A term associated not only with mourning rites for the dead but also with ritual leave-taking, as in the case of a bride parting from her family or a mother’s farewell to a son recruited on war service (in many societies, perhaps most, the role of lamenter is taken by women; see Women in music, §III). The ritual character of laments embodies notions of transition to another state or world and the possibility of symbolic renewal. Funeral laments, although they mark a universal fact, are not found throughout the world; nor, where they are found, are they analogous in structure or style. On the contrary, they differ just as the rites associated with them vary from one region to another. The predominantly vocal expression of grief in lament rituals is complemented in some cultures by instrumental music and movement that carries symbolic or numinous force; speech, poetry and dance may also play a part. The notion of lament can extend into other traditional genres such as ballad or epic, especially through performance style: ‘lamenting’ can be an interpretative approach to song or chant, a style as much as a genre. The range of symbolic functions can range from genuine mourning or parting to complaints about status in the community, or to contact with the preternatural or spirit world.
Lamenting draws on a wide set of vocal mannerisms from culture to culture, and often parallels such genres as the lullaby, especially when an improvisatory style is used. This improvisation, however, usually follows formulaic, ritualized patterns of vocal gesture, just as the funeral events themselves are highly structured. Vocal laments tend to move within a narrow melodic range of a 5th or less, although some, beginning in a high or middle register, descend as much as an octave or more. Vocal techniques used include sobbing, voiced inhalation, slow vibration of the vocal cords and falsetto. Laments often bring into focus the boundaries of speech and song, composition in performance and gender- or emotion-related issues. Their increasing rarity in the Western world has occasionally resulted in the re-creation of lamenting as a phenomenon of cultural tourism. (For discussion of different types of lament and nomenclature see Apothéose; Déploration; Dirge; Dump; Elegy; Epicedium; Lamento; Nenia; Pibroch; Plainte; Planctus; Threnody; and Thrēnos).
3. South-east Asia and Melanesia.
4. The Middle East and Africa.
JAMES PORTER
Vocal laments are found in many rural communities, even into the 20th century, more often in Catholic or Orthodox than in Protestant countries. Examples have been recorded and studied in Finland, Hungary, Ireland, throughout the Mediterranean and the Balkans, and in Russia, where Stravinsky famously adapted and modified the structure and style of wedding laments for The Wedding (1921–3). For funeral laments a distinction can be made between the improvised, ritual wailing over the body or at the graveside and the more considered poetic tribute made by a local composer. The distinction was known in ancient Greece: the epikedeion over the dead body, and the thrēnos in memory of the dead. The two styles can merge, however, as in Bulgaria, where each utterance is a fragment of a melodic and poetic whole that exists in the singer’s mind in many variants and dominates her thoughts after the utterance is past. The ritual lament accompanying a major rite of passage often involves weeping, sobbing and cries of grief. Sometimes the lamenter praises the departed, calling attention to their beauty or strength of character, or adopts an accusatory tone, bewailing their abandonment of those who live on. In most societies the lamenters are women past childbearing age who are honoured and recompensed for their knowledge and skill, being thought to have special power relating to the passage of the deceased to the otherworld. In many areas these rites were opposed by Christian churches as pagan or at least unsupported by dogma: the church hierarchy in Ireland, for example, passed numerous ordinances in the 17th and 18th centuries against the practice of keening.
Lamenting in Ireland (keening), first referred to in a 7th-century eulogy for St Cummain the Tall, has been described since at least the 17th century, and during the 19th century Edward Bunting and others attempted to notate its melodic shape. The keen, or ‘Irish cry’, was performed over the body in the house, during the procession to the graveyard, and at the burial itself. The usual number of hired keeners was four; one, standing near the head of the bed or table on which the body lay, began the dirge with the first note of the cry, which was followed by a note or part of equal length sung by a mourner at the feet. The long or double part was then sung by mourners at the side, after which family and friends would join in the common chorus at the end of each stanza. Lamentations at wakes and funerals were often in the form of extempore songs; E. O’Curry (On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, London, 1873) cited one such by the deceased’s younger brother, who recounted his genealogy, eulogized his family’s honour and described his childhood and youth. Then, changing the melody, he sang of his skills, his wooing and marriage, and ended by ‘suddenly bursting into a loud, piercing, but exquisitely beautiful wail, which was again taken up by the bystanders’. Elegies were usually composed at a later stage. Keening was recorded as late as the 1950s in the Aran Islands, though out of context and with some wariness because of the opposition of the Catholic church. Ritual lamenting of this kind contrasts markedly with the merrymaking and horseplay that often accompanied wakes in Ireland.
The practice of keening lasted less long in Scotland, where the Reformation opposed it more resolutely from the 17th century on. Traces of keening, however, have lingered in Catholic areas of the Hebrides; the three-part keen included repeating the name of the deceased, a dirge (tuiream) invoking his or her virtues, and the cry (goll), a chorus of non-lexical syllables. The bagpipe became something of a surrogate for the human voice, and stirring ceňl mór has been composed around the notion of lament (cumha), although it is now rare for a piper to play ceňl mór at the graveside. The Highland Clearances of the 19th century sometimes resulted in lament-like reactions from the people: one observer (A. Geikie, Scottish Reminiscences, Glasgow, 1904) was startled by the sound of a communal wail ‘like a funeral coronach’ from the inhabitants of a Skye township as they made their way along the road, departing unwillingly from their ancestral crofts. Lamenting can thus become a collective expression of grief rather than, as in shamanistic enactment, an individual conjoining with the spirit world.
