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Distributed for Eburon Academic Publishers

Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction

Music and dance play a fascinating and complex role in social interactions in nearly every culture. The power of music to elicit physical reactions—from causing people simply to sway in rhythm, to inciting trances or even sexual excitement—has led to numerous different traditions of music and dance in the service of romance. Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction examines a broad range of such practices: from the dancing and singing of South Indian devadasis (courtesans) to the provocative dialogues exchanged between Chinese rural villagers; from the interplay of attraction and repulsion in Mozart’s operas to the “bump and grind” of dancers in nightclubs today. From anthropological, biological, and ethnomusicological perspectives, the essays in this volume explore the universality of the relationship between music, dance, and sexual attraction.

472 pages | 30 halftones | 6 x 9 3/8 | © 2013

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology

Music: General Music


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Table of Contents

Introduction
Frank Kouwenhoven and James Kippen

THE BIOLOGY OF MUSICAL COURTSHIP
1. Why not just copulate? Reflections on the aesthetic trappings of animal and human courtship displays
Bjorn Merker
2. Song complexity in a species of songbird, the Bengalese finch : a tool for seduction or a byproduct of domestication?
Kasuo Okanoya and Miki Takahasi
3. Musical Seducers and Music as Seduction
Rokus de Groot
4. Enchanting Voices
Wim van der Meer
 
CASE STUDIES
5. The Marks of a Sensual Person: Music and Dance Performance in the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia
Jane Freeman Moulin
6. Sexual Education through Singing and Dancing in S.E. Cameroon
Susanne Furniss
7. Courtship Rituals and the Native American flute
Paula Conlon
8. Love songs and temple festivals in northwest China: musical laughter in the face of adversity
Frank Kouwenhoven
9. Al Bic Bac and the Marriage Customs of the Dong
Han Mei
10. There She Was: Love, Courtship, and Marriage in Performances by Gay and Lesbian Choruses
Pamela Moro
11. Empowerment: the Art of Seduction in Adult Entertainment Exotic Dance
Judith Lynne Hanna
12. ‘Con el guleindon - a tocar es xoriguer’: Subtle and unsubtle seduction and courtship in Luso-Hispanic and Sephardic song
Judith R. Cohen
 
FOCUS INDIA
13. On the dancers or Devadasis: Jacob Haafner’s Account of the Eighteenth-Century Indian Temple Dancers
Joep Bor
14. Between Seduction and Redemption - The European Perception of India’s Temple Dancers in Travel Accounts and Stage Productions from the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth Century
Tiziana Leucci
15. Sringaranta: Eros Fragmented
Saskia Kersenboom
16. Wounded with the Arrow of Her Eyelashes: Seduction and Sensuality in North Indian dance
Margaret Walker
17. The Language of Seduction in Courtesan Performance
Lalita du Perron
18. Eros and Shame in North Indian Art Music
Nicolas Magriel

Notes
References
About the Authors
Index

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