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Bude​ș​ti (Maramures​)​1: The Death​-​Wedding

from Romania Phonographies, 2015​-​2016 by AKASHIC RECORDS

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Without much fore-knowledge of the place we were going to, only that it was remote & traditional, we hitched a ride along winding mountain road and found ourselves in Budestia at about 3pm, the local bar/grocery closed, so we put our back-packs down and fell asleep on the nearby picnic table. Waking later, we started to wander into the village, nosing around for a cozy camping spot and began to notice the bells. Not coming from the wooden church on the hill but from somewhere still hidden. The ringing became slowly more noticeably clamorous, insistent & yet stopping and starting at irregular intervals, as if someone got tired, or eventually, I propose, had need of a coffee-break. Or perhaps it was a change of the guard. I sought the source of the clanging in a long unprepared walk. What I captured, I assumed, the last possible moments of this somber and vigorous resonance, seems true to itself, pigs, crows, cocks, dogs and all, but I was to learn that these bells were to continue on the next day & night, the next day again, summoning all the locals --the high village and the low village of Budesti, and those compounds nearby -- to the funeral of a woman, a mother of two daughters & a son, a widow who's husband had been buried the year before. Later, I was to discover the special significance of such a funeral, since it unites the departed husband and wife in the world beyond, in a special ceremony. It seems that there are various traditions of the Death-Wedding & for further information about this complex affair of inter-locking ceremonies, I advise the listener to seek out Gail Kligman's "The Wedding of Death" (as of this update, it's available online via Google documents!). It is not merely a social farewell to the deceased such a funeral but according to the faithful a woman is being united with God in the after-life and that therefore, like a nun, she has a mystical marriage with Jesus. The deceased male would likewise become wedded to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In any case, there are long standing customs where an unmarried person who dies receives the hand of a village volunteer as a proxy marriage partner because, as the belief goes, the ummarried spirit is an unsatisfied spirit and would return as a ghost. Other instances have been reported of Death Weddings where a woman marries a man killed in battle, if there was an agreement between them beforehand. This is likely a concern for the passage of property and lands on the one hand but the weaving of the social fabric depends on all member of the community coming out to play special roles as mourners.There are even official mourners who sing loud laments with ritual poetic formulae. The rituals take place in the wooden church were the parishioners attended services most of their life, even though there is a new basilica just down the road, where the bells actually ring. In this recording you will hear the bells also of the wooden church ringing just before our entrance. I capture the funeral mass using only my small dictaphone, since I didn't want to be intrusive. Obviously, the society being extremely traditional, there is a great attention to ceremonious detail, mourners related to the deceased wear white scarves pinned to their shoulders, they carry tall thin candles. Widows dress in black for one year after a death of a relative. For the funeral, all the older women are dressed in black and they shuffle along I wonder how many of them are thinking of their own moment to come. It seemed only unmarried younger girls wore kerchiefs of different colors. Our arrival on the day of such a funeral was perhaps deemed of some significance and we received invitations to attended the entire 3 hour ceremony which began at the home of the deceased woman. There was a ritual of passing bags of corn puffs and boxes of chocolate over the coffin, which were then given to children standing by. The funeral procession, men carrying the coffin, wound around the village on foot, with cries and poems mourning declaimed by certain women emerging from houses. The procession stopped for prayers at crossroads twice before heading to the wooden church for what we assumed was the final ceremony. There was an hour long mass. Homilies and the singing of a cantor, a wine bottle which had been pierced through a disc-shaped loaf of bread, was raised up and down repeatedly. Then came not the end but a break for food, saramal, rice, and palinka in the community center. But then the second part of the ceremony would shortly begin. (To be continued).

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You can find Gail Kligman's book here: https://books.google.pl/books?id=IekB06HxYZkC&lpg=PR1&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q&f=false

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from Romania Phonographies, 2015​-​2016, released October 10, 2015

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AKASHIC RECORDS Poland

Guitarist, composer, sound designer, field recordist, shortwave radio poet, blending electro-acoustic, electronica, spectral comp., cracked circuits, sounding organic objects with an ear towards earth voices. Studied Javanese and Balinese gamelan and theories of Partch and Xenakis. Working with dance/theater/butoh co. Djalma Primordial Science. More than 400 concerts throughout Europe since 2005. ... more

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