Pain, Play and Music

This book shows how the Wana people of Morowali accept the experiences of pain, illness and loss, and transform them into something positive: rituals that celebrate life, friendship and the community.

Among the Wana people of Morowali, Central Sulawesi, music serves as a connection between the human world and the hidden world of spirits and emotion. For this reason, music has a central role during the momago, the main Wana healing ritual, and the kayori, the funeral. By examining these rituals, this book describes and analyses how music is used by the Wana to heal the members, control emotions, reinforce the sense of community and mark the cultural death of the community member. It shows how music transforms the pain generated by a negative event into a playful event that will heal the community and assure its future, leading the living and the dead through critical times.

The research is relevant for the wider academic study of religion, anthropology and ethnomusicology, looking at funerals as healing rituals for the community.