Interpreting ritual as performance and theory Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania 2010 distinguished lecture.

Interpreting ritual as performance and theory Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania 2010 distinguished lecture. INTRODUCTION Invitation to address the Association for Social Anthropology inOceania (ASAO ASAO Association for Social Anthropology in OceaniaAsAo Ascending AortaASAO Advanced Space Analysis Office (NASA Lewis Research Center)ASAO Association of Shows and Agricultural Organisations (UK)) offered the opportunity to look back at my ongoingresearch on ritual and its association with structured movement systemsand dance. (1) I have re-searched my fieldwork that has taken me to fourdifferent parts of the world, and I present four short case studies(from Hawaii, Tonga, Bulgaria, and India) concluding with remarks on thestudy of ritual, this, a slippery concept that needs further researchand updating. I am interested in the relationships between dance andritual and especially in how dances are presented today and what theyare said to represent from the ritual past. Ritual has been of special interest to many anthropologists sincethe beginning of the discipline and many important insights have derivedfrom research in Oceania. But, except for a few memorable studies, suchas Alfred Gell Alfred (Antony Francis) Gell (June 12, 1945-January 28, 1997) was a British social anthropologist whose most influential work concerned art, language, symbolism and ritual. among the Umeda in New Guinea New Guinea(gĭn`ē), island, c.342,000 sq mi (885,780 sq km), SW Pacific, N of Australia; the world's second largest island after Greenland. (1985) and Andree Grauamong the Tiwi of Australia (2001), little research has focused onbodily movement as part of ritual structure. Yet, Maurice Bloch noted,'I very much doubt that an event observed by an anthropologistwhich did not contain the three elements of [ritualized speech, singing,and dancing] would ever be described ... as a ritual. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently ,these phenomena have been implicitly taken as the distinguishing marksof ritual' (1974:57). Here, I bring 'movement,' as one ofritual's distinguishing marks, to center stage to explore if andhow ritual movement and dance are related. What ritual and dance oftenshare is that they manipulate (i.e., handle with skill) human bodies intime and space resulting in structured movement systems. These aresystems of knowledge that are socially and culturally constructed:Created by, known and agreed upon Adj. 1. agreed upon - constituted or contracted by stipulation or agreement; "stipulatory obligations"stipulatorynoncontroversial, uncontroversial - not likely to arouse controversy by a group of people, and primarilypreserved in memory. Though transient, movement systems have structuredcontent. They can be visual manifestations of social relations, thesubjects of elaborate aesthetic systems, and may assist in understandingcultural values. HAWAI'I My interest in Hawaiian ritual arose from my study of Hawaiiandance, a structured movement system today called hula. I wasparticularly interested in hula pahu, a small group of dances that aresaid to be the remnants of pre-Christian rituals, and I wrote a book onthe subject of Hawaiian Drum Dances (Kaeppler 1993). My research, whichI began in 1970s and continued through the 1990s, recorded and analyzedthe hula pahu of the three main schools that still performed and taughtthese dances. Since my original research, only one of these schools isstill alive and well and I will focus on performances of this school,now known as the Zuttermeister School under the direction of Kumu Hula(master teacher) Noenoelani Zuttermeister. In performances by this school that include hula pahu, there isalways a ritual beginning. Kumu Noenoelani opens with an oli (a specifickind of chant) that calls upon the gods to inspire and surround theperformers with the energy of nature. The performers respond with a melekahea asking permission to enter onto the performance space. They oftenuse one which originated from the traditional epic of the volcanogoddess Pele. Kumu Noenoelani answers and invites them to enter.Noenoelani uses the pahu drum which, according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. Hawaiian tradition,was brought to Hawai'i from an ancient homeland known as Kahiki byLa'amaikahiki, sometime around AD1250. These drums were sounded inoutdoor temples called heiau A heiau is a Hawaiian temple comprised of a stone platform with various structures built upon it. The structures on the platform were used to house priests, sacred ceremonial drums, sacred items, and cult images representing the associated with that particular temple. , and they remain instruments of power andsacredness. The sound of the drum is called kani and the head of thedrum is waha (mouth). Hawaiians believe that playing the drum was a wayof communicating with their gods. The pahu is carved from a single treetrunk, usually from breadfruit breadfruit:see mulberry. breadfruitFruit of either of two closely related trees belonging to the mulberry family. Artocarpus communis (also called A. incisa or A. altilis) provides a staple food of the South Pacific. or coconut, and the waha is typicallycovered by sharkskin shark��skin?n.1. The skin of a shark.2. Leather made from the skin of