The Lament at a Funeral

The Columbia Library of Folk and Primitive Music
Collected and Edited by Alan Lomax, Volume IV: France
Edited by Cl. Marcel-Dubois and Maguy Andral
Columbia Masterworks, KL-207, made in U.S.A., 1952

Funerary lamentation is a widespread practice among catholic countries/regions. It is said to have originated in Roman times but the origins of the singing at wakes and funerals may well go further back than Christianity does. A lamentation is an improvisation of an unaccompanied female wailing voice. The singer is often a relative of the deceased but also could be a hired professional "wailing" woman. In Ireland she's called a "keener", in Romania a "bocitorre", and in this example recorded in Corsica "voceratrice". Laments can be divided up into two categories: that of the wakes and funerals for adults, and for those of children. The adult ones are mournful while children's laments can have a festive quality to them as it is celebrated when a child "becomes an angel" without having experienced the hardships and impurities of life. The practice has become nearly extinct now but it used to be a tradition in nearly all catholic societies. It could be found throughout the Mediterranean, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other pockets of Catholicism that existed around the globe. I grew up in the Catholic Netherlands, but I don't think lamentation was ever practiced there. It certainly wasn't  when my grandparents died while I was still a little boy in the late 1960s. The Netherlands had a sober kind of Catholicism, it had the introverted ascetic characteristics of it but not not the extroverted spirituality. The folk music in Mediterranean and Latin American countries were influenced by a rich spirituality and a cult of the death. In the sound example below you can hear the 80 year old "voceratrice" Barbe-Marie Monti perform a funeral lament. She is sitting at the foot of the table with the corpse when she starts: Permettetemi un Momuntu. It was recorded in Corsica in 1948. The accompanying text that goes with the lament on the album The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music: France states that in Corsica funeral laments are often the start of a vendetta or family-feud. The improvised laments can contain inflammatory incriminating lyrics, especially if the death of the relative was a violent one.