主播大秀

This is a recording of a shamanic ritual in Korea, made by Professor Keith Howard, an ethnomusicologist at SOAS.

During the ritual an old woman in the audience started speaking in the voice of a little girl. The family who were holding the ceremony had lost their young daughter several years before.

That ghost-child had apparently now become a woman and demanded a ritual in which she could be married to a male spirit, in order to pass onto the other world.

The ritual went on all night from 8pm to the early morning. "Recording them was no easy task," Keith says, "with mosquitoes buzzing around and with the audience basically having a party as the serious parts of the ritual went on."

Recording courtesy of Keith Howard and the British Library's Sound Archive.