Professional Pallbearers Dance the Dead Out in Style

Credit: www.latimes.com

If you attend a funeral in parts of West Africa and the Southern United States, you may witness some fancy footwork by professional pallbearers who specialize in dancing with the dead. These dancing pallbearers often sing gospel or other sacred songs as they do the “funeral step.”

In West Africa, funerals tend to be huge community gatherings that may last several days, and involve a healthy dose of cathartic mourning and celebration, moving the energy of grief through the grace of song and healing dance. Funerals are an opportunity to get down and funky with your loved one for the last time. Professional pallbearers are often joined by mourners as they dance a casket from a funeral ceremony to a hearse, and sometimes from the hearse to the place of disposition.

In the United States, professional pallbearers have a similar role, with a more North American flavour, as in the video clip below. While most commonly requested in the American South among people of African ancestry, their services can now be accessed in New York and New Jersey through John B. Houston funeral homes. According to Houston, this “White Glove” service is now being requested by one in ten “upper echelon” clients.

For those of you who wish to dance your dead to their final resting place but do not have the means to hire professional pallbearers, you might consider the communication, cooperation and understanding that would be necessary to gather together to create this for yourselves. What would be required of you, your family and community to co-create this act of respect and celebration of life? How would this endeavor deepen your capacity to listen, or stand in the fire of something new with all the uncertainty that that entails? How might you be required to evolve?