Pain, Play and Music

Death and Healing Rites Among the Wana

The Wana people of Morowali accept the experiences of pain, illness and loss and transform them into something positive: rituals that celebrate life, friendship and the community. Through fieldwork with the Wana people of Morowali, Central Sulawesi, Giorgio Scalici shows how music serves as a connection between the human world and the hidden world of spirits and emotion.

By examining rituals such as the momago, the main Wana healing ritual, and the kayori, the funeral, this book investigates how music is used by the Wana to heal people, control emotions, reinforce the sense of community and to mark the cultural death of the community member. In this study, music transforms the pain of loss into a playful event that heals the community and assures its future.

This book will be of interest to the wider academic study of religion, anthropology and ethnomusicology as it looks as at funerals as healing rituals for the community which lead the living and the dead through critical times.