Music and Mourning: Funeral Traditions of the South

Southern funerals. There’s nothing like them anywhere in the world. They are a unique blend of faith, reverence, tradition, and music, and Southern funerals and burials have been tremendously shaped by song. Whether it’s the keening moan of a gospel choir, the slow march of a brass band, or a lone fiddle crying out over a pine box, music has always helped us grieve in the South – and remember.

I don’t know how to explain it, but I love graveyards. I always have. There’s just something about them that totally intrigues me. Very few people know this, but when my wife and I first started dating, several of our first dates were spent together in Pine Hill Cemetery in Auburn, Alabama, either sitting and talking or walking and exploring. Over the years, she and I have visited several graveyards in various states. We’ve witnessed some bizarre burial traditions, taken charcoal rubbings from notable headstones, and perhaps got chased by a zombie out of a graveyard in Florida.

That particular incident closely matched the opening scene of the original Night of the Living Dead that came out in 1968. My wife and I stopped at a small cemetery outside of Milton, Florida late one afternoon in the late 90’s, and started exploring. At some point, we noticed an old man walking very stiffly across the graveyard, heading straight for us. Unlike the idiots in the movie, we didn’t fool around. We got out of there.

Over the years, my wife and I have collected a lot of little tidbits about Southern graveyards. Did you know that people are buried on an East-West axis so that they are facing the rising sun? That way, they’ll be looking into the face of Jesus on the morning of the rapture. However, occasionally you’ll see a grave turned sideways on a North-South axis. That’s an indication that the deceased died out of favor with the church and community, and they’re basically buried wrong on purpose.

I’ve seen Southern graves with toys, trinkets, and seashells across or around the top. If it’s toys or trinkets, then it’s usually the family or friends who are decorating the grave with items of significance to the deceased. I’ve seen Coke bottles buried upside down around the grave, which is just a decoration without any hidden meaning. It is people making do with what they have. And I’ve also seen old graves with seashells on them. This usually indicates a slave grave, as the seashells are symbolic of freedom.

In the South, a funeral isn’t just a formality. It’s a moment when music becomes memory, and memory becomes something you can hum for the rest of your life. One of the most familiar sounds at a Southern funeral is the gentle rise of a hymn—maybe “Shall We Gather at the River,” “Amazing Grace,” or “Farther Along.” These aren’t just songs. They’re sacred heirlooms, passed from one generation to the next, folded between the pages of worn Bibles and sung by voices that are trembling with both grief and hope.

You’ll hear these hymns in country churches where the floorboards creak and the choir’s made up of cousins and neighbors. You’ll hear them from the pulpit when no one’s left to sing. And sometimes, you’ll hear them out in the open air, where the wind carries the melody out over the cemetery and into the trees.

Consider the powerful song Will the Circle Be Unbroken. It promises a joyful reunion when your immediate family will all be together again one day, by and by, Lord, by and by. I sang that song graveside at my own mother’s funeral in 2023, and to be honest, I’d known for many, many years that I was going to do it, no matter what.

It’s that unique mixture of sorrow and salvation that defines Southern mourning. There’s a deep belief—especially in rural Protestant communities—that death isn’t the end. It’s a crossing over. And music, more than anything else, helps us make that crossing together.

Think about the lyrics of “I’ll Fly Away”:

“Some glad morning when this life is o’er / I’ll fly away…”

That’s not just a metaphor. For the folks who sing it, it’s a promise. A belief that their loved one has left the pain of this world behind and taken flight—toward glory, toward home. You hear that same blend of grief and grit at a homegoing. That’s the term used in Black Southern culture—a celebration that the deceased has gone home to be with the Lord. There may be weeping, but there will also be shouting. There will be clapping. And there will be music. Lots of music. In Black churches, music is the train that we will ride through the pearly gates.

And what a contrast that is to the often somber, stoic funerals you see in other parts of the country. I’ve been to Yankee funerals, and I’m not making this up – they whisper. I couldn’t understand a thing they said. It was almost as if they were all embarrassed to even be there. But down here, we sing. Loud. Proud. As if we could sing the dead straight into Heaven. And sometimes, I think we do.

Nowhere is funeral music more famous—or more joyful—than New Orleans. The jazz funeral is one of the city’s most iconic cultural expressions, and it’s built around a single, powerful idea: that life should be celebrated, even in death.

