"By combining long-term field research with hypotheses from the cognitive sciences, this book proposes a groundbreaking anthropological theory on the emotional power of music. It highlights a human tendency to engage in empathic relations through and with the musical artefacts, veritable "sonic agents" for which we can fell pity, compassion, or sympathy. The theory originates from a detailed ethnography of the musical life of a small Roma community of Transylvania (Romania), where Filippo Bonini Baraldi lived several years, seeking an answer to intriguing questions such as: why do the Roma cry while playing music? What lies behind their ability to move their customers? What happens when instrumental music and wailing voices come together at funerals? Through the analysis of numerous weddings, funeral wakes, community celebrations and intimate family gatherings, the Author shows that music and weeping go hand in hand, revealing fundamental tensions between unity and division, life and death, the self and the others. Tensions that the Roma enhance, overemphasize and perceive as central to their identity. In addition to improve our understanding of a community still shrouded in stereotypes, this book is an important contribution for research on musical emotion, which thus far has focused almost exclusively on Western classical music"--
Roma Music and Emotion is an important work of scholarship at the intersection of ethnomusicology and anthropology, combining long-term field research with hypotheses from the cognitive sciences to illustrate the musical world of the Roma of Transylvania and, in so doing, propose a groundbreaking anthropological theory on the emotional power of music
In Roma Music and Emotion, author Filippo Bonini Baraldi forges a much-needed theory of music, emotion, and empathy from an anthropological perspective, addressing the failure of the prevailing psychological theories on music and emotion to account for non-western musical cultures. Bonini Baraldi, having spent years among the Hungarian Roma of rural Transylvania, presents compelling ethnographic descriptions of their weddings, funerals, community celebrations, and intimate family gatherings. Based on extensive field research and informed by hypotheses drawn from the cognitive sciences, the anthropology of art, and aesthetics, Roma Music and Emotion analyzes why Roma musicians cry along with music and how they arouse specific feelings in their audiences. Translated by Margaret Rigaud, and with a Foreword by Steven Feld, Roma Music and Emotion makes an important ethnomusicological contribution to theoretical discussions of the relationship between music and emotion.