a shark.3. A rayon and acetate fabric having a smooth, somewhat shiny surface. or, today, with cowhide cow��hide?n.1. a. The hide of a cow.b. The leather made from this hide.2. A strong heavy flexible whip, usually made of braided leather.tr.v. . It is lashed with coconutsennit fiber in which the maker's prayers were captured to remainwith the pahu for its lifetime. The pahu is accompanied by a small kneedrum, called puniu or kilu, made of a coconut shell base and coveredwith the skin of the kala or surgeonfish. The pahu is struck with thepalm of the hand while the kilu is struck with a fiber beater beat��er?n.1. One that beats, especially a device for beating: a carpet beater.2. A person who drives wild game from under cover for a hunter. called ka. Three dances are usually performed in the pahu tradition: 1. Kaulilua I Ke Anu O Waialeale is one of the oldest dances tosurvive from rituals used on the heiau (outdoor temples). This was laterbrought into hula and perpetuated by a few practitioners whose roots canbe traced back to the 19th century. The poetry has kaona, or hiddenmeaning, in which the cold and rain of Mt. Waialeale on the island ofKaua'i is a metaphor for fertility rituals of the god Lono; 2. Aloha EKe Kai O Kalalau is also from Kaua'i and describesthe ahi lele, or fire brands, which were thrown from Kamaile at the topof a steep cliff called Makana. The firebrands were tossed into the windto be carried twirling Twirling is any of several artforms, hobbies, or sport and recreational activities accomplished by spinning or rotating the twirled object either for exercise, or in a rhythmic, or otherwise artful manner. far out to sea where Hawaiian chiefs watched intheir canoes. This hula preserves a ritual based on fire chantsassociated with the god Kanaloa and inherited by King Kalakaua in the19th century; 3. Hanohano ka uka Pihanakalani preserves a ritual that involves asacred flute called Kanikawi; in the 19th century, this became a leichant in honor of Queen Kapi'olani. Although these dances, and a few others, have been preserved in thepresent hula tradition, in old Hawai'i there were three contexts inwhich structured movement systems were performed. In order to understandritual, I found it was necessary to sort out traditional Hawaiianconceptualizations regarding structured movement by going back to thebasic performance of structured movements in traditional contexts,rather than simply analyzing present-day hula. The three structured movement systems in old Hawai'i included,first, mourning ceremonies in which movements accompanied kanikau(lamentations). These movements were formulaic and involved locking thefingers of the hands and putting them behind the head, stretching handsand arms upwards with palms turned towards each other, and beating thebreast. A second structured movement system, called ha'a, was usedduring sacred ceremonies on heiau. These movements appear to have beenbased on an asymmetrical processional in a bent-knee stance, performedin conjunction with a chanted text and pahu. They were performed byimage bearers and carriers of other sacred objects Sacred ObjectsArk of the Covenantgilded wooden chest in which God’s presence dwelt when communicating with the people. [O.T. such as kapu kapu (kä·pōō),n in the Hawaiian culture, a code of taboos, strictly practiced until the midnineteenth century. Violators of the code were banished or put to death. sticksand sacred cords which were 'tools' of the kahuna (person) kahuna - /k*-hoo'n*/ (From the Hawaiian title for a shaman) An IBM synonym for wizard or guru. (priests).Finally, a third structured movement system, hula, was used in formal(and informal) entertainment. Movements included a series of lower-bodymotifs performed symmetrically and a wide variety of hand/arm motifsthat alluded to words of the text and were performed in conjunction witha variety of sound-producing instruments. Although the movement'products' (i.e., the movement motifs performed simultaneouslyand sequentially) may have been somewhat similar in all theseactivities, the contexts in which they were performed differed. Theywere movement dimensions of separate activities, were terminologicallydifferentiated, and the reason or intention for performance differed. The first two contexts might be termed 'ritual' However,the Hawaiian language does not have a term that accurately translatesour anthropological concept. In both the mourning ceremonies and in theheiau context, the specialized Hawaiian performers carried out what RoyRappaport Roy A. Rappaport (1926–1997) was a distinguished anthropologist known for his contributions to the anthropological study of ritual and to ecological anthropology. Rappaport received his Ph.D. at Columbia University and then held a position at the University of Michigan. has described as 'more or less invariant (programming) invariant - A rule, such as the ordering of an ordered list or heap, that applies throughout the life of a data structure or procedure. Each change to the data structure must maintain the correctness of the invariant. sequences offormal acts and utterances not encoded by the performers'(1979:175). That is, these movements were handed down by ancestors andtheir function was to worship specific gods--primarily Lono, god ofpeace and agriculture, but also Ku, the god of war. Some structuredmovements dealt with the manipulation of sacred cords and