MOVING SOULS: THE COMMENDATION OF SOULS AND THEIR SONIC

AFFINITIES

Short Abstract:

The recent revival of the musical ritual the Commendation of Souls will be treated

here as a collective engagement in the nostalgic restoration of local ontologies

and as a movement of social re-connection and exchange between those

separated by time and genealogic distance.

Long Abstract:

The Commendation of Souls is a death cult, practice during Lent, when people

gather at midnight to sing and pray for the souls in Purgatory, asking to the divine

entities to release their ancestors souls to Heaven. This ritual has been recently

revitalized in the municipality of Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal, and its now practiced

mainly by returned migrants. Musically, its performed by a singing chorus,

accompanied by the sounds of intervening things (eg.: the church bells; wooden

rattles), played by the group. Its generally performed outdoors at highest points of

the villages, from where it can be easily heard by all. By awakening and proposing

to those who are/were asleep to join their indulgences, the ritual practitioners

conduct a collective remembrance of the dead, enabling their listeners to be

moved/affected by their(s) souls (beloved ones). The musical re-enchantment of

this old religious folk practice, is both a nostalgic restoration of locality and a

bridge between humans alive, and those who already ceased to be. Base on my

ongoing ethnographically informed research, this paper intends to question: (1)

How does this musical performance re/produces a sense of locality to those return

migrants? (2) What is the performativity of the textures, intensities, melodies and
words contained in these songs, in relation to its social contexts, and how its

combinations potentiate sonic affinities with the none-humans? (3) How do those

who listen become recipients/patients of the indexicality of these songs (Gell

1998), actively engaged in surpassing the permeable boundaries of humanness

(Brabeck; Seeger 2013)?