أطراس
Volume 7, Numéro 2, Pages 139-147
2026-07-15
“sing And Be Possessed”: A Reflective Practitioner’s Perspective On The Impacts Of Music On Jinn-human Relations
Authors : Imam Muhyideen Olasunkanmi .
Abstract
This study utilises Driscoll's (1994, 2007) model of structured reflection, based on Terry Burton's core questions namely: what (the situation), so what (what was learnt), and now what (the action plan), to examine an aspect of fieldwork observations at a Nigerian Islamic exorcism centre. The case explored involves a thirty-five-year-old lady allegedly afflicted by jinn possession attributed to her habitual consumption of secular music. The paper examines the ontological, theological, and socio-cultural dimensions of jinn-human relations mediated through musical practice. It opens with the provocative public confessions of two prominent Nigerian musicians, 9ice and Terry G, whose self-reported claims about the devil’s dominion over secular music provides a compelling popular-culture entry point into this under-theorised intersection of ethnomusicology, hip-hop linguistics, Islamic demonology, and the anthropology of possession. This piece argues that music in many West African Muslim contexts is not a neutral aesthetic phenomenon but a spiritually charged medium through which permeable boundaries between the human and unseen worlds are negotiated, violated, and potentially restored. The study contributes to growing scholarship on musical linguistics, Islamic therapeutic practices, the moral economy of sound, and the gendered dimensions of jinn affliction in postcolonial Nigeria.
Keywords
Music and evil ; Driscoll's reflective model ; Gender and possession ; Ethnomusicology ; Jinn possession
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