Along the Atlantic littoral and into the Mediterranean, laments have been recorded in Portugal, Spain and Corsica. In Corsica, the singer (voceratrice) improvises a lament (vocero) at the foot of the table where the corpse is laid out. In former times keening over the body of a murdered relative could incite the mourning family to a blood feud. Keening is practised by Albanian groups in central and southern Italy, where some laments resemble Transylvanian types; lamenting by Italians continues in those regions and in the islands, though no longer in the north. The Roma of Europe lament even before death takes place, while those present continue to chat, smoke and drink beside the dying person. When the death is announced there is collective weeping; men whimper and cry bitterly. Among some groups the lamenting continues long into the night, subsequently changing to rhythmic chanting. Even the children wail. Musicians normally play before the lowering of the coffin into the grave. The funeral chants, according to J.-P. Clébert (Les tziganes, Paris, 1961), are improvised and, more important, are never repeated. Their ephemeral nature enhances their value.
In Russia, where the practice of lamenting is widespread, the terms used vary according to region: plach (‘weeping’, ‘crying’) is used for traditional laments in general, especially in central and western villages, whereas prichet' (‘reciting’, ‘counting’), whose text is often a bitter litany of complaint, is characteristic of north Russia. The voiced beginning or ending of a breath cycle may be marked by a loud inhalation or exhalation, termed vopl', one of many intonational devices found in Russian laments. A woman lamenter is called plakal'shchitsa (‘she who cries’), voplenitsa (‘she who wails’), vytnitsa (‘she who howls’) or prichitalka (‘she who recites’). Although a lamenter might be singled out as specially skilled, in many local traditions every woman was expected to be able to lament. The Molokan or Spiritual Christian sect have a special concept of ‘fine singer’ (khoroshii pevets) for members who aid communication with the divine by their singing during communal worship. Their intercessions resemble village lamenting in that sobs, tears and wailing mingle with songs and recitation.
The same women who lament over the dead in Russian villages are often invited to lament for brides. In most local traditions, wedding and funeral laments share the same melodic formulae. The wedding lament is composed of episodes ordered according to local tradition and embodies impersonal responses to a ritualized situation: young persons entering a new stage of life must undergo a symbolic death of their former selves. The wedding lament is performed on the bride’s behalf by a woman who knows the tradition and leads the ceremony. Weddings fall into two parts, the first symbolizing the separation of the bride and groom from their previous lives, the second dealing with the wedding festivities and rituals to ensure good fortune. Laments were essential to the first part but were not permitted to cross into the feast; this division was paralleled in the funeral ritual. The first lament might conclude the matchmaking episode; during the following weeks the bride laments at dawn and sunset each day and while bidding farewell to her family and home. Such laments might be combined with choral song, which does not belong to the category of wedding songs proper. Two musical layers result, an upper one saturated with exclamations and sobs, moving in free time; and a lower one with a rigid syllabification that is strongly accented and songlike. Similarly, the pitch level in the upper layer is subject to fluidity and nuance, while the lower pitch level is stable throughout (Balashov and others, 1985; Mazo, ‘Wedding Laments’, 1994).
Every Russian lament is unique, being created anew even when it follows prescribed patterns. The associations surrounding the performance can affect those present even before the lament begins, as when the lamenter covers her eyes with a shawl. Although laments have been sung for the singer alone, the response of those in attendance is normally regarded as important: Vologda women would always comment on whether everyone wept, and which words the lamenter used. Small details of regional or village custom in lamenting, such as ‘thin voice’ (high register), were felt to be significant and helped define the local style. The singers draw a distinction here between ‘the tune’ and ‘the voice’, and distinguish similarly between ‘singing’ and ‘lamenting’. The former is associated with a fixed and stable set of pitches, while the latter has a gliding pitch contour and intervals (popevki) that vary within the same melodic gesture. Professional lamenters make a clear distinction between stability and instability in the scale degrees for a performance; under selfconscious conditions they are likely to select a more formal interpretation based on fixed pitches. Observers including Istomin and Dyutsh (1894) have also described a practice termed khlyostan'e or khryostan'e in which a lamenter drops to the floor with an exclamation such as ‘O mamon'ka’ or ‘O-oi, okh-kho khoi!’ before rising and continuing to lament.
In Karelia, where the population underwent forced relocation during and after World War II, the lament seems to typify an ancient Finno-Ugric melodic pattern also found in Hungarian laments: a descending unison pentachord or solo melody consisting of a single constantly embellished phrase with alternating cadences on the second and first scale degrees. This pattern, distributed widely among Finno-Ugric peoples, is related to the Te Deum melody (Kiss and Rajeczky, 1966). The first mention of a Balto-Finnic lament tradition is in 1210, when Estonians were said to bury their war dead with laments and drinking. Finnish laments are mentioned in Bishop Agricola’s Psalter of 1551. Johann Gottlieb Georgi included an account of Ingrian lamenting in his description of Russia and its territories (1776), mentioning specifically the custom of bringing food and money to the grave and quoting a fragment of lament text. The earliest surviving texts were recorded by Elias Lönnrot, compiler of the Finnish national epic, Kalevala, in 1836. Lönnrot mentioned the crying and sobbing that accompanied lament performance, and that the texts were only partly comprehensible. Lamenters themselves are not always able to explain the language of the laments, even though Karelian is intelligible to Finnish speakers. The recondite language appears to link the lament, especially at the outset where the pitches are unstable, to both older epic singing and shamanistic practice. Preternatural power resides in such expression. While the pitches, mode, range and phrase structure were also fluid within the performance, the power of the lament clearly had a transformative effect on those present. As in Russia, the Karelian lamenter might cover her eyes with a shawl or apron and even simulate a sorrowful demeanour as a means of inducing the appropriate psychic state. During the lament the other women present would yield to crying or quiet sobbing while the lament itself would rise in strength and in pitch. The overall structure, however, is a descending melodic phrase within the range of a 4th or 5th. Lamenters may be competitive and critical, since lamenting is the main source of prestige in their old age. They value a good lamenter for her ability to ‘find words’, to affect others, and by her effectiveness within the ritual. As a device to communicate with the spirit world, the lament was sacred in nature. In Finland women who learnt to lament in the original traditional context sometimes display their art in a folkloristic arena such as the ‘tourist cabin’ in Nurmes, east Finland. In this way the singers become mediators of fragments of their own culture.