tying/binding.There was a restricted set of movements that were performed inconjunction with specific texts. Structured movements did not transferfrom one text to another nor change from performance to performance;that is, they were constricted or restricted orders. Essentially, theycould not be re-choreographed, or re-ordered, but were reproduced andrepeated each time they were performed (or at least that was theintention). Performers were men and the primary audience was the gods who wereconcerned with the process--that is, that the act of performing wasbeing carried out. Other audience members included the assembledcongregation which watched the movement specialists, raising their armsat specific junctures, and who were reassured that the rituals of peace,agriculture, fertility, and sometimes preparations for war were beingcarried out on their behalf. They witnessed that the form or structureof the movements in a fixed relationship to one another was properlyperformed. The medium, i.e., the performance, was the message with anencoded metamessage. The performance of ha'a, as this structured movement systemwas called, was necessary to the religious and political order of oldHawai'i. This was a social contract among chiefs, people, and thegods; a liturgical order that through its performance worshipped thegods who then looked favorably on the performers and the congregationand their requests. In the 21st century, the remnants of these ritualshave today been incorporated into the formal hula category of hula pahu. TONGA My study of Tongan ritual derived from my being in Tonga duringceremonies associated with the death of Queen Salote Tupou III in 1965and with the investiture investiture,in feudalism, ceremony by which an overlord transferred a fief to a vassal or by which, in ecclesiastical law, an elected cleric received the pastoral ring and staff (the symbols of spiritual office) signifying the transfer of the office. of King Tupou IV in 1967 (as well as thesubsequent investitures of several other chiefs, nobles, and the presentKing Tupou V in 2008). Although dances were performed at some of theseevents, Tongans do not conceptualize con��cep��tu��al��ize?v. con��cep��tu��al��ized, con��cep��tu��al��iz��ing, con��cep��tu��al��iz��esv.tr.To form a concept or concepts of, and especially to interpret in a conceptual way: that dance derives from ritual eventhough some of the arm movements in kava (Piper methysticum Piper methysticum,n See kava. ) ceremoniesare virtually the same as arm movements used in what they today wouldconsider to be 'dance.' Again, to understand local meanings ofdance, I found that it was necessary to sort out traditional Tonganconceptualizations regarding structured movement by going back to basicacts of performing structured movements in original contexts, ratherthan simply analyzing present-day dance style and technique. One important structured movement tradition takes place during themixing of kava. This was first described during the third voyage ofCaptain James Cook and illustrated by expedition artist John Webber.Traditionally, kava root was chewed (by young people with good teeth)and placed into a wooden bowl before it was mixed with water and drunkby the assembled group during state ceremonies. As the gods gave kava topeople, it was appropriate for people to offer it back to the gods.European disgust at ingesting something that someone else had previouslychewed influenced this kava-drinking society to find a new way toprepare it--namely by crushing kava root with one stone upon another. Atvarious times during the past two centuries, kava was thought to besimilar to alcohol, then to be closer to a narcotic narcotic,any of a number of substances that have a depressant effect on the nervous system. The chief narcotic drugs are opium, its constituents morphine and codeine, and the morphine derivative heroin.See also drug addiction and drug abuse. , but it is nowgenerally considered a relaxant relaxant/re��lax��ant/ (re-lak��sant)1. lessening or reducing tension.2. an agent that so acts.muscle relaxant and soporific soporific/sop��o��rif��ic/ (sop?o-rif��ik) (so?po-rif��ik)1. producing deep sleep.2. hypnotic (2).sop��o��rif��icadj.1. . It is essentially a'downer' and encourages agreement rather than violence. It wasthought to have sacred powers and to promote sociability. Its chemicalproperties vary according to how it is prepared and by how much water isused in its dilution. Kava mixing bowls are usually shallow to enable amixer to knead knead?tr.v. knead��ed, knead��ing, kneads1. To mix and work into a uniform mass, as by folding, pressing, and stretching with the hands: kneading dough.2. macerated root and then further crush it in the bowl,after which the fluid is wrung wrung?v.Past tense and past participle of wring.wrungVerbthe past of wringwrungwring with a fiber strainer to remove leftoverfiber and bits of root. All kava preparation movements are prescribed and ordered.Deviation is not allowed. Structured movement begins with displaying theempty kava bowl to the ceremonial attendants at the far side of the ovalperforming space. These matapule continue to monitor the ritualpreparatory movements and they will stop the ceremony if something isdone incorrectly. Movements are precise and are performed in aprescribed order including how the kava root is squeezed with water, howthe fiber strainer is manipulated, shaken, and