Modern Laments in Northwestern Greece, Their Importance in Social and Musical Life and the “Making” of Oral Tradition

Year 2017, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 95 - 140, 30.12.2017

Athena Katsanevakı

https://doi.org/10.33906/musicologist.373186

Abstract

Having as a starting point a typical phrase
-“all our songs once were laments”- repeated to the researcher during
fieldwork, this study aims to explore the multiple ways in which lament
practices become part of other musical practices in community life or change
their functionalities and how they contribute to music making. Though the
meaning of this typical phrase seems to be inexplicable, nonetheless as a
general feeling it is shared by most of the people in the field. Starting from
the Epirot instrumental ‘moiroloi’, extensive field research reveals that many
vocal practices considered by former researchers to be imitations of
instrumental musical practices, are in fact, definite lament vocal
practices-cries, embodied and reformed in different ways in other musical
contexts and serving in this way different social purposes. Furthermore,
multiple functionalities of lament practices in social life reveal their
transformations into songs and the ways they contribute to music making in oral
tradition while at the same time confirming the flexibility of the border
between lament and song established by previous researchers.

Keywords

Lament practices, Death rituals, Moiroloi, Musical speech, Lament-song, Symbolic meaning, Collective memory

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