Hungarian lamenting forms a link with Finno-Ugric and Ob-Ugrian musical types and follows a performance pattern found elsewhere in east Europe. Traditional laments in Hungary have been recorded with singular thoroughness since the beginning of the 20th century when Bartók and Kodály began their field research, and the number of laments (and parodies, usually by children) increased vastly around the mid-century. Kodály in particular drew attention to the improvisatory nature of vocal lamenting in Hungary. Often the lamenter was the nearest female relative of the deceased, and those present would comment on the quality and sincerity of the lament. The inspirational aspect results in sections of unequal length ending with pauses, irregular repetition of melodic phrases, and a melodic structure tied to the freely flowing prose and consisting of two descending lines sometimes covering an octave, sometimes a 4th or 5th. The tonal structure is usually diatonic, though occasionally pentatonic turns are heard. Notably, the ‘complaints’ of the Székely people represent a transitional form between the local pentatonic lament and pentatonic strophic melodies, perhaps indicating a development from improvised lament to song types with stanzas having fixed numbers of syllables to a line. In some counties rhymed texts are sung to a pre-existing tune, the individual expression of grief giving way to a typical standard text; this too can be considered a lament since it is sung by the nearest female relative. During the absence of menfolk at war, women have lamented while engaged in such tasks as spinning (Kodály, 1937; Kiss and Rajeczky, 1966).
A similar pattern of lamenting in Romania was described by Brăiloiu (1973). The ceremony involved pieces to be sung by the coffin in the house, on the road to the graveyard and at the graveside. Brăiloiu differentiated these laments from ancient ritual songs sung at the same time, not by relatives, but by chosen women of standing in the community. In the 1990s the style of village lamenting was adapted to comment on the political and social upheavals since 1989. One singer transformed a lament for the dead in her village as a model, stating that her people mourn the dead in various ways, both in a doina-like manner and with words, as if trying to restore them to life. Another remarked that humankind developed the lament as the only means of communication with the dead. In Jewish tradition a woman’s long, improvised song provided a means of easing her emotional burden for years afterwards by singing at the graveside.
Albanian women who lament, though needed by the community to communicate with the otherworld, are marked out by that function as powerful and hence to be avoided. The idea of lamenting as a bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead is strong in Greece. In Crete, the ‘invitation to mourning’ is an important element of lamenting; group catharsis achieved through lamenting reinforces the bond between women for whom suffering is a communicative code. Although women attend wakes primarily to honour individuals, they may also bewail their own misfortunes. Epirot women in north-west Greece lament their shared problems: widowhood, caring for extended or dispersed families, the general sense of loss. The distinction between singing (tragoudia) and lamenting (moirologia), and the metamorphosis of the former to the latter, as well as the prevalence of the lament in declining village traditions, has resulted in some older women expressing reluctance to sing and preferring to lament.
Russian wedding laments are linked to other Slavonic regions and to the ritual songs and laments of the Kazakh in Central Asia and Georgians in the Caucasus, in particular through the rhythmic formula that breaks the widespread octosyllabic line into 5 + 3 syllables (ex.1). Traces of this rhythm, which may not be Slavonic in origin, have been found in Hungarian wedding songs and among Romanians in Bihor, as well as in Bashkir, Mishar Tatar and Mordvinian wedding laments. In Kazakhstan this rhythmic structure is found only in female ritual songs, namely wedding or funeral laments (zhoktau), but a similar rhythm is used in Kazakh and Kyrgyz epic song, and it is possible that the Kazakh predilection for epic singing has led to the rhythmic model’s influencing the structure of other genres, including Slavonic ritual songs. The model also appears in Georgian laments, and it has been suggested that Georgians adapted it from the Siberian-derived Kipchak who settled in Georgia in the early 12th century; evidence of it appears throughout eastern Europe, always in places visited by the Kipchak. But its origin may, rather, lie in contact between the Kipchak and the Bolgars, who had migrated earlier to the Caucasus and whose musical and speech patterns are similar (Zemtsovsky, 1990).
Further east, instruments play an important symbolic role in funeral music. In China and North Vietnam, and among the Hmong, who live in the border regions of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, the mouth organ and drum feature prominently in the rituals enacted before the funeral. During the ceremony itself a lamenter standing at one side of the body sings out with a loud, descending melody while the spouse of the deceased sobs at the other side. On the death of a Buddhist believer in Kyoto, Japan, five or six old women gather in the home where the funeral is to be held and sing a Buddhist chant (goeika) to the accompaniment of a small bell (chin chin). Funeral processions among Soto Buddhists include a mouth organ (sho), drum, flute and a ritual chant (syomyo). One such chant, termed wasan, is sung in Japan by the Shingon, one of the oldest sects, as they make their customary pilgrimage to 88 temples, often in commemoration of the death of family members.
In Korea, songs known as sangyo-soro are sung by pallbearers during funeral processions. In the cities such pallbearers, though professionals, are a minority group with low social status. In rural societies the villagers arrange the ceremony and carry the bier. A competent male singer leads with a solo which is answered by the others singing a refrain. When the procession begins, the handbell-ringer (yoryong chabi) sings a prologue before the bier while shaking the bell (yoryong). The song text incorporates Confucian, Buddhist and shamanic elements. Sangyo-sori fall into four parts: a slow prologue sung at departure to express the soul’s feelings of grief at separation from its village; a processional song on the way to the grave; a song in accelerated tempo when approaching the burial site; and a song for trampling the grave soil after burial. The singing thus contains elements of work songs. The pitch of these songs is variable, and microtonal shadings are often present. On the island of Chindo, south-west of the mainland, burial is preceded by tashiraegi, a performance genre honouring the dead in which women go ahead of the coffin wailing or weeping while men sing dirges.