then discarded. The kavais then squeezed into the cup with the fiber strainer and served andreceived with two hands. Even how a server stands when waiting to servethe kava cup is prescribed. Finally, the serving order as called out bythe ritual leader also follows specific rules. According to Tongan tradition, a high chief arrived unannounced ata small Tongan island in the midst Adv. 1. in the midst - the middle or central part or point; "in the midst of the forest"; "could he walk out in the midst of his piece?"midmost of a famine. Lack of food to feed thechief led the couple living on the island to kill their leprous lep��rous?adj.1. Having leprosy.2. Of, relating to, or resembling leprosy.3. Biology Having or consisting of loose, scurfy scales. daughter, Kava'onau, bake her in an earth oven An earth oven or cooking pit is one of the most simple and long-used cooking structures - a simple pit dug in the ground to hold heated materials for food to be cooked over. Earth ovens have been used in many places and cultures in the past. , and serve her tothe chief. He refused to eat the girl and directed the couple to buryher instead. From her interred body grew the first kava plant (namedafter the daughter) and also the first sugarcane plant. A rat, eatingthe kava plant became disoriented (or drunk) and then ate the sugarcaneplant and was refreshed. This sacrifice of Kava'onau and the plantsthat derived from her body embed Tongan values of social interaction andhierarchy including the importance of hospitality, the use of certainfood and drink to acknowledge an individual's rank, and theelegance of preparation and presentation. Based on these values, kavapreparation ceremony became institutionalized as an important ritualthat expresses proper relationships among gods, chiefs, and people. Atthe center of this ritual is the kava bowl. considered today a ritualobject. Like Hawaiian, the Tongan language This article is about the Polynesian language of the kingdom of Tonga. For unrelated languages with similar names, see Tongan language (disambiguation).Tongan (lea fakatonga) is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. does not have a term thatconveys the concept of 'ritual.' Although there are numerousevents that could be described as ritual, these are simply part of thecycle of life such as funerals which entail wearing large ragged mats,or the importance of ceremonial (or ritual) attendants calledha'atufunga, who carry out much of their work in secret. Tongansrevere Revere,city (1990 pop. 42,786), Suffolk co., E Mass., a residential suburb of Boston, on Massachusetts Bay; settled c.1630, set off from Chelsea and named for Paul Revere 1871, inc. as a city 1914. these ceremonies as a central part of their tradition and ananalysis of structured movements used in these important ceremonies ledme to a larger exploration of kava ceremony in a contemporaryperspective and its association with dance, especially as many Tongandance movements reproduce those of kava mixing. Although kava ceremonieshave been part of the anthropological literature for decades, themovements have been seldom mentioned (but see Kaeppler 1985) To evoke Rappaport's definition again, the kava mixers,servers, and drinkers carry out 'more or less invariant sequencesof formal acts and utterances' not originated by them. The ritualsequence was handed down by ancestors and today a kava ceremonygenerates and regenerates a covenant between chiefs and people.Performers are usually men who sit in a specified layout in a sacredperforming space, and are served in a specific order depending on theirplace in the hierarchical order of chiefly lines. Participants alsoinclude the gods, who were traditionally concerned with the process, andhumans to whom the ceremony is relevant. Again, the medium, i.e., theperformance, is a message with an encoded metamessage. Tongan performance of the kava ceremony is necessary to thepolitical order which is a social contract among chiefs, people, and thegods. The chief (who descended from the gods) directed the old couple inan act that originated the kava plant. The supernatural origin of theplant requires that the drink made from it should not be usedindiscriminately but should be used in the service of the chiefs and thegods in an elegant way. The chief gave kava to ordinary people whosanctify sanc��ti��fy?tr.v. sanc��ti��fied, sanc��ti��fy��ing, sanc��ti��fies1. To set apart for sacred use; consecrate.2. To make holy; purify.3. it with their labor and then give it back to the chiefs and thegods, forming a ritual covenant among them. A Tongan kava ceremony is a socio-political, religious processperformed in an outdoor sacred space sacred space,n space—tangible or otherwise—that enables those who acknowledge and accept it to feel reverence and connection with the spiritual. . The audience comprises the (old)gods and a congregation of believers. The intention is to carry out thetraditions that derived from the pre-Christian gods who will then lookfavorably on the performers and the congregation. The hierarchicalstructure See hierarchical. of the society is encoded in the process. At the same time,this is socio-political theatre in which meaning is aestheticallyencoded in the product and must be derived by a culturally knowledgeableaudience that is engaged by the objects, words, and structuredmovements. For example, a kava ceremony in November 2006, calledpongipongi tapu, installed King Siaosi Tupou V as the new King of Tonga(although his formal investiture did not take place until 2008), as wellas the new Crown Prince Tupouto'a, and the latter's two sonsas 'Ulukalala and Ata. Ritual kava ceremony is alive and well inTonga. Tongan rituals associated with death and funerals are also highlyprescribed including funerary fu��ner��ar��y?adj.Of or suitable for a funeral or burial.