Search - Various Artists :: Dancing With The Dead: The Music Of Global Death Rites

The excellently documented collections released by Ellipsis Arts typically focus either on geographical regions (as on the China: Time to Listen box set) or a geographic blur (as on Planet Soup). But this collection carries on the "states of being" focus begun with the Celtic Lullaby anthology. Death, the collection maintains, is almost universally treated with some reverential musical ceremony, and over the course of 17 tracks, we get a Southern Baptist eulogy, a Tibetan Buddhist sheng-guan performance, a Balinese gamelan orchestra excerpt, and a flute and drum performance from the Antanosy and Mahafaly people of Madagascar. Without exception, the music chafes at a purely musical--or purely programmatic--role, reaching for exultant force here, and quiet somberness there. It also works in almost each case to include the community of witnesses at a death ritual, either by antiphonal call-and-response singing or by deeply rooted instrumental displays that the community understands as a matter of cultural course (serious though the course may be). As is usually the case with Ellipsis Arts, this single CD comes lavishly packaged. It's slipped into a hardcover book with musical annotations and an introductory essay by Greg Palmer, who produced the Death, The Trip of a Lifetime television special. --Andrew Bartlett