In Bali, the spirit is believed to remain earthbound until cremation, whereupon it may enter into the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. Soon after death, songs termed kakawin, similar to laments but used also in other contexts, are performed. Their texts urge the deceased to leave the house, dispelling fear by describing the wonders of the upper world and the high level of reincarnation the spirit deserves.
In northern New Guinea, elaborate funeral ceremonies lasting 12 hours or more take place in Iatmul villages of the middle Sepik river. The feast for the death of a clan leader is accompanied by paired flutes representing a specific spirit. Their playing is quite independent of the chants sung to the accompaniment of an hourglass drum, split bamboo beater and, occasionally, men’s chorus. Before the ceremony the flute players carry their instruments (concealed from women and children) to a special part of the deceased person’s house, inside which a screen has been built. The singer begins a chant, the cue for the flutes to enter; symbolically, their playing invites the participation of ancestors. The assembled men of the clan utter a harsh ‘Ah’ to express wonder and gratification that the ancestors have answered. The Eipo of western New Guinea cultivate laments for the recently dead and the dying. These are performed almost exclusively by women, and consist of spontaneous, emotional singing, sometimes on two pitches a tone apart, interspersed with weeping or crying. The lament begins emphatically, in a loud voice, and ends after several minutes in an introverted manner, with a low voice. There is no Eipo word for this kind of singing, but lamenting in general is termed layelayana.
The Kaluli in the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea have five named patterns of weeping to express grief at loss, abandonment or separation. Three are associated with men; of the two performed by women, sa-yalab is the more refined and aesthetic. It is elaborated through improvised texts and a highly patterned but stable melodic contour based on four descending notes, the first two a major 2nd apart, the next a minor 3rd below and the last a major 2nd below (e.g. D–C–A–G). This pattern is said to derive from the call of the fruit dove; one Kaluli myth connects sadness, birds and human expressive sound. Sa-yalab involves continuous sobbing, streaming of tears and nasal discharge. Voiced inhalation is characteristic, particularly at the beginnings and ends of phrases, giving the effect of short, startled bursts of vocalization. Slower glottal chord vibration results in a somewhat ‘raspy’ sound.
Although solo sa-yalab is fundamentally monophonic it is less often performed by an individual voice than by two to four women simultaneously, with some interaction as one lamenter responds to or is moved by another. Performance of sa-yalab involves, according to Feld (1990), a process called dulugu ganalan (‘lift-up over-sounding’), a spatial-acoustic metaphor that suggests an image of continuous layers of sound, overlapping without internal breaks. Through their wailing the women give voice to personal memories and convey their emotional relationship with one another, the deceased, and their listeners. Themes of food, family, relationship and place are embodied in the texts, which also include place names symbolic of the shared paths in life. A sa-yalab performance may be followed after a short interval by another (with the same or different participants) that allows the effect of the first performance to be kept in temporal and spatial focus.
Although sa-yalab is essentially improvisatory, a limited amount of ‘composition’ may take place before performance in that the women are clearly aware of poetic images and place-name sequences that emerge in the texts. Memorizing does not occur with obvious regularity as a principle, although lines and images heard in sa-yalab may be ‘reinvented’ on a different occasion. There is no sense of a single ‘authentic’ version of a lament. Each performance is unique, the art of sa-yalab wailing lying in the spontaneous creation of song. Ritual wailing for the Kaluli displays the aesthetics of emotionalism, and performances are valued as expressions of personal and social identity. But the special role of women as performers of sa-yalab leads to a striking division between the sexes. Kaluli men contrast sa-yalab with their own forms of wailing, which are impulsive or wild and require the wailer to be restrained in order to regain composure, whereas women see sa-yalab as a way of articulating collective feelings.
Lamenting has been known in the Middle East since ancient times. The most spectacular funeral ceremony in the modern world takes place among the Druzes of Lebanon (see Lebanon, §2 (iii)), an Arabic-speaking Islamic sect for whom attending a funeral is a moral obligation. The funeral performance as a whole, and dirges in particular, are referred to as nadb (‘funeral songs’), a wide repertory including improvised war songs for deceased young males and wedding songs for females. Other song types used in funerals include tanāwīh (wailing songs), firaqiyyāt and scābā (departure songs), and rithā’ (eulogistic poems). Nadb can be performed by men or women, but the other genres (apart from rithy’, normally sung by male funeral singers specializing in Zajal poetry) are performed solely by women, who gather round the body of the deceased in a separate room. Female lamenters are instructed not to invoke excessive grief at funerals, not to beat themselves nor dance and sing before a male audience; all singers must avoid song texts that criticize the acceptance of death as divine justice. The melodic compass of laments is generally limited to a 4th or 5th, although rithā’ songs may reach an octave or more. These scalic patterns are often related to the system of maqāmāt.
In sub-Saharan Africa a woman who leads the lament is honoured. In Zambia, for example, every woman is expected to know how to sing the lament in preparation for singing for her own relatives when they die. Older women are closer to ancestors by virtue of their age; men, on the other hand, do not sing the lament because they have never given birth. The lament gives birth to a spirit, because without death there would be no ancestors; women therefore sing the dirge to bring life. Music is the purest form of communication: through it the spirit can be called back to work with its people, or a human, purged by death, can be elevated to spirit form. Older women, then, sing the lament because they are more knowledgeable, and music is their appropriate form of communication.
