Is music a universal language, or just a cultural way to remember the dead?
We often assume music speaks a global tongue, but when it comes to death, the melodies change entirely. From ritualized mourning to the enduring legacies of composers, exploring how sound bridges the gap between life and death reveals how deeply our musical structures are tied to our cultural identities.
While music and death are universal human experiences, the ways they intersect are profoundly diverse. In her lecture at Barnard’s Inn Hall, violinist and academic Mieko Kameshi explores how different societies use sound to grapple with mortality. A central tension in this study is the work of ethnomusicologist Philip Tagg, who in 1988 challenged the popular notion of music as a 'universal language.' Tagg argued that death is far from a universal cultural phenomenon, noting that attitudes toward the deceased vary radically even within a single cultural sphere.
This diversity is particularly evident in funeral music. In Western classical traditions, specific musical parameters—studied through music semiotics and topic theory—are often used to convey recognizable emotions like joy or anxiety. However, these conventions are not global. The characteristics of funeral music vary significantly across the world, often because the rituals themselves differ in which emotions they choose to celebrate and whose emotions are prioritized during the ceremony.
Beyond the ritual, there is the concept of the 'afterlife' of music itself. Western classical music culture is unique in how it places immense value on the legacies of departed composers. Through the performance of their works, we bridge temporal distances, allowing past generations to coexist with the living. This creates a continuous loop where the living sustain the creative minds of the past, using sound to navigate the boundary between the temporal and the eternal.
Source: Music, Death and Afterlife - Mieko Kanno
