Dancing at the Thresholds

Reviews / Votes

"I cannot overemphasize how vital a scholarly contribution this is. We are fortunate indeed that Turner was able and willing to do this research, which unfolded over 10 years - giving the work a temporal depth that is rare these days. Given her own positionality as a musician capable not only of interviewing diwan experts but also of playing with them, she is the only one able to give us this kind of deeply researched, 'experience-near' personal account. No one else will be able to do this."-Jane Goodman, author of Staging Cultural Encounters: Algerian Actors Tour the United States

"This book outlines a wealth of scholarship on under-recognized communities across Algeria with attention to the nuances of geography, purpose, generation, belief, and economy. By bringing these together with attention to a frame of ecology, Turner writes a compelling story that challenges notions of how these pieces of personal and ritual experience interrelate."-Christopher Witulski, author of The Gnawa Lions: Authenticity and Opportunity in Moroccan Ritual Music

"This book dances across many thresholds, between Sub-Saharan roots and contemporary Algerian reality, traditional ritual practice and modern festival stagecraft, the different spheres of men and women and the different worlds of spirits and humans. Tamara Turner leads us through these portals with empathy and warmth, balancing meticulous scholarly inquiry with deeply felt emotion, and offering lessons we can take into our own lives."-Phillip Schuyler, author of North African and Middle Eastern Music

"Dancing at the Thresholds is a remarkable contribution to the literature on the enduring musico-ritual legacies of the sub-Saharan diaspora in the Maghreb. Its theorizing of the affective labor of musicians - who are responsible for cultivating "right feeling" for efficacious ritual healing - is grounded in sensitive and evocative ethnographic portrayals. The book itself dances at the thresholds of history and ethnography, linguistic and musical analysis, and, indeed, the known and the unknowable."-Richard Jankowsky, author of Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form