promoted fertility, cured intractable illnesses that proved resistant to other remedies, protected against the evil intentions of others, restored balance in personal relationships that had turned poisonous, and ensured success in business as well as other aspects of life in both urban and rural environments. One factor for its growth, not only among Ewes but throughout coastal western Africa, is the power of the Brekete gods who successfully Since the 1920s the Brekete religion has gained many adherents in Eweland. The author glosses the book's overall plan thusly: chapter 1 'the turn of the dance,' chapter 2 'the chanted call to prayer,' chapter 3 'the musical silence of sacrifice,' chapter 4 'the sounds and movements of wake keeping,' chapter 5 'the play of the drums,' and chapter 6 'the poetics of divination' (12). Important features of this religion include behavior usually called 'spirit possession' and objects usually called 'fetishes.' Remains of Ritual provides a detailed ethnography of the Brekete shrine religion with special attention to its aesthetically charged feeling tone and the inner experience of its devotees. The author argues that it is reasonable to locate Brekete within a major global religion-'African spirit-god worship'-which, though decentralized and lacking a brand name like 'Christianity,' has many common aspects shared by its myriad particular instantiations. 'Brekete,' a gorovodu religious practice of the Ewe-speaking people of Ghana and Togo.

The subject of this book is Lahare Kunde, a.k.a. This book proves that studies of Ewe religious practice that marginalize music and dance should be regarded as deficient. The main reason that ethnomusicology has the potential for a leadership position, as the author points out, is the primacy of aesthetic force in human life. Remains of Ritual successfully demonstrates the potential of the discipline of ethnomusicology to be at the forefront of scholarly discourse on culture, rather than a junior sister to disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy.

In my opinion this is a very strong ethnomusicological monograph and a superb study of an important West African religious system. As a reader I was not ready to leave the two worlds that the text successfully conjures: the world of the author, as well as the world of the practitioners of the Brekete shrine system. Frankly, two readings were insufficient for fully digesting the text's data and argument, so I started to re-read it immediately after finishing the nostalgic final passage.

I appreciated the opportunity to learn a great deal about Ewe culture and I empathized with the author's control over the pace at which information was disclosed. I enjoyed meeting the text's cast of characters and was able to project myself into the intense world of spirit possession in the Ewe Brekete shrines that the book successfully conjures. Rather than aggravating me with an authorial persona as ethnographer-hero, Steve Friedson's adventures in Ghana held my attention. On second reading, the book's design drew me in and I came to appreciate its many well-written, evocative passages, as well as its strongly argued ideas and conclusions.

Rather than review it then, I let the book 'lie fallow' on the shelf for a few months. The first time through was frustrating: the organization of information seemed jumbled up and the writing style needlessly arty. I read this book three times before writing this review.

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