The Living Has Sound

The article examines musical sound as a worldview category connected with rituals, traditional beliefs, concepts, and life styles of the indigenous, numerically small peoples of Arctic Eurasia. The discussion is based primarily on materials from the author's field research, begun on the Taimyr Peninsula in the 1980s. This study of the sound culture of Samodeic [Samoyedic] peoples incorporates works of ethnographers and art historians, as well as northern studies researchers from other disciplines.