Why lament? - communal and sacral functions of "Lament in Voice"

In this post I want to talk about some functions of "Lament in Voice". 

Even though the word "function" may sound functional, it can be interesting to identify the meanings of a practice in its given cultural context. That allows not only a deeper understanding of the cultural frame, but can also deliver insights to the possible reasons of why the practice got/is getting extinct. 

To find the functions of the practice I ask: Why did they lament? What role did the lamenting practices play in the community? What and who did it serve?

Old Georgian anthropological books and the conversations I had with elder people in the regions help me to answer these questions. 

What they both seem to agree on, is that the lamentation practices were important cultural components to tend for the dead properly. Remembering the dead adequately was regarded as a means to ensure the well-being of the dead's soul. A death ritual with all it's crucial elements, including "Lament in Voice", would help the deceased's soul to transition in to the other-worlds with more ease.   

Now how did they ensure to help with that?

If a "Lamentor in Voice" was good enough, they would create through their voice and through poetical usage of words an atmosphere, that would enable emotional flow. In this way friends and family of the passed one were able to expose their hearts to the reality of their loss. It gave space for emotions to be moved. Crying, speaking out hurt, holding each other in the pain would help not only with staying emotionally intact, but also with avoiding possible physical and mental frictions caused by the emotional trauma.  

We go one step further now and say, that in this way the well being of the dead's soul was addressed too. It was believed, that the right attention put on the dead's soul was not only good for personal emotional well-being, but helped also the dead to navigate their way better in the other realms. The channels of flowing emotions, that the "Lamentor in Voice" created, helped the dead to orient themselves through unknown territory. 

A small detour

In the Georgian mountain region Khevsureti, there was a kind of profession called "Mesultane/ მესულთანე", which could be translated as "soul's attendee". The "Mesultane" was chosen by the deceased person's soul to be a medium through which the soul could express themselves. They would tell them all that was weighing on their hearts, unresolved things, or maybe messages of warnings for their people and the village. The "Mesultane" was highly regarded from both the dead and the living. She (it would be normally a female gendered person) would perform her work of mediumship also outside of death rituals. But often the "Mesultane" was also a "Lamentor in Voice" and would form her laments through the tongue of the dead's soul. 

In one anthropological text of 1940* a phenomenon called "Adzrakheba/ აძრახება" is described, that seemed to be common in death rites. In that a woman would be chosen from the dead's soul. That woman would start shivering, trembling, gnashing her teeth, being nervous and unrestful up until the point in which she'd start to let the soul speak through her. In this way she'd hold a "Lament in Voice" whilst being the tongue for the dead's soul. 

The dead ones were also the ones to ask when something went wrong in the communal life and the village. They themselves initiated contacting the living too, through the "Mesultane" and through other means, when they had warnings or other messages they wanted to share.  

Back from the detour

The communal life of the living was tightly connected to the dead. The dead were an integral part of the living community in old Khevsureti. They were tended and considered in the every day lives: rituals, festivities and special holidays were made for them.* In this frame of worldview the communal well-being of the living and the well-being of the dead were linked to each other.

The therapeutic role of "Lament in Voice" seems to me to be a crucial function of that practice. A  therapeutic function, that aimed for the living and the dead. Let me explain this point further.

An individual's tragedy can cause not only individual, but also communal fracture. The communities where small enough, especially in the mountain regions, to make their high dependence on each others lives obvious. Every individual had their role in the community. Their individual disorder would impact also the community's well-being directly. "Lament in Voice" and generally lamenting practices, obviated emotional stuckness. 

 

If trauma doesn't get resolved, it gets stuck and creates fracture. Death rites created a container for the grief, allowing it to be processed. In this way the "Lament in Voice" can be regarded as a therapeutic process that was in the interest for the individual and the communal well-being. 

Now, if the well-being of the dead was dependent on the well-being of the community and vice versa, the therapeutic function transmits also to the dead.

Why are the lamenting practices dying out today?

If the therapeutic function of "Lament in Voice" interlinks with the tight connection between the lives of the dead and the living, it does so by being embedded in a cultural frame, that regards death as a crucial part of life. 

A practice dies out, when it has no ground anymore with that it can share it's values and beliefs. Cultural practices exist in congruence with local knowledge. Knowledge gives the practices a framework, through that it can be enacted. The knowledge that was connected to these practices is not in common circulation of Georgian culture anymore. There have been significant historical interferences, that aimed deliberately to diminish local cultural knowledge. (For example: The imperialistic politics of the Russian empire and it's successor the soviet empire. They where awfully successful with that.) 

If knowledge gets lost, so does the framework of a practice. The Why's and the How's of a practice evaporate. Without the hold of a framework practices loose ground and float away. 

These kind of historical processes, that create cultural ruptures, enable the phenomena of cultural imperialism* to flourish with extraordinary success. Cultural imperialism has an easy hold on countries, that have been colonialized or imperialized physically in their history. We humans have the need to navigate our way through life somehow. When our own knowledge is lost, we will look for that knowledge which is available and take on those values and set beliefs. It seems so, that the values we have taken on now have no place for practices like "Lament in Voice".

Thank you for reading!

* გ. ჩიტაია, მასალები საქართველოს ეთნოგრაფიისთვის, ტ. III, თბილისი 1940. / G. Chitaia, Material for Georgian Ethnography, Vol. III, Tbilisi 1940. P. 39-42.

* "Material for Georgian Ethnography, Vol. III" covers lots of information about old rites, holidays and festivities, that were held for and connected to the dead in Khevsuretian culture. Unfortunately the text exists only in Georgian language. 

* Cultural imperialism - is “a process of social influence by which a nation imposes on other countries its set beliefs, values, knowledge and behavioral norms as well as its overall style of life” P. 129. (Jonathan Gray, Imagining America: The Simpsons Go Global. Popular Communication. 2nd ed. Vol. 5. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. P. 129-148).