Origin & approach
Music, Ritual & Re_Connection
My engagement with music, ritual and altered states of consciousness first grew out of my own musical practice.
Early on I was drawn to repetition, loops and cyclical structures, first through hip-hop and electronic music. It became clear how repetition can change perception, attention and bodily states.
An important impulse came in 2003 through recordings from the Gnawa Festival in Essaouira. The combination of rhythmic repetition, song, movement and ritual context opened up a musical practice in which sound becomes bodily and socially effective. Later I travelled to Morocco, attended the festival and began to engage more deeply with the connection between music, ritual and altered states of consciousness.
Fieldwork & research
Research basis
Between 2010 and 2011, under the supervision of the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music Dresden, I carried out ethnomusicological fieldwork in Morocco. Its focus was the Gnawa brotherhood and their ritual practice. The resulting thesis is titled „Musik und Trance: Mechanismen und Auswirkungen am Beispiel des Gnawa-Kultes in Marokko“ (Music and Trance: Mechanisms and Effects, Using the Example of the Gnawa Cult in Morocco). It was awarded the top grade.
The research followed a classic ethnomusicological approach: participant observation, interviews with musicians and ritual participants, and direct participation in night-long ceremonies. A central task was to clarify what is often loosely called “trance”. Instead I worked with the concept of altered states of consciousness, describing them as context-dependent shifts in perception, attention and bodily experience — close to everyday life and bound to concrete conditions.
A particular focus lay on musical processes: the interplay of tempo, repetition and intensification; the interaction of rhythm and movement in changing bodily and mental states; and the emergence of collective synchronisation in sound and gesture. These questions remain at the centre of my work to this day.
Since then my research has broadened considerably: from ethnographic observation to a wider interdisciplinary inquiry that draws on philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, ritual studies and aesthetics. I am especially interested in ritual space: the interplay of outer conditions such as architecture, sound, light, smell, temperature and social constellation with inner processes such as attention, emotion and bodily perception.
This includes questions such as: what makes a space act like a threshold? How do sensory elements such as music, movement, visual form and scent interlock to change consciousness? What role does the group play, and how does individual experience relate to the collective process? How can such spaces be made effective without religious framing?
Gnawa ritual practice – documentary
Documentary on Gnawa music and ritual
Research field
Ritual Space
The Gnawa fieldwork has grown into a research line of its own: the question of how a place becomes a threshold — how sound, repetition, body, space and group bring about ritual situations in which perception, affect, attention and embodied self-orientation can shift or become activated. Ten lines of inquiry, ordered as a movement from frame through roles and inner states to sound, body, history, contemporary practice and effect:
Thresholds and secular ritual forms
How does a secular threshold emerge?
02Figures of the ritual space
Who holds, opens and brings back?
03States of consciousness, trance and transformation
Which states does a ritual space alter?
04Music, repetition and perception
How does music create intensification?
05Sound, space, sensory perception and atmosphere
What does atmosphere consist of?
06Body and Body Memory
What does the body know?
07Group and synchronisation
How does a shared pulse emerge?
08Historical ritual forms and transcultural translation
What does translation mean without copying?
09Political emotions and embodied reflection
How do political emotions become bodily workable?
10Ritual ambition and effect
What effect does a ritual space strive for?
Translation
From research to practice
The research asks how insights from ritual traditions can be translated into present-day Western contexts: with respect for cultural origins, with clear framing, and with observable effects on how people relate to themselves, to one another and to the world.
Today I continue the fieldwork, observing and taking part in contemporary ritual contexts: Ecstatic Dance, Five Rhythms, techno, concerts and therapeutic formats. I examine what makes these spaces hold, when they tip over, and what role sound, body, group, transition and bringing-back play.
Re_Connection is the practice space in which these questions are tested, together with an interdisciplinary team from dance therapy, political education and live music.