Rather, music is celebrated and exuberantly expressed as a central aspect of religious life.3 Moreover, mad d?h is widely revered in Badakhshan and constitutes the pre-eminent genre of Pamiri devotional music. The geographic and cultural area inTajikistan from which madd?h arises is known by many names: Kuhest?n (mountain-land),the roof of the world, Badakhshan, and Pamir. It is a vast region that extends across the southeast province of Tajikistan, sharing borders with Afghanistan on the west and south, China on the east, and Kyrgyzstan to the north. People live in villages and towns, as well as isolated mountain or valley dwellings, where the near est neighbor could be thirty minutes away or more by foot. The rocky and dry terrain allows for little agricultural development, presenting an ongoing problem for sustaining a nutritional diet. In addition, a journey to the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, is at least twenty-four hours by car, or a dangerous

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