Among the Ga people of south-eastern Ghana, the music and dance of transitional funeral rites are collectively termed adowa, performed at the wake the night before burial and on the day of the burial before and during the funeral procession. Adowa is the only corpus of songs and a dance used for a single rite of passage by all Ga people; the songs are performed exclusively by women. Public mourning is also conducted by women, in keeping with the belief, shared with the Asante, that weeping does not become men (who are, nevertheless, expected to express their sorrow at a death). The dirges sung can refer to such qualities as patience, family cohesion or sharing (Hampton, 1982). The elders are recognized as the principal mourners apart from the bereaved family.
The most important musical expression in funerals of the Akpafu, who also inhabit south-eastern Ghana, is the dirge sung by adult women. The Akpafu, a largely agrarian people whose culture is strongly influenced by the dominant neighbouring Ewe, have begun to include Ewe funeral dirges, worksongs and folktale interludes in their repertory. They perceive two broad categories of music for funeral rites: abi (‘drums’) and sino (‘dirges’). Sino is semantically and functionally quite distinct from kuka (‘song’), and combines singing, speaking and a manner midway between the two. Both Christian and more traditional non-Christian funeral rites are held, the former being a 20th-century development. In both types, dirges that use Western functional harmony, especially at cadence points, are heard alongside traditional dirges. In the Christian wake, hymns, Bible readings and testimonies by friends and relatives are interspersed with neo-traditional choral and brass band music and punctuated by sobs, wails, cries and shouts as expressions of sorrow. Dirges are central to the traditional wake, and may number anything from 20 to 40 over its span. The cosmology expressed in them embodies a belief that life before and after death is regulated by spirits who remain active in both stages. The singer may address questions to the deceased about the passage from this world to the next, as well as detailing his or her personal attributes.
Structurally, dirges are cast in a call–response form, and stock phrases by the lead singer are answered by a chorus restating the main musical ideas and amplifying them with wails, cries and shouts as well as verbal expressions suggested by the particular dirge. Important gaps or silences occur between the phrases of the response. The Akpafu dirge, like that of the Akan, may be characterized in performance as ‘essentially a linguistic activity’ (Nketia, 1955, p.113); some dirges are influenced structurally by the sound of speech patterns, while others show affinity with semantic aspects. In some a melodic phrase remains constant while elements of the text change. Each dirge can thus be considered a unique structure that highlights significant features. Melodic contour, for example, follows the intonational contour of speech quite closely. A number of dirges employ the archetypal gradual descent noted by writers on African melody, reaching the lowest pitch at or near the end. Akpafu dirge melodies can stray into other generic territory and become, for example, dance-songs, confirming that a multiplicity of subgenres are implicit in them (Agawu, 1988).
In the Caribbean, funeral wakes on Jamaica and Martinique customarily occupied nine days. The East Indian influence in Trinidad has resulted in an annual ritual celebrating the martyrdom of the grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad; traditionally, women followed the procession of ornate temple-tombs singing laments. On Carriacou, between Grenada and St Vincent, the African-derived creole repertory includes hallecord songs with lamenting texts. Wakes on Guadeloupe include music performed both within and outside the house of the deceased: outdoors, throat sounds, clapping and stamping accompany the music. A male singer leads, with the exchange amounting to a competition in which singers challenge one another, begging the audience for support. Indoors, invited women singers sing canticles (kantikamo) over the coffin throughout the night, again in a responsorial fashion. Songs performed outdoors support the mourners, while those sung indoors invoke the spirit world.
Wakes on St Lucia involve singing, dancing and instrumental performance. On the first and eighth night following the death, funeral wakes are held at the house of the deceased. Hymns and sankeys (gospel hymns), as prayers to God to accept the souls of the dead into heaven, have been sung at St Lucia wakes since around 1970. An unaccompanied vocal genre, kont, includes a variety of topics chiefly concerning death but also as a means of entertainment: a good kont singer must be a convincing actor, with a clear voice and keen wit. Normally, the kont consists of two sections that involve contrast in melodic material and in the pace of alternation by solo and chorus. The song may be extended or reduced depending on its reception. To intensify expression kont singers use sustained notes, a wider ambitus and melodic leaps of up to a 12th. Some make a point of heavy breathing at the end of certain phrases to indicate their emotional involvement.
African-related practices exist in Colombia: the wake for a dead child includes celebratory music as part of the belief that the child’s soul goes directly to heaven. The Quichua of Ecuador employ harp music during the child’s funeral; eventually, addressing her child, the mother’s lament revolves around a descending major 2nd followed by a descending major 3rd (G–F–D). In the Atlantic region the wake (velorio) is usually held in the parents’ home, music being provided by a specialized group of singers in call and response mode, while others sing and dance in a circle around the corpse. In the Pacific area hymns for the dead (chigualos) are sung by a chorus of women accompanied by male kin playing drums. The wake for an adult is more solemn; no drumming occurs, and all sing dirges. For the Atlantic-coast Sumu people in Nicaragua the funeral rite is the most important communal ceremony. On the first night, the shaman sings incantations to invoke the spirit of the deceased. Dancing with instrumental accompaniment continues the ritual.
The Miskitu, an Amerindian people who inhabit parts of Nicaragua, Honduras and north-eastern Costa Rica, mourn their departed in laments (inanka) sung by women which refer to the life of the deceased and idealize the afterlife. The singers weep while seated around the body of the deceased and sing laments to accompany the burial. The melodies are descending in contour, with the lowest note repeated at phrase ends. A wake for a dead child can include a greater variety of music, sometimes accompanied by a musical bow or machete, and a tiun (‘song’, ‘tune’) referring to death may be sung. Three days after the death, a shaman begins an extended wake in which laments are the principal form; the shaman dances and sings to the soul, manifested as a firefly trapped in his hands. This dance is accompanied by one or more rustic plucked lutes known as kitar (from guitar), food-grater rasps, rattles without handles, and a horse’s jawbone. At the same time, younger men perform their songs to the same instruments. Portable radios and record players add to the scene in contemporary rituals. As the sky lightens, the performers move to the grave, where the shaman buries the firefly with the body.
