in ancient China. These wails and laments were not (or were not always) uncontrollable expressions of emotion. Albert Galvany argues they were in fact "subject to a strict and complex process of codification that determines, right down to the finest details, the place, the timing and the ways in which such expressions of pain should be proffered". The Liji ("Book of Rites") proclaimed that the mourner's type of relationship with the deceased dictated where the death wails should take place: for your brother it should take place in the ancestral temple; for your father's friend, opposite the great door of the ancestral temple; for your friend, opposite the main door of their private lodging; for an acquaintance, out in the countryside. India An oppari is an ancient form of lamenting in southern India, particularly in Tamil Nadu and North-East Sri Lanka where Tamils form the majority. It is a folk song tradition and is often an admixture of eulogy and lament. The oppari is typically sung by a group of female relatives who come to pay respects to the departed in a death ceremony. It in a means to express one's own grief and also to share and assuage the grief of the near and dear of the diseased. Sometimes professional oppari singers are recruited, but it is a dying practice. Hawaii During the 1920s, ethnographers Laura Green and Martha Warren Beckwith described witnessing "old customs" such as death wails still in practice: Death wail in literature The death wail is mentioned in many literary works: "She began the high, whining keen of the death wail... It rose to a high piercing whine and subsided into a moan. Mama raised it three times and then she turned and went into the house..." John Steinbeck's short story "Flight", set in the Santa Lucia Mountains Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, set in post-colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) gives an account of the death wail. See also Keening Banshee Oppari References Further reading Describes the death wail in the Taribelang language, with a literal translation and comments on music and language. Contains a discussion of Armitage's work. External links Media British Library website with downloadable sound file of 1898 death wail. Requires Windows Media Player. Video of Death wail performed by 2 women of the Manobo-Dulangan tribe of the southern Philippines (YouTube) Australian Aboriginal music Ceremonies Death music