By listening to the succession of wails, it is possible to observe how sonic elements
introduced in Wails 1 and 3 are
gradually enhanced, amplified, exaggerated, and combined, culminating in Wail 10. Sobbing, gritty scream, and intake are introduced
immediately in Wail 1 to undergo development later. Falsetto is
introduced in Wail 3, developed through repetition in Wail 7, and developed further in Wail 8 in
which M.G.R. mirrors a shift from falsetto to normal voice with its obverse. Gritty
screaming, introduced in Wail 1, is deepened and exaggerated in Wails 4 and 6. In wails 7 and 9 M.G.R. slows down and exaggerates
the raspy intake of air introduced in Wail 1. Each element, after
it is introduced, is developed and combined with the others. Wail 4
combines falsetto with gritty scream; Wail 7 combines all
elements; and Wail 10 also combines all elements in a highly
elaborate and dramatic performance: a musical climax involving the inhaling and exhaling
lungs, vocal cords in both falsetto and normal modes, and the resonant cavities of his
throat and mouth in a wide variety of configurations. The musical development from Wail 1 to Wail 10 is one in which the
singer's performing body comes increasingly to the fore in the listener's awareness. Figure 1 above shows that the oppari performance is a gradual
buildup of the trappings of emotional expression, moving toward a sudden rise in
incantation pitch at about eight and a half minutes, and culminating in an extended
drumming and dancing section which lasts an additional six minutes. The performance, which
begins as a chiefly musical rhetorical expression (explaining to the audience the
conditions of grief), culminates in body movement, dance. M.G.R.'s performance therefore
evolves gradually from a verbal and musical expression to one involving the whole body.
Although his performance bears repeated icons of crying, he has deliberately developed his
expression according to a calculated musical plan. Moreover, he steps up the intensity of
his crafted emotional expressions only after he has prepared his listeners musically and
rhetorically.
Listeners who champion M.G.R. as a professional not
only hear the increasing emotional intensity he performs, but also the self-control, and
the deliberate musical planning that lies behind his performance. It is because he is able
to develop highly emotional expressions so deliberately that he is valued as a talented
oppari professional by many. M.G.R. succeeds, in part, in distancing himself from the
intense emotions, death, and widowhood evident in his oppari through the deliberate,
patterned, musical nature of his performance. He seeks to perform the sounds of
spontaneous, intense crying--or exaggerated variants of them--yet distance himself from
death, widowhood and the intense, spontaneous emotions he enacts. Because his performances
typically involve climactic buildups of performative energy, his oppari is a spectacular
distraction. Women performing oppari do not build up toward such climaxes, perhaps because
they have different expressive goals.
During the actual funeral, I observe no one laughing
at the musicians or their performance, although the performers do sometimes verge on
buffoonery, dancing, grinning, and waving their arms as they sang. But in the oppari
re-performance, analyzed here, the listening audience sometimes responds to M.G.R.'s
exaggerated emotional display with laughter. This audience backchannel can be faintly
heard in my field recordings, and is perhaps most audible in the background of Wail 10. As mentioned in a passage in
Section 3, as icons of crying are stylized and transformed, sobbing can be made to
sound like laughter, and other wail features can be exaggerated so as to become mocking
expressions of grief. Through careful sonic artistry, M.G.R. can do his job of expressing
the sounds of grief, yet distance himself from the emotions, and show himself to be a
talented professional.
Concluding
Remarks
"Professional
Weeping" | EOL 5 | email
Author |