Among northern Amerindian cultures laments take another form. L.B. Palladino observed that one of the funeral dirges sung by Flathead Indians while carrying the dead to the place of burial was an old war song, ‘a stirring wail of lamentation they used to sing over their braves fallen in battle’ (Indian and White in the Northwest, Baltimore, 1894, 2/1922). The arrival of missionaries marked the first time Salish learnt ‘a prayer song for death’. One writer in the 1880s described a dirge to accompany a warrior funeral, but this was an arrangement by an early missionary, later adapted as a Christian hymn. H.H. Turney-High (The Flathead Indians of Montana, Menasha, Wisconsin, 1937) gave an account of a death feast: after the meal the men retired to the interior of the lodge and began the death chant, which had few words and was ‘a long, protracted wail with no or few intermissions’.
C. Brăiloiu: Problčmes d’ethnomusicologie, ed. G. Rouget (Geneva, 1973; Eng. trans., 1984)
N. Sachs: ‘The Facts of Death: an Anthropologist Views Musical Symbolism’, The World of Music, xxi/3 (1979), 36–49
L. Honko: ‘The Lament: Problems of Genre, Structure and Reproduction’, Genre, Structure and Reproduction in Oral Literature, ed. L. Honko and V. Voigt (Budapest, 1980–81), 21–40
I.-I. Badwe Ajuwon: ‘Lament for the Dead as a Universal Folk Tradition’, Fabula, xxii (1981), 272–80
L.S. Károly: ‘Die Geleiterin der Seele: über die Dramaturgie der Totenklage und die Phänomenologie der Gestik’, Acta ethnographica, xxxvi (1990), 227–49
N. Kaufman: ‘Laments from Four Continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, and America)’, International Folklore Review, vii (1990), 22–9
Y. Tokumaru and others: ‘Death: its Symbolism in Music’, Tradition and its Future in Music: Osaka 1990, 323–34
I. Zemtsovsky: ‘Music and Ethnic History: an Attempt to Substantiate a Eurasian Hypothesis’, YTM, xxii (1990), 20–28
O.Kh. Agreneva-Slavyanskaya: Opisanie russkoi krest'yanskoi svad'by s textom i pesnyami [Description of a Russian peasant wedding in words and song] (Moscow, 1887–9)
F. Istomin and G. Dyutsh: Pesni russkogo naroda sobrannye v Arkhangel'skoi i Olonetskoi guberniyakh v 1886 gody [Russian songs of worship from Arkhangel'sk and Olonetsk in 1886] (St Petersburg, 1894)
C. Brăiloiu: Despre bocetul de la Drăguş/Note sur la plainte funčbre du village de Drăguş (Bucharest, 1932)
B. Szabolcsi: ‘Osztják hősdalok – magyar siratók melódiái (néhány ázsiai adalék a magyar népzene keleti kapcsolataihoz)’ [Ostiak epic songs, Hungarian lament melodies: data on the eastern relations of Hungarian folk music], Ethnographia, xliv (1933), 71–5
M. Haavio: Über die finnisch-karelischen Klagelieder (Helsinki, 1934)
E. Mahler: Die russische Totenklage (Leipzig, 1935/R)
L. Colacicchi: ‘Il “pianto delle zitelle”’, Lares, vii (1936), 98
B. Szabolcsi: ‘Osztják és vogul dallamok (újabb adalékok a magyar népi siratódallam problémájához)’ [Ostiak and Vogul melodies: additional data on the problem of Hungarian folk laments], Ethnographia, xlviii (1937), 340–45
N. Andreyev and G. Vinogradov: Russkiye plachi (prichitaniya) [Russian plach (laments)] (Leningrad, 1937)
Z. Kodály: A magyar népzene [Hungarian folk music] (Budapest, 1937, enlarged 6/1973; Eng. trans., 1960, enlarged 3/1982)
C. Brǎiloiu: ‘Bocete din Oaş’ [Mourning-chants in Oaş], Grai si suflet, vii (Bucharest, 1938), 1–90
E. Reiner: Die rituelle Totenklage der Griechen (Stuttgart, 1938)
R. Bromwich: ‘The Keen for Art O’Leary: its Background and its Place in the Tradition of Gaelic Keening’, Eigse, v (1946–7), 236–52
L. Vargyas: ‘Die ugrische Schicht in der ungarischen Volksmusik’, Acta ethnographica, i (1950), 161–92
M. Alvar: Endechas judeo-espańoles (Granada, 1953, 2/1969)
B. Rajeczky: ‘Typen ungarischer Klagelieder’, Deutsches Jb für Volkskunde, iii (1957), 31–45
E. de Martino: Morte e pianto rituale nel mondo antico (Turin, 1958, 2/1975)
K.V. Chistov: Prichitaniya [Laments] (Leningrad, 1960)
W. Laade: Die Struktur der korsischen Lamento-Melodik (Strasbourg, 1962, repr. 1974)
B. Sárosi: ‘Sirató és keserves’ [Lament and complaint], Ethnographia, lxxiv (1963), 117–22
V. Hadžimanov: ‘Les mélodies funčbres du séisme de Skopié’, IFMC Conference: Budapest 1964 [SMH, vii (1965)], 71–7
L. Kiss and B. Rajezcky, eds.: Siratók [Laments], Corpus musicae popularis hungaricae, v (Budapest, 1966)
B. Rajeczky: ‘Ost und West in den ungarischen Klageliedern’, Festschrift für Walter Wiora, ed. L. Finscher and C.-H. Mahling (Kassel, 1967), 628–32
