Review

Reviewed Work(s): Beyond the Roof the World: Music, Prayer, and Healing in the Pamir
Mountains by Benjamin D. Koen
Review by: Margarethe Adams
Source: Ethnomusicology , Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter 2014), pp. 156-159
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/ethnomusicology.58.1.0156

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Vol. 58, No. 1 Ethnomusicology Winter 2014

Book Reviews

Beyond the Roof the World: Music, Prayer, and Healing in the Pamir Moun-
tains. Benjamin D. Koen. 2009. Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press. xii, 225 pp, photographs, illustrations, musical examples, references,
index. Cloth $65.00; paper $29.95.
This provocative study, unusual in both content and methodology, represents
an intrepid step into uncertain terrain. An experimental ethnography within the
relatively new discipline of medical ethnomusicology, Koen’s work is as rich with
ethnographic detail as it is unconventional in its approach. Blending ethnogra-
phy, physiology, and reflective prose, Koen sets forth a convincing study of the
phenomena surrounding multimodal healing (which he describes as a crucial
nexus of prayer, music, and healing) and provides a fascinating introduction to
the maddah, a Muslim healing ceremony in the Pamiri region of Tajikistan.
Koen’s study is set in Tajikistan’s Badakhshan region, in the Pamir Mountains.
Located in the eastern half of Tajikistan at the heart of Central Asia, Badakhshan
borders Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Xinjiang (northwest China).
As Koen points out, it is a crossroads of several important historical trade routes.
A “pivot of Asia”—to borrow Owen Lattimore’s term—this area links China,
the Turkic/Persian oases of the Silk Road to the west, the traditionally nomadic
pastoral areas to the northeast (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Siberia),
and the Indian subcontinent to the south via Afghanistan (Lattimore 1950). For
readers unfamiliar with this geographically complex region, the book’s lack of
a map is somewhat problematic; its inclusion would have helped to ground the
ethnography and situate the sites Koen describes, particularly as some sections
read as a kind of travelogue documenting his journey through the area. Aside
from this oversight, Koen does an admirable job of encapsulating succinctly,
in Chapter 2, Badakhshan’s cultural landscape, in particular the role of Persian
language, poetry, and song in Badakhshani musical/spiritual practices, specifi-
cally those linked to healing.
The maddah is a meditative devotional ceremony set to prayer and sung
poetry that promotes overall well-being in a group and is also undertaken to

© 2014 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

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 Book Reviews  157

heal specific ailments. Koen’s strengths lie in his richly detailed descriptions of
the maddah itself and his explanations of the particular efficacy of the triangular
interaction of music, prayer, and healing. In Chapter 2, he provides useful defini-
tions of terms and concepts such as maddah and baraka (blessing) as well as an
introduction to the region, all of which lead into a more developed ethnographic
treatment of the maddah in Chapter 3. The maddah is also discussed in Chapter
4 (spiritual entrainment), and Chapter 5 (maddah performance and payment).
Chapter 3 will likely be of particular interest to ethnomusicologists as it deals
most explicitly with musical aspects of the maddah, but also to anthropologists
and Central Asianists interested in music, healing, and prayer. In this chapter,
Koen describes the structure of the maddah ritual and its musical characteris-
tics, such as form and melodic material, as well as maddah poetry. He focuses
particularly on the concept of cognitive flexibility with regard to rhythmic and
metric structure, explaining that “maddah functions as a bridge between cog-
nitive domains, linking dimensions of the mind-body self (aql, tan), which is
subject to illness and disease, to conceptualizations of the spiritual self (ruh/jan),
the spiritual realm, and God, which lie beyond illness and disease” (91). Another
point of interest is the discussion of place in the context of maddah. Here Koen
attends to local Pamiri expressions of place within the ritual’s texts (particularly
architectural features, such as pillars that give definition and meaning to the
sacred space) and draws parallels with the architectural design of Pamiri houses
and maddahkhane, the site where the maddah takes place.
Koen’s third chapter also contextualizes his central theoretical pursuit of an
“ontology of oneness” and the music-prayer dynamic, or the “affective relation-
ships between music and prayer in the context of healing.” Here, Koen discusses
his own theories as well as those put forth by his colleague Dr. Shirinbek. A
Pamiri physician and naturopath who worked with Koen and to some degree
contributed to his conceptualizations about healing and prayer, Shirinbek is
concerned with the “quantum level” as “a potential and emergent dimension of
qodrat (power/energy), ruh (spirit), fekr (thought), and baraka (spiritual power/
blessings),” which, as Koen states, is “expressive of the underlying intercon-
nectedness of all things, visible and invisible.” While this hypothesis serves as
a potentially useful entrée into local theorizations of healing and prayer, the
inclusion of further elucidations from Pamiri practioners of maddah would
have strengthened Koen’s analysis. At points in Koen’s discussion of these terms,
their source is obscured (Koen, Shirinbek, or both?). Still, Koen’s study clearly
holds potential for collaborative theorizing about belief, sound, and medicine,
particularly as he has apparently worked closely with local physicians and heal-
ers. Extending the analysis to include their thoughts and explanations about
the above concepts would bring Koen’s study closer to an explication of locally
constructed ways of knowing.

