At the crossroads of religious anthropology and ethnomusicology, this lecture is concerned with the phenomenon of trance rituals in the Central Indian Himalayas. It deals with the gharau-ka ja-gar, a domestic spirit possession ceremony led by bards of the untouchable caste in Kumaon in the Indian state of Uttaranchal. Accompanied by audiovisual media, this presentation will focus on the performative aspects of the ritual and its religious context. In contrast to other forms of possession in the Himalayas, where processes of depersonalization of the medium appear often to be spontaneous, music and dance in the ja-gar ceremony, rather than being mere ornaments, appear as constitutive elements of the rite itself. Here, the musical discourse is involved both in the activation and resolution of the chaos of existence. Creators and regulators of a subjective time, musicians and dancers transport their audiences into mythical time. In a context in which music is inseparable from its symbolic representations, this exploration will highlight how its technical elements interact, directly or indirectly, with the activity of mediums, living icons of the ritual.