L. Vargyas: ‘Totenklage und Vorgeschichte der Ungarn’, ibid., 623–7
R. Katsarova: ‘Oplakvane na pokoynitsi’ [Laments for the dead], IIM, xiii (1969), 177–202
T. Alibakiyeva: ‘Pohoronnďye prichitaniya i pominal'nďye pesni uigurov’ [Uigur burial lamentations and songs in memory of the dead], Problemy muzykal'nogo fol'klora narodov SSSR, ed. I.I. Zemtsovsky (Moscow, 1973), 101–7
M. Alexiou: The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1974)
Z. Skvortsova: ‘O prichitaniiakh v svadebnom obriade’ [The lament in wedding ritual], Fol'klor i etnografiya, ed. B.N. Putilov (Leningrad, 1974), 244–51
A.S. Stepanova and T.A. Koski: Karel'skiye prichitaniya [Karelian laments] (Petrozavodsk, 1976)
B. Rajeczky: ‘Arbeiten über die ungarische Volksmusik des Mittelalters: die Totenklage’, Historische Volksmusikforschung: Seggau 1977, 137–46
P. Hajdu: ‘The Nenets Shaman Song and its Text’, Shamanism in Siberia, ed. V. Diószegi and M. Hoppál (Budapest, 1978), 355–72
M. Mazo: ‘Nikol'skiye prichitaniya i ikh svyazi s drugimi ganrami mestnoi pesennosti’ [The Nikolsky laments and their links with other genres of local song traditions], Muzďkal'naya fol'kloristika, ii, ed. A. Banin (Moscow, 1978), 213–35
B. Ó Madagáin, ed.: Gnéithe den chaointeoireacht (Dublin, 1978)
Y. Sherfedinov: Zvuchit Kaytarma [The Kaytarma sounds] (Tashkent, 1978)
A. Caraveli-Chaves: ‘Bridge between Worlds: the Greek Women’s Lament as Communicative Event’, Journal of American Folklore, xciii (1980), 129–57
B.B. Efimenkova: Severnorusskaya prichet' mezhdurech'e Sukhony i Yuga i verkhov'ia Kokshengi (Vologodskaya oblast') [The north Russian lament from the area between the Sukhona and Yug rivers and the upper Kokshen'ga river, in the Vologda region] (Moscow, 1980)
A. Partridge: ‘Wild Men and Wailing Women’, Eigse, xviii/1 (1980), 25–37
M. Herzfeld: ‘Performative Categories and Symbols of Passage in Rural Greece’, Journal of American Folklore, xciv (1981), 44–57
A.M. Hustad: ‘The North Russian Lament in the Light of the Religious Songs of the Old Believers’, Scando-Slavica, xxvii (1981), 47–67
B. Kerewsky-Halpern: ‘Text and Context in Serbian Ritual Lament’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, xv/1 (1981), 52–60
B. Ó Madagáin: ‘Irish Vocal Music of Lament and Syllabic Verse’, The Celtic Consciousness: Toronto 1978, ed. R. O’Driscoll (Toronto and Dublin, 1981), 311–32
L.M. Danforth: The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (Princeton, NJ, 1982)
A. Nenola-Kallio: Studies in Ingrian Laments (Helsinki, 1982)
A. Partridge: Caoineadh na dTrí Muire [The lament of the Three Marys] (Dublin, 1983)
E. Razumovskaya: ‘“Plach 's kukushkoi”: traditsionnyi vopl russko-belorusskogo pogranich'ya’, Slavyanskiy fol'klor, ed. N. Tolstoy and others (Moscow, 1984)
D.M. Balashov, Yu.I. Marchenko and N.I. Kalmykova: Russkaya svad'ba [Russian weddings] (Moscow, 1985) [incl. 4 sound discs]
U. Konkka: Ikuinen ikävä [Eternal longing] (Helsinki, 1985)
Tod und Jenseits im europäischen Volkslied Kolympari 1986 [incl. D. Burkhart: ‘Sterben, Tod und Jenseits in russischen Totenklagen’, 81–93; D. Loucatos: ‘Emprunts aux ballades ordinaires pendant les lamentations sur les morts en Grčce’, 35–48; M. Meeraklis: ‘Hochszeitslamentationen in Griechenland’, 65–80]
A. Caraveli: ‘The Bitter Wounding: the Greek Lament as Social Protest in Rural Greece’, Gender and Power in Rural Greece ed. J. Dubisch (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 169–94
I. Rüütel: Muzďka v obriadakh i trudovoy deyatel'nosti finno-ugrov (Tallinn, 1986)
S. Auerbach: ‘From Singing to Lamenting: Women’s Musical Role in a Greek Village’, Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. E. Koskoff (New York, 1987), 25–44
I. Zemtsovsky: ‘Etnomuzďkovedcheskiy vzglyad na Balto-Slavyanskyu pokhoronnyu prichet' v indoevropejskom kontekste’ [An ethnomusicological view of the Balto-Slavonic dirge in an Indo-European context], Balto-Slavyanskiye issledovaniya 1985 (Moscow, 1987), 60–70
N. Kaufman and D. Kaufman: Pogrebalni i drugi oplakivanija v Bulgarija [Funeral and other lamentations in Bulgaria] (Sofia, 1988)
T. Varfolomeyeva: Severobelorusskaya svad'ba: obryad, peseno-melodicheskiye tipy [North Belarusian wedding: ritual, song melody types] (Minsk, 1988)
G. Oberhänsli-Widmer: La complainte funčbre du Haut Moyen Age français et occitan (Berne, 1989)
M. Mazo: ‘Stravinsky’s Les Noces and Russian Village Wedding Ritual’, JAMS, xliii (1990), 99–142
E.D. Tolbert: ‘Women Cry with Words: Symbolization of Affect in the Karelian Lament’, YTM, xxii (1990), 80–105
