Stambeli: Music, Trance, and Alterity in Tunisia
Richard C. Jankowsky
Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology
The University of Chicago Press (2010)
Society for the Anthropology of Religion:
Clifford Geertz Prize – Honorable Mention
Society for Ethnomusicology – African Music Section:
Kwabena Nketia Book Prize – Honorable Mention
American Institute for Maghrib Studies:
L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize in North African Studies – Honorable Mention
In Stambeli, Richard C. Jankowsky presents a vivid ethnographic account of the healing trance music created by the descendants of sub-Saharan slaves brought to Tunisia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Stambeli music calls upon an elaborate pantheon of sub-Saharan spirits and North African Muslim saints to heal humans through ritualized trance. Based on nearly two years of participation in the musical, ritual, and social worlds of stambeli musicians, Jankowsky’s study explores the way the music evokes the cross-cultural, migratory past of its originators and their encounters with the Arab-Islamic world in which they found themselves.
Stambeli, Jankowsky avers, is thoroughly marked by a sense of otherness — the healing spirits, the founding musicians, and the instruments mostly come from outside Tunisia — which creates a unique space for profoundly meaningful interactions between sub-Saharan and North African people, beliefs, histories, and aesthetics.
Part ethnography, part history of the complex relationship between Tunisia’s Arab and sub-Saharan populations, Stambeli will be welcomed by scholars and students of ethnomusicology, anthropology, African studies, and religion.
This is by far the best book on Maghrebi music in English. The analysis is sophisticated and theoretically informed, but Jankowsky never lets that obscure his sensitive portrait of the community where he lived. The book moves gracefully from the broad sweep of history to the organization of the society of musicians and spirits, particular performances, contemporary developments, Jankowsky’s personal experiences, and a hint of what may lie ahead.
Philip D. Schuyler, University of Washington
Stambeli is a stunningly original, ethnographically rich, and theoretically nuanced work that nicely bridges the gap that often separates ethnomusicology from less musically inclined anthropological scholarship. Jankowsky knows his music, has spent quality time as an apprentice stambeli musician, and has used this highly focused experience in the field to think deeply about the phenomenology of spirit possession — he has immersed himself in the world of stambeli music, and we, the readers, are richer for it.
Paul Stoller, West Chester University
Stambeli', Richard C. Jankowsky's ethnographic and historiographic study of this Tunisian musical tradition, is a welcome contribution to the scholarship on a North African country that is infrequently the subject of such nuanced and extended treatment... Drawing broadly on historical, ethnomusicological, and anthropological sources, Jankowsky has composed a study that offers not only meticulous analysis of the components of this distinctive musical genre and trance healing tradition, but also a sophisticated theoretical engagement with the socio-historical context that fostered its emergence.
Rodney Collins, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
A book marked by a convincing ethnography and sound theoretical judgment, clarity of language, and an engaging narrative.
Bode Omojola, Canadian Journal of African Studies
Yinna Baba Majid el Barnawi (center) [Archives Mihoub family]
Richard C. Jankowsky
Professor
Tufts University, School of Arts and Sciences, Music
Richard Jankowsky, PhD, received his BA in Anthropology and Music from Tufts University and his PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago. Prior to his appointment to the Department of Music at Tufts University in 2006, he was on the faculty of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, England.
Through fieldwork-based methods, Professor Jankowsky's primary area of research revolves around the intersection of music, ritual, and power in North Africa, particularly music's capacity to heal, to maintain and narrate histories of underrepresented populations, to create conditions for transcendent experiences, and to serve as a flashpoint for debates over cultural, religious, and political identities.
His music analytical work explores issues of cyclicity, density, and transformation in contemporary trance rituals.
His most recent book, Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form, features a companion web site developed in conjunction with Tufts Digital Library. His previous book Stambeli: Music, Trance, and Alterity in Tunisia, received three honorable mention awards for book prizes from academic societies in the fields of anthropology, ethnomusicology, and North African Studies. He is a two-time National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and has also received grants from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Fulbright.
Stambeli: Music, Trance,
and Alterity in Tunisia
Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology
The University of Chicago Press
256 pages | 7 halftones, 12 line drawings, 1 map, 7 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2010
Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches
and the Social Work of Musical Form
Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology
The University of Chicago Press
272 pages | 9 halftones, 20 musical examples, 9 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2020
VIDEOS
Video #1
Kouri
Nuba of the spirit Kuri, performed by Baba Majid Barnawi at Dar Barnu
Tunis, 2001
(See page 121)
Video #2
Sidi Marzug
Nouba Sidi Marzug by the Dar Barnu stambeli troupe
Tunis, 2001
(See pages 116 and 122)
Video #3
Sidi Bu Ra's el-'Ajmi
Nouba Sidi Bu Ra's el-'Ajmi by the Dar Barnu stambeli troupe
Tunis, 2001
(See pages 117 and 122)