Trance

Psychobiological and Cultural Understandings of Trance

Music has been used to support transformations of consciousness for thousands of years, an early and persistent function of a number of integrated multisensory components within multimedia sacred or secular ritualistic practices. All instances of trance constitute altered states of consciousness (ASC) characterized by a selective external or internal focus; altered sensory, temporal, and self awareness; reduced critical faculty; and decreased orientation to consensual reality. However, the term ASC stresses the psychobiological level of experience and the notion of discrete states of consciousness, whereas the word trance emphasizes cultural aspects and the notion of experience as process. The gerund trancing is intended to escape the notion of trance as a discrete state, instead emphasizing its processual nature. The processes of absorption (effortless involvement) and dissociation (detachment) are recognized as integral to trance.

Specific understandings of trance vary cross-culturally, and sociocultural values and beliefs shape trance behaviors and the phenomenology (subjective “feel”) of experience. For example, in Bali, trance is overtly accepted as normal within religious contexts, and multiple terms are used to [Page 1144]distinguish different types, all of them possession trances. The trance vocabulary of the industrialized West is slight by comparison, reflecting the construct's more marginal status within the culture. Ethnomusicological and psychological studies of trance have tended to have different emphases, the former examining trance as situated behavior, the latter focusing on the neurological correlates of trance states, regardless of context, using brain imaging techniques.

The prime focus in ethnomusicology has been on instances of high-arousal or ergotropic trance in non-Western ritualistic settings (e.g., possession trance in West Africa and shamanism in Nepal), although instances of high-arousal trance in Europe and America have also received some attention (e.g., in raves, pentacostal worship, and strong experiences of listening to or performing music). By contrast, trance in the industrialized West is primarily understood as a low-arousal somnambulent state associated with hypnosis, which may or may not involve music. Volitional or spontaneous self-regulatory interactions with music in daily life that facilitate alterations of consciousness (including aesthetic involvement) have been identified as examples of everyday trance.

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