C.N. Seremetakis: The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani (Chicago, 1991)
G. Flam: Singing for Survival: Songs of the Łódz Ghetto, 1940–45 (Urbana, IL, 1992)
G. Holst-Warhaft: Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature (London, 1992)
U.S. Konkka: Poeziia pechali: karel'skie obriadovye plachi (Petrozavodsk, 1992)
A. Nowicka-Jezova: Sarmaci i śmierć: o staropolskiej poezji żałobnej [Sarmatians and death: on old Polish funeral poetry] (Warsaw, 1992)
R. Kara: Erzincan’ in goz yaslari: deprem agit ve destanlari (Ankara, 1993)
V.P. Kuznetsova: Prichitaniya v severo-russkom svadebnom obriade [Laments in north Russian wedding ritual] (Petrozavodsk, 1993)
L.G. Nevskaya: Balto-slavianskoye prichitaniye: rekonstruktsiya semanticheskoy struktury [Balto-Slavonic laments: a reconstruction of their semantic structure] (Moscow, 1993)
B. Ó Madagáin: ‘Song for Emotional Release in the Gaelic Tradition’, Irish Musical Studies, ii, ed. G. Gillen and H. White (Blackrock, 1993), 254–75
I. Kriza: ‘The Rural Form of Death Dirges in Hungary’, Jb für Volksliedforschung, xxxix (1994), 110–16
M. Mazo: ‘Lament Made Visible: a Study of Paramusical Elements in Russian Lament’, Themes and Variations: Writings on Music in Honor of Rulan Chao Pian, ed. B. Yung and J.S.C. Lam (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 164–211
M. Mazo: ‘Wedding Laments in North-Russian Villages’, Music-Cultures in Contact: Convergences and Collisions, ed. M. Kartomi and S. Blum (Basle, 1994), 21–39
P. Lysaght: ‘Caoineadh na marbh: die Totenklage in Irland’, Rheinisch-westfälische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, xl (1995), 163–213
S. Popa: ‘The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 and its Reflection in Musical Folklore’, Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. M. Slobin (Durham, NC, 1996), 156–75
E.V. Barsov, ed.: Prichitaniia severnogo kraia [Laments of the northern region], i–ii (St Petersburg, 1997)
Z. Tajikova: ‘Songs of the Tajik Burial Ritual (on the Material of the Zeravshan Expeditions)’, Problemď muzďkal'nogo fol'klora narodov SSSR, ed. I.I. Zemtsovsky (Moscow, 1973), 95–100
I. Kas'ianova and M. Chuvashev: disc notes, Mordovskiye (Erzianskiye) prichitaniya [Mordvinian (Erzian) laments], ed. E. Alekseyev (1974)
Kwon O-Song: ‘Hyangt’o sonyul ui kolgyok’, Yesul nonmunjip, xvi (1977), 116–30; repr., Eng. trans., as ‘Melodic Structure of Korean Funeral Procession Songs’, YTM, xv (1983), 59–69
R.B. Qureshi: ‘Islamic Music in an Indian Environment: the Shi’a Majlis’, EthM, xxv (1981), 41–71
M. Dugantsy: Erza-mordwinische rituelle Klagegesänge (Uppsala, 1991)
A. Simon: ‘Types and Functions of Music in the Eastern Highlands of West-Irian (New Guinea)’, EthM, xxii (1978), 441–55
S. Feld: Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (Philadelphia, 1982, 2/1990)
S. Feld: ‘Wept Thoughts: the Voicing of Kaluli Memories’, Oral Tradition, v (1990), 241–66
J.H. Nketia: Funeral Dirges of the Akan People (Exeter, NH, 1955)
A.J. Racy: Funeral Songs of the Druzes of Lebanon (thesis, U. of Illinois, 1971)
B. Ajuwon: Funeral Dirges of Yoruba Hunters (New York, 1982)
B.L. Hampton: ‘Music and Ritual Symbolism in the Ga Funeral’, YTM, xiv (1982), 75–105
A.J. Racy: ‘Lebanese Laments: Grief, Music, and Cultural Values’, World of Music, xxviii/2 (1986), 27–40
El-Aswad and el-Sayed: ‘Death Rituals in Rural Egyptian Society: a Symbolic Study’, Urban Anthropology, xvi (1987), 205–41
V.K. Agawu: ‘Music in the Funeral Traditions of the Akpafu’, EthM xxxii (1988), 75–105
G.A. Anderson: A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance: the Expression of Grief and Joy in Israelite Religion (University Park, PA, 1991)
P.W. Ferris: The Genre of Communal Lament in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Atlanta, GA, 1992)
GEWM, ix (‘French Guiana’, J.-M. Beaudet; ‘Miskitu’, T.M. Scruggs)
S. Girard: Funeral Music and Customs in Venezuela (Tempe, AZ, 1980)
J.M. Schechter: ‘Corone y baile: Music in the Child’s Wake of Ecuador and Hispanic South America, Past and Present’, LAMR, iv (1983), 1–80
J. Guilbault: ‘Fitness and Flexibility: Funeral Wakes in St. Lucia, West Indies’, EthM, xxxi (1987), 273–99
G. Urban: ‘Ritual Wailing in Amerindian Brazil’, American Anthropologist, xc (1988), 385–400
R. Keeling: Cry for Luck: Sacred Song and Speech among the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok Indians of Northern California (Berkeley, 1992)