Bocet

The bocet is the ritually improvised funeral lament of Romania and Moldova, sung by women over the dead during the wake, the priveghi, and along the road to the grave. Half sung, half wailed in parlando-rubato phrases punctuated by sobs and refrains, each bocet is composed in the moment: it praises the deceased, recounts their life, voices the family's grief and questions death itself, addressing the dead directly as they begin the journey to the other world. Unaccompanied and metrically free, it belongs to the oldest layer of Romanian ritual song and has close kin in the laments of the wider Balkans and Mediterranean.