E-mail: jim.wilce@gmail.com; anthropology@nau.edu
Tel.: 001 928 523 3180;
555 E. Pine Knoll Drive PO, Box: 15200 Flagstaff AZ 86011–5200 Anthropology;
Professor of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University
The paper is supported by the National Science Foundation, grant № 0822512.
This essay reflects early insights from an ethnographic study of the contemporary “Finnish lament revival” and its relationship with traditional Karelian lament, adumbrating several longer publications on the same topic currently in preparation. The article focuses on two related features of traditional Karelian lament and its contemporary revivalistic counterpart — namely, lament’s purported sacredness and its use of a particular linguistic register to serve an honorific function. Lament is rapidly disappearing from traditional societies around the world, and the Finno-Karelian “lament revival” is the only revival of lament known to this author. Whereas in that sense it is unique, it shares much with myriad manifestations of “the postmodern”, and specifically other examples of New Age (or “subjective-life”) spirituality. It is not only the case that traditional Karelian laments trafficked in the sacred; rather, Finnish revivalists believe they are creating an intimacy that is itself sacred in the act of revealing their innermost feelings through this traditional genre. Unsurprisingly, the metalanguage these revivalists use to frame their performances combines psychological jargon with a discourse on tradition and the requirements imposed on them if, as is the case, they sing like the old lamenters using honorific features targeting a supernatural audience.
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