[Latin fner clothing based on the wearing of mats. Howbig and how ragged these mats are indicates the wearer'srelationship to the deceased. The funeral directors (ha'atufunga)are borne on a pall with the coffin. They carry flywhisks which areincorporated into ritual movements. The men who carry the pall movetogether with structured walking motifs and six months later, at the endof the funeral rituals, women use the same ritual walking while carryingtheir presentations of barkcloth Barkcloth is a soft, thick, slightly textured fabric so named because it has a rough surface like that of tree bark. Barkcloth is usually made of densely woven cotton fibers. and mats (which have been rituallyfolded). However, as l noted at the beginning of this section, the structureof Tongan ritual movement is not conceptually related to dance eventhough many hand and arm movements used in dance are similar to, andderived from, structured kava preparation. Kava and funerary ritualsdemand a prescribed ordering of movement while contemporary dance can berechoreographed each time it is performed or even can be choreographedspontaneously (i.e., improvised). Tongan dance is entertainment, anevent of honoring, or a political statement. It is not a ritual. InTonga, there is no such thing as ritual dancing. BULGARIA To broaden our comparison of structured movement and dance andtheir relation to ritual, we might also look to two very differentsocieties I had the chance recently to visit, in which ritual movementremains important (see Ilieva 2001 and Silverman 1983). In May 2005, Itook part in a study group, concerned with ritual complexes, whichvisited Bulgaria. The ritual that we investigated is today associatedwith St. George's day. This is a calendrical ritual based on thecoming of spring which supplicates rainfall for the crops. In Varvara,this takes place in a sacred space at the top of a nearby hill up whichwe walked 15,000 steps, along with church officials, several old womenspecialized in the structured movement aspects of the ritual, and manymembers of the community. The origin of the ritual is pre-Christian andgoes back to a female goddess of the Bronze Age Bronze Age,period in the development of technology when metals were first used regularly in the manufacture of tools and weapons. Pure copper and bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, were used indiscriminately at first; this early period is sometimes called the who was worshipped inparts of contemporary Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. The night before St. George's Day, during which the mainritual took place, sheep were brought to Varvara's Catholic Churchto be blessed by the Priest before they were sacrificed and subsequentlyroasted at the top of the hill for a communal feast. Early in themorning of St. George's Day itself, women brought decorated breadto the church that they had baked during the night to be blessed by thePriest, also to be taken up the hill for the feast. In the church, thewomen sang old traditionally-pitched songs accompanied by clappers clap��per?n.1. One who applauds.2. The tongue of a bell.3. Slang The tongue of a garrulous person.4. andthe men sang Christian songs. After the Priest blessed bread, water,sheep, and participants, all began the long trek up the steep hill Steep Hill is a popular tourist street in the historic city of Lincoln, UK.At the top of the hill you will find the entrance to the Cathedral and at the bottom is Well Lane. The Hill consists of independent shops, tea rooms and pubs. .Wearing headbands of oak leaves, the procession was led by the Priestand officials who carried banners featuring St. George on a white horse,followed by a band, old women, and the rest of the community. Along theway, as the procession passed through the village, women showered theprocession with handfuls of grain. After some hours of walking up thehill, the procession arrived at a ritual space where the breadpreviously had been transported and sheep were being barbequed. Musicspecially associated with the ritual along with other music was alsoplayed and enjoyed. One of the main elements of the ritual was a performance ofstructured movement by the old women to bring rain. Several old womenbegan their performance and right on cue it began to rain and continuedraining for some time. Plates of food were distributed to everyone andall went into the tents to eat. These tents had been set up the previousday as 'everyone knew it would rain.' This ritual performance (sometimes referred to as a horo) performedby the old women is distinguished from other Varvara music/dance in thatthe music, movement motifs, and songs are specific for St. George'sDay. The important movement elements here included lower body movementmotifs typical of Balkan dance, but with more emphasis on the leftleg/foot than the right, this emphasizing the ritual concept of theleft. The main movement motif is in four beats: Left foot cross in