Lament and Affective Cardiac Responses

Abstract

This chapter considers the funeral lament as an integral part of larger adaptive process regulating emotions. Sustainability of the lament is understood here in the spirit of Jeff Titon's pioneering approach to sustainability of music cultures. For centuries, the lament retained its capacity to change not only in response to extremely emotional situations and life transformations, but also as a direct channel of their productive management. Ethnographic studies of the lament demonstrate its role both in expressing emotions of grief and in mobilizing social support. By juxtaposing earlier ethnographic studies with new empirical research on the affective heart responses to lament, this chapter offers insight into the lament's role in preventing the physical and cognitive breakdown of the grief-stricken body and thus in sustaining human life.