The film Trance and Dance in Bali was made as a collaboration between American and English anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson during two separate visits to Bali, in 1937 and 1939. This film, released in 1951, is one of only eight ethnographic films selected by the us National Film Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress (Durington and Ruby 2011, p. 205). While the ethnographic status of some of these films has been discussed by some critics, Bateson and Mead’s films have not received much commentary and analysis in anthropological literature (Henley 2013, p. 75). Specifically, very little commentary can be found discussing the musical aspects of Trance and Dance in Bali, even though music plays an important role in this film.