frontof right foot, right foot to right side, left cross behind, right toright side. The women perform at the top of the hill, mid-way down thehill, and at the bottom of the hill. Also, along the way back down thehill to the starting point Noun 1. starting point - earliest limiting pointterminus a quocommencement, get-go, offset, outset, showtime, starting time, beginning, start, kickoff, first - the time at which something is supposed to begin; "they got an early start"; "she knew from the , the procession stopped at each crossroad sothat the Priest could bless bread for those who were not able to climbthe hill and take part at the sacred space. Most of this seems straightforward in that during the ritual it'always' rains and efficacy is preserved. However, theperformance includes other elements for which people have no explanationand which are done 'because they are part of the ritual.' Forexample, much of the ritual is markedly associated with women. A newlymarried woman will bake bread during the night in a white clay potwearing her wedding dress. Before St. George's Day, a newly marriedwoman often wears her wedding jacket and headwear head��wear?n.A hat or other covering for the head. , but on St.George's Day her mother-in-law changes her headdress headdress,head covering or decoration, protective or ceremonial, which has been an important part of costume since ancient times. Its style is governed in general by climate, available materials, religion or superstition, and the dictates of fashion. for amarried-woman's kerchief. The women also make oak-leaf wreaths. Inthe past, women collected herbs and bathed in the dew before sunrise,then bathed in the river where this turns to the left, reflecting themotif that 'everything should be done to the left.' In somevillages, women dance around the bread table three times followed by thePriest who also dances around the table three times. Men bring theirfirst-born male lamb of the year with a candle on its horn to be blessedby the priest. The Priest sings to the lamb and takes the lighted candleand makes the sign of the cross with the candle fire on the forehead ofthe lamb. Several families take their lambs to a crossroad to form a'border-crossing' for the Priest. A man should give salt tohis lamb and have the lamb symbolically cross a border by walking over abelt while facing the east. After sacrificing the lamb, the man shoulddip his finger in the blood and put a spot on the foreheads of children.Then he should put the blood into a river, water, or earth. But why do ritual supplicants in Varvara take part today?Essentially, besides being a ritual that must be performed to bring rainfor the crops, St. George's Day has become an identity festival anda mechanism of renewal of what it means to be Bulgarian. Traditionalstructured movement, ritually performed, connotes present-day politicalidentities. INDIA During the second week of February, 2009, I traveled with eightstudents and three faculty members of the Jawaharlal Nehru University The sprawling campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (जवाहरलाल नेहरू विश्वविद्यालय ) ,where I was teaching, to document the Yarlamma ritual in Karnataka. Muchof this ritual has been banned by the government because of itsassociation with prostitution. The ritual relates to a myth of a womanwho was beheaded by her son, told to do so by his father after hisbrothers had refused their father's request. The son who performedthe deed was given one wish and he wished that his mother's headwould be restored. It was, and it multiplied. Many temples have beendedicated to Yarlamma in various places in south India South India is a commonly used term that is used in India to refer to the South-of-India or Southern India. The Southern part of the Indian peninsula is a linguistic-cultural region of India that comprises the four states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu and the . Traditionally,the original ritual involved dedication of women as temple devadasis.Subsequently, eunuchs (as well as hermaphrodites and transvestites) alsobecame part of the ritual to be likewise dedicated to Yarlamma. Thousands of people are now devotees and thousands of others attendthe festival each year (including police which seems remarkable for abanned ritual). Devotees come primarily from marginalized groups withtheir own sub-cultures who wish to preserve their own way of doingthings, their own traditions. People arrive in decorated covered wagons(pulled by bullocks) and sleep in these during the ceremony. We sawhundreds of these carts, and many smaller scale rituals took placewithin the wider temple area. Some components of the main ritual nolonger occur (or at least that is the official stance), for example aparade of unclothed women and the dedication of young girls who arechosen because of their knotted hair. But priests and instrumentalistscontinue to lead devotees to a pool where they bathe, and then to thetemple which is entirely covered with yellow turmeric turmeric:see ginger. turmericPerennial herbaceous plant (Curcuma longa; family Zingiberaceae), native to southern India and Indonesia. Its tuberous rhizomes have been used from antiquity as a condiment, as a textile dye, and medically as an , red ochre Red ochre and yellow ochre (pronounced /'əʊk.