A morte cantada: incelências para anjos no município de Jucurutu (segunda metade do século XX)

Abstract

The present work seeks to understand the ritualistic practices around death from the “incelências” sung to “angels” in the rural area of Jucurutu/RN in the second half of the twentieth century. “Incelências” are songs chanted around the dead in order to lead the soul of the deceased on the way to heaven and to console those who remained. In the chosen spatial cut is possible to see a variant of these chants of the popular matrix which, in this case specifically, are chanted only in funerals of “angels” (children), differing from the occurrence of this same phenomenon in other parts of Brazil. Is use the oral source, collected through interviews with the ladies who participated directly in the funerals, besides resorting to academic historiography related to the theme. Making an explanation about human actions before death, delimiting the ages of childhood to be work and analyzing the letters and senses behind them is possible to understand the representations about child’s death.