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| Image of a minor chord and a graveyard (at Shiloh) |
Musical choices matter. They matter in life, and they matter in the rituals of death as well. They represent the person and that person’s values, choices, and (with luck) tastes. Funeral music, in particular, does more than fill silence; it becomes a final gesture, shaping how we remember and are remembered.
Having recently gone through the experience of choosing music for a family funeral myself, I know that those choices are constrained by the hosting institution, by the capacities of the performer, and by the sheer quantity of “absolutely not, I cannot abide that drivel” that abounds in the funeral industry. Tasteless pop pablum: not the way our dear-departed should be ushered out of the land of the living. We ultimately had a meaningful ceremony, though not without hitting discussions of option B, option C, and let’s circle back and see if option A will pass the minister’s attention. (It did.)
Happily, my husband and I have had our lists of “recommended listening” for our own funerals in a folder on a just-in-case basis. We should both revisit it; those lists are from long ago, and newer music has penetrated our awareness. But we did that work in uncertain times, and it’s nice to know that if a family member were faced with having to orchestrate a remembrance ceremony (heavens forfend), they’d have someplace to start.
These existence of such lists show a bit of where I come from: as a musicologist, the idea of remembering me through something musical is a meaningful offering – much like a shared favorite poem or the sunrise pictures that will give folks a taste of the additive joys of my life. So much beauty, here, have some, and savor what I loved.
But here’s what brought that admittedly macabre topic to mind: Brian Fairley in a recent Journal of Sonic Studies article talks about a 1967 Georgian funeral at which, well, I’ll let his words tell it:
As the casket of the singer and choirmaster Artem Erkomaishvili lay in state at the municipal theater in Ozurgeti, a reel-to-reel tape player clicked on:
Weep for me, brothers and friends, relatives and acquaintances. Only yesterday I talked with you, yet today my hour of death has come. And now I will go to that place where there is neither hypocrisy, sorrow, nor wailing, where the slave and master stand together. (Erkomaishvili 1980: 17)
The voice was Erkomaishvili’s own, reciting a portion of the Orthodox Christian rite for the dead.
The singer had recorded the “Rite of Mourning” for his own funeral, using multiple tape recorders to overdub the three-part chants himself. He had also requested a performance by the Gordela ensemble as well. “Hey, there’s this group I’d like to sing” is one level of control. But “Hey, I’ve made a single-occasion sound recording for my funeral? That’s a level of involvement in the end-of-life ceremony that frankly had never occurred to me. It was a moment as a reader that I stopped cold. Wait, what?
But as I’ve pondered this incident, I’ve come to realize that it’s not so strange. At Sally A’s funeral, for instance, there was a performance of an arrangement she’d written of a song she’d loved. Or wait, was it a recording of her actually singing? The details now blur, but I remember the moment of poignancy – her hands, her mind, her musical choices shaping what we, gathered to celebrate her life, had shared together in community.
And we are becoming familiar with posthumous “holographic” tours – Tupac Shakur at Coachella (2012); Roy Orbison’s In Dreams: Roy Orbison in Concert (2018); “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa” tour (2019); and the Whitney Houston tour (2020-2022), described by its promoters as “the most awe-inspiring and immersive live theatrical concert experience ever.” Yes, “live theatrical concert” of a dead person. I get it: the music lives on.
To be honest, such holographic recreations remind me of the glitz of the whole “immersive Van Gogh” media extravaganza; digitized and mediated remembrances of something that at its core once mattered to us, now repackaged and aggrandized as commercial re-imaginings with high sales potential (and juicy ticket costs).
But these things speak together as well of the nature of music as a path to remembrance. For music lingers. It resonates in the unswept corners of memory and in the silences that follow loss. Whether it’s a congregation joining in a well-worn hymn, a voice echoing from an old reel-to-reel, or a digitally-animated likeness on stage, music allows us to summon the presence of the departed – sometimes tenderly, sometimes theatrically, but always powerfully.
In that way, funeral music is more than background. It offers structure, offering shape to grief. It is a connecting gesture, extending a hand to the mourners. And it gives voice – sometimes literally – to the dead by giving them a final say in how they wish to be remembered.
As technologies evolve and expectations shift, so too do the multitudinous ways we humans craft sonic presence in rituals of parting. What remains constant is our human need to hear, to remember, and to let music speak where words might falter.
So write your description. Compile that playlist. Or even make that recording, if you wish. Choose with care. Because someday, someone will press play – and in that moment, you’ll be present, shaping new memories.
WORKS CONSULTED
“An Evening with Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour” [website]: https://www.whitneyhouston.com/tour/an-evening-with-whitney-the-whitney-houston-hologram-tour/
Fairley, Brian. “Singing at Your Own Funeral: Overdubbed Intimacy and the Persistence of Tradition in Soviet Georgia.” Journal of Sonic Studies 27 (2025): https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3509747/3509748
Special call-out to Brian Fairley, who makes a complex argument in his “Singing at Your Own Funeral” – about socio-political contexts for musical recordings in 20thc Soviet Georgia, about the role of family stories as historical documents, about the nature of the heroic and learned singer, and of the nature, importance, and sometimes impermanence of technology. You should definitely read the whole thing!
Grow, Cory. “‘Bizarre World of Frank Zappa’ Hologram Tour Not So Bizarre After All.” Rolling Stone, April 25, 2019, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-live-reviews/frank-zappa-hologram-tour-review-827195/
Matthews, Justin, and Angelique Nairn. “Holograms and AI can bring performers back from the dead – but will the fans keep buying it?” The Conversation, June 1, 2023, https://theconversation.com/holograms-and-ai-can-bring-performers-back-from-the-dead-but-will-the-fans-keep-buying-it-202431.