ə/, from the Greek ochros, yellow) are pigments made from naturally tinted clay. It has been used worldwide since prehistoric times. , andvermilion vermilion,vivid red pigment of durable quality. It is a chemical compound of mercury and sulfur and is known as red sulfide of mercury; it was formerly obtained by grinding pure cinnabar but is now commonly prepared synthetically. thrown by those attending (and so were we). There, devoteespetition the goddess for good health, fertility (especially for sons),and other hopes for the future. Many of the villagers who participatedcarried a figure of the goddess's head on their own heads, which isimportant for an association with Yarlamma. We also found a fair withbooths selling a variety of goods from saris for the goddess figures, tovermilion, to CDs. Important structured movement elements during the ritual includedsupplication by placing oneself flat on the ground, over and over,moving clockwise around the temple, and facing the temple where thegoddess resides. The movements of the devidasas (male and female,jokomas and jokopas) that honored the goddess were simplified versionsof traditional Indian dance genres including typical lower body motifsand also hand/arm movements with a distant relationship to Hindu mudra(ritual movements). RITUAL CONCEPTS The structured movement components observed in these fourtraditions call attention to anthropological approaches to ritualitself. When I first studied anthropology, there were no classes offeredthat focused on ritual. I recall instead only passing mention of ritualin classes such as History of Anthropological Theory where we wereintroduced to Durkheim and van Gennep, primarily in the contexts ofreligion and rites of passage respectively. Just what is ritual and doesthis remain a viable analytic concept? We commonly use terms such as'ritual object,' 'ritual music,' 'ritualspeech,' or 'ritual dancing' without much criticalthought about their implications. Rituals are usually taken to beancient and traditional and associated objects or performances are thusalso thought to be traditional and ancient. As noted earlier, Roy Rappaport defined ritual as 'theperformance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts andutterances not encoded by the performers' (1979:175). That is,these formal acts and utterances are learned/memorized (or read) fromthe teachings of ancestors and do not originate with the performer.Rappaport suggested that a ritual is 'a form or structure ...[having] a number of features or characteristics in a more or less fixedrelationship to one another' that can exist only in performance.The medium (i.e., the performance of structured movement) is part of themessage; more precisely, it is a metamessage about whatever is encodedin the ritual. Similarly, Vilsoni Hereniko, a Rotuman anthropologist andperformance artist, has noted the received rather than creative aspectsof ritual performance: traditional rituals and ceremonies ... did not make sense to me ... [because] no one explained to me the reasons certain rituals had to be performed on special occasions, or why these rituals had to follow a prescribed order ... I did not feel it was appropriate to ask or probe into the reasons or meanings of these acts or actions. (2005:103) And Valero Valeri, who wrote extensively on Hawaiian rituals, alsoobserved that 'rituals are practices in which the participants donot believe themselves to be the authors of what they do, believinginstead that their ritual significations are authorized and prescribedby a superior authority' (quoted in Kelly and Kaplan, 1990:139). This emphasis on prescribed movement is evident in all of my fourcase studies, where participants felt that their ritual performances hadcome down to them from ancestors and had to be enacted in the prescribedmanner else they would not be effective. Structured movement used inHawaiian hula pahu, Tongan kava mixing and presentation, and theBulgarian rain dance could not be changed but had to be performed thesame way each time. In each case, the ritual encompassed a message thatneeded to be performed. Indeed, it was the process of performing thatensured fertility, cemented a social contract with the gods, or broughtthe rain. If structured movements were not performed as given, therewould be a lack of offspring in nature and humans (as happened in 19thcentury Hawai'i). The social contract between chiefs, people, andthe gods might not be renewed in Tonga. And rain for the crops might notcome in Bulgaria. And for devotees of Yarlamma, if the ritual processwas not performed, requests for sons, restoration of health, and thelike would not be granted. Rituals are similar to what Frits Staal in Discovering the Vedas(2009) characterized as Kautsa's fifth thesis. That is, rituals,like mantras, have no meaning. They are learned by heart throughmemorization rather than through less conscious learning like becomingskilled in a first language. In the four cases above, memorizationplayed an important part and questions about the process were not asked.Even the indigenous scholar Hereniko felt he should not probe into themeanings of structured movement or other ritual components. According to these theorists and my own research, ritualparticipants may not fully understand what they are doing, only that itis necessary to do it. (2) How, then, does ritual relate to the moreinclusive category of performance and especially to theatre and evenspectacle? One basic difference between ritual and