Technologies of Dismemberment: Orpheus, Fascination, and Bulgarian Etnodzhaz

“Fascination” has long been used to describe the blinding attraction to a desired object/person that inspires acts detrimental to the self. As demonstrated by the story of Orpheus, there is a subtler way of looking at fascination where performance allows the subject to become both dismembered and dismemberer, a dynamic at play in Bulgarian etnodzhaz, whose musicians dismember and suture an imagined folk wellspring that fascinates them and their listeners.