Wisdom in Mournful Tunes: Exploring the Major Themes of Igbo Oral Funeral Songs

Abstract

Death often engenders emotional outbursts in the form of chants, songs and recitations. In most parts of Africa, the death of an adult member of the society goes with the rendition of some peculiar songs in honour of the deceased and to contemplate on death as a natural phenomenon. Among the Igbo of South-eastern Nigeria, it is anathema to intone a funeral song at a moment or location where there is no bereavement. Such acts attract severe verbal sanctions because oral funeral songs are special performances rendered during burial and funeral ceremonies. This implies that they are not merely ordinary songs rendered for non-justifiable reasons but ones which have recognizable motives behind their rendition. The focus of this paper is to identify some strands of meaning which most Igbo oral funeral songs convey. It highlights their basic thematic constructs or the ‘artistic representations’ espoused in most of them. Applying Contextual Analysis as the conceptual theoretical framework, the paper analyzes the content of selected Igbo oral funeral songs and concludes that they have clear identifiable preoccupations because they express multifaceted shades of grief and serve valuable purposes in the various communities where they are rendered.