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158  Ethnomusicology, Winter 2014

One of the weaker aspects of the book is the way Koen has chosen to orga-
nize the chapters, which at least to my eyes, begs cohesiveness. The fact that the
sections dealing with the maddah are scattered among Chapters 2, 3, and 4 is
understandable considering that this is Koen’s central ethnographic focus, but
to have a single chapter devoted to the maddah in all its aspects would, from my
perspective, be extraordinarily useful for classroom purposes. Further, though
there is often a nice flow to the writing, some chapters lack intrinsic focus. For
example, Chapter 4 consists of three discernibly different discussions: 1) a kind
of musical tour detailing dervishes and musicians performing at green bazaars,
2) a reflective and reflexive musing on the author’s natural surroundings and
Pamiri belief, and 3) a discussion of the process of “spiritual entrainment,” which
Koen describes as “a cognitive-spiritual dimension or pathway of consciousness
[which] accompanies the process of surrendering the lower self to the higher
self ” (112). The latter discussion is fascinating, well-grounded in local practices
and belief, and constitutes a crucial aspect of the book’s central focus. But its
placement in this chapter buries its significance, as it does not clearly relate to
the chapter’s previous two sections, and also covers territory already traversed
in the two preceding chapters, rendering it redundant rather than highlighting
its importance.
The remaining three chapters turn to a more medical orientation, each tak-
ing quite a different approach to the material. Chapter 5 includes a discussion
of Sufi texts and the involvement of the body in prayer (saying prayers, wearing
prayers, eating prayers); a description of medical uses of spring water and herbs;
and a study of music/prayer dynamics in the hospital. The sixth chapter diverges
significantly from the rest of the book. It presents Koen’s study of Pamiri physi-
ological response to music in and outside ritual performance, by measuring
blood pressure and heart rate as participants listened to or performed maddah
devotional music and then comparing the results with similar measurements
taken while they performed or listened to other types of music (local pop music,
and “unfamiliar devotional music”). Chapter 7, titled “The Human Certainty
Principle of Science, Spirituality, and Experience,” again attends to Koen’s “one-
ness” frame for understanding health and healing, consciousness and spirituality,
and transformative musical experiences.
Koen’s book is a welcome investigation of an understudied region that reso-
nates with scholarship in medical ethnomusicology, Central Asian studies, and
Islamic studies. Despite the slightly awkward organization and at times overly
reflexive approach, its strength lies in the study of the maddah, a much needed,
detailed, and insightful ethnography of the Muslim healing ritual. As such, Koen’s
work can be placed in the body of scholarship that investigates music, belief, and
healing in Central and Inner Asia: it speaks to the question of “moral musicians”
posed by Theodore Levin and applicable to many types of performers in Central

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 Book Reviews  159

Asia (Levin 1999; Harris and Dawut 2002), it attends to the use of sound as a
conduit to the spirit world (cf. Rancier 2009 and Adams 2013 on the use of the
Kazakh qobyz for inducing trance in healing), and it resonates with the recently
renewed interest in Inner Asian shamanism (Balzer 1995; Vitebsky 2001; Reid
2003; Levin 2006; Pedersen 2011). Koen’s multidimensional approach to music,
prayer, and healing represents an important step in the emerging methodologies
of medical ethnomusicology, and will hopefully encourage others to undertake
similarly varied analyses of this complicated phenomenon, so widespread and
deeply rooted in Central and Inner Asia.

Margarethe Adams Stony Brook University

References
Adams, Margarethe. 2013. “The Fiddle’s Voice: Timbre and Collaborative Ethnography in Central
and Inner Asia.” In “Collaborative Ethnographies of Music and Sound,” ed. Amber R. Clifford
Napoleone, special section, Collaborative Anthropologies 6 (forthcoming).
Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam, ed. 1995. Culture Incarnate: Native Anthropology from Russia. Ar-
monk, New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Harris, Rachel and Dawut, R. 2002. “Mazar Festivals of the Uyghurs: Music, Islam and the Chinese
State.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11(1):101–18.
Levin, Theodore. 1999. The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and
Queens, New York). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Levin, Theodore with Valentina Süzükei. 2006. Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music,
and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Pedersen, Morten Axel. 2011. Not Quite Shamans: Spirit Worlds and Political Lives in Northern
Mongolia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Rancier, Megan. 2009. “The Kazakh Qyl-qobyz: Biography of an Instrument, Story of a Nation.”
Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles.
Reid, Anna. 2003. The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia. New York: Walker & Company.
Vitebsky, Piers. 2001. Shamanism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Hearts of Pine: Songs in the Lives of Three Korean Survivors of the Japanese
“Comfort Women.” Joshua D. Pilzer. 2012. New York: Oxford University
Press. xix, 191 pp., black and white photographs, illustrations, appendix,
bibliography, discography, index, companion website (pronunciation guide,
songs, and color illustrations). Cloth, $99.00; Kindle, $10.50; paper, $25.00.
While research and activism associated with the “comfort women” have
prompted more awareness of the Japanese system of military sexual slavery
that took place during the Asia-Pacific War (1931–45), this does not erase the
fact that most Korean survivors of this system had to endure four decades of
silence with little public acknowledgment or support. In Hearts of Pine: Songs in
the Lives of Three Korean Survivors of the Japanese “Comfort Women,” Joshua D.

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