“Sorrowful Erigone weeping in the Marathonian wood beside the body of her slain father, her plaints exhausted, began to untie the sad knot of her girdle and chose sturdy branches intent on death.”
– Statius, Thebaid 11.644 ff
Concerning the song:
“Emmeleia”: the title (in Greek ἐμμέλεια, meaning “gracefulness” or “harmonization”) was the name of the grave and dignified dance of tragedy in the theatre of ancient Greece (each dramatic genre featured its own chorus dance, being the emmeleia or emmelīa in tragedy, the kordax or cordax in comedy, and the sikinnis or sicinnis in satyr-play). The “lyrics” derive from Lisa Gerrard’s usual glossolalia, but because she had to write down a phonetic version for Brendan Perry to sing along with her, this song sounds much more like a structured language. Written transcriptions exist but no language could be recognized.
Wow. That song was exactly what was needed tonight.
Dead Can Dance is my default ritual music.
One of my all time favorites from DCD. It is so pure, so dark, so ineffable.
definitely one of my favorites too – which is saying something cause i love about 80% of what they’ve done very intensely.
Excellent stuff…
I’ve recently started adapting DCD tunes to Antinoan purposes…One in particular works so incredibly well, and it was used at PantheaCon in our Antinoan Dream Incubation Ritual. Perhaps privately, I’ll tell you what my Thracian colleague saw when I performed it in the Temple of Nyx…
I would enjoy that.