theatre is that eventhough a dramatic script was written by someone else, the acts areencoded by the performers. Rather than the performance itself being themessage, the message in theatre is derived from the performance. Intheatre. performers do understand what they are doing and it is theproduct that is the message (not the process of performance itself).Although process and product are important in both ritual and theatre,in ritual the process is primary. In theater the product is primary. (3) As a specialist in structured movement associated with music,dance, and poetry, I interrogate our conceptual link betweenmusic/dance/poetic speech and ritual. In spite of what Maurice Bloch(1974) has declared, perhaps these practices are not intrinsicallyrelated at all and it is our lack of indigenous knowledge andcategorization that encourages us to relate them. Practitionersthemselves may not be 'musicking' or 'dancing'(concepts derived from our own Western tradition) but rather'ritually intoning and moving' (though using the same ordifferent sound and movement systems). I propose that there are three important elements in thecomparative study of ritual: (1) What is the intention of theperformance and the presenters?: (2) Efficacy, or does it work, at leastoften enough to continue doing it. and is the intention realized?: and(3) What knowledge do the viewers/beholders bring to a performance asthis shapes how it will be decoded, as ritual, or as theatre, or asspectacle. In contrast, important elements for the analysis ofstructured movement are: (1) Is there an indigenous category thatcompares to the Western concept of dance and, if so, how does this fitwith other structured movement systems in that society?; (2) How isdance learned in specific societies, for example, is it learned as amovement 'language' (rather than by memorization)?; (3) Whatis (are) the function(s) or intention(s) of this category of movement?;and (4), How is meaning derived from a performance, and are aestheticsan important element in choreography and performance? My interest lies in understanding how meaning is derived fromritual (and dance and other structured movement), how the flame of anevent must be understood in order to derive its meaning, how intentionand cultural evaluation can be understood in terms of that event'sframe, the necessity of understanding the activities that generaterituals, and how and by whom ritual and its efficacy are judged. But, asthis is a work in progress, I intend to keep on researching ritualcomparatively to discern if it is, in fact, a viable analytical categoryand why structured movement systems are important in its presentationand re-presentation. REFERENCES BLOCH, M. 1974. Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation:Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority? European Journalof Sociology, 15:55-81. GELL, A. 1985. Style and Meaning in Umeda Dance. In P. Spencer(ed.), Society and the Dance: The Social Anthropology of Performance andProcess, pp. 183-205. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). . GRAU, A. 2001. Ritual Dance and 'Modernisation': The TiwiExample. Yearbook for Traditional Music 33:73-81. HERENIKO, V. 2005. Dressing and Undressing the Bride and Groom at aRotuman Wedding. In S. Kuchler and G. Were (eds.), The Art of Clothing:A Pacific Experience, pp. 103-09. London: UCL UCL University College LondonUCL Universit�� Catholique de LouvainUCL UEFA Champions LeagueUCL Upper Confidence LimitUCL University of Central LancashireUCL Upper Control LimitUCL Unfair Competition LawUCL Ulnar Collateral Ligament Press. ILIEVA, A. 2001. Bulgarian Folk Dance during The Socialist Era,1944-1989. Yearbook for Traditional Music 33: 123-126. KAEPPLER, A. L. 1985. Structured Movement Systems in Tonga. In P.Spencer (ed.), Society and the Dance: The Social Anthropology ofPerformance and Process, pp. 92-118. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress. 1993. Hula Pahu Hawaiian Drum Dances. Volume l. Ha'a and HulaPahu: Sacred Movements. Honolulu: Bishop Museum. 2010. The Beholder's Share: Viewing Music and Dance in aGlobalized World. Ethnomusicology ethnomusicologyScholarly study of the world's musics from various perspectives. Although it had antecedents in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the field expanded with the development of recording technologies in the late 19th century. 54(2): 185-201. KELLY, J. D., and M. Kaplan. 1990. History, Structure, and Ritual.Annual Review of Anthropology 19:119-50. RAPPAPORT, R. A. 1979. Ritual. In E. Barnouw (ed.), TheInternational Encyclopedia of Communication, vol. 3: 467-473. New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of :Oxford University Press. SILVERMAN, C. 1983. The Politics of Folklore in Bulgaria.Anthropological Quarterly 56 (2): 55-61. STAAL, F. 2009. Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Rituals, Insights.New York: Penguin Global. Adrienne L. Kaeppler Smithsonian Institution NOTES (1.) I thank ASAO for the invitation to present this lecture at its2010 annual meeting in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia in very snowyconditions. (2.) Some ritual specialists would give more agency to performersthemselves, but my analysis agrees with that of Valeri. (3.) I have just published an article on how viewers decode ritual,theatre, and spectacle Kaeppler (2010), I will not elaborate this here.