It usually starts slow. The brass band plays a dirge—maybe “Nearer My God to Thee” or “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” The mourners walk in step, quiet, somber. The mood is respectful. Grief gets its moment. But once the body is laid to rest, everything changes.

The tempo lifts. The drums kick in. The trumpets start to dance. And suddenly, the funeral procession becomes a second line parade—a joyful explosion of music, color, umbrellas, and movement. The first line is the band and the family. The second line is everybody else—the neighbors, the friends, even strangers who just heard the music and joined in. One of the greatest things about New Orleans is that if you see a parade, you’re automatically invited. Everybody’s invited. This isn’t disrespectful. It’s deeply spiritual. Because in New Orleans, death isn’t the end of the music. It’s the start of a new rhythm.

I know of no other place in the world except New Orleans that celebrates a second line funeral, because nowhere else in the world can claim to be the birthplace of jazz. Also, it’s not an ancient ritual handed down through the generations. The New Orleans funeral didn’t become a thing until the birth of jazz in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Outside of New Orleans, the rest of the South is known for traffic completely shutting down when a funeral procession drives by. It drives Yankees crazy. In the South, you DO NOT move when you see that line of cars with their headlights on. Out of respect for the deceased, the local law enforcement will shut down intersections and cars just simply stop right where they are until it passes completely by. That’s just what we do.

One of the funniest stories I ever heard about jazz drummer Art Blakey involves a Southern funeral. Blakey was notorious for being a strong advocate of jazz education. According to the story, Art Blakey was driving through a small Southern town when the traffic got completely tied up because of a funeral procession. Since he couldn’t get past the cemetery until the service was over, he decided to get out of his car and listen to the eulogy. When the minister asked if anyone had anything to say about the deceased, there was a prolonged silence. Finally, Art Blakey stepped forward and said, “Well, if nobody’s got anything to say about the departed, I’d like to say a few words about jazz.”

Now, head north a bit, into the Appalachian Mountains, and you’ll find a different kind of mourning music. There, the tradition is quieter—but no less powerful. Appalachian funeral songs are often unaccompanied, raw, and deeply emotional. They’re rooted in Scots-Irish balladry, brought over centuries ago and shaped by the isolation of mountain communities.

One of the most haunting examples is “O Death.” Some folks first heard it in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, sung by Ralph Stanley in a chilling, trembling voice. But that song’s been around much longer. It’s an old mountain prayer—pleading, bargaining with Death like it’s a person standing at the door.

“O Death, won’t you spare me over ’til another year…”

These songs aren’t polished. They aren’t performed with perfect harmony or trained voices. They’re sung with cracks and quivers, often by someone standing next to a homemade coffin on a wooded hillside. And in that simplicity, there’s a kind of holiness you can’t fake. Once, a choir director heard me listening to some recorded examples of this music, and she sneered, “Why do they sing so nasally?”

I answered, “Because they’re doing it right.”

And sometimes, the singer isn’t even a relative. They’re what folks used to call a “sorrow singer”—someone known in the community to step forward and sing for the dead, even if they barely knew them. A voice called up by duty and spirit.

I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen a tiny country funeral where the preacher didn’t show, so somebody’s uncle stood up and read scripture, and one of the cousins—bless her heart—sang “I’ll Fly Away” off-key, tears soaking the hymnbook. I’ve been to Black funerals where the choir shook the rafters with “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” I’ve sat in pews where you could feel the Holy Ghost move through the music long before the sermon began. And I’ve been to funerals with no music at all—just an old cassette player on the pulpit playing a recording of the deceased singing when they were young. Those are the moments that really stick with you.

The song someone chooses for their own funeral tells you everything about them. It tells you how they understood the afterlife. It tells you what kind of hope they held. And sometimes, it tells you what kind of pain they carried. You better believe I’ve already selected all the music I’d like to be played at my funeral.

Funerals are a strange thing, aren’t they? They’re the most heartbreaking moments in a family’s life, but they’re also where legacy becomes real. And music is the bridge. Genealogy doesn’t just live in census records or family Bibles. It lives in the soundtrack we inherit. In the way someone hums a verse when they’re sad. In the way your grandfather tapped his foot to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” at every funeral he ever went to. Music binds us—not just to the dead, but to the living. And when we sing those same songs, we’re not just remembering. We’re belonging.

So maybe the most important question you can ask your family isn’t, “Where are we from?” Maybe it’s, “What did we sing when it was time to say goodbye?” Because in the South, those songs are your real family tree.

In the South, we don’t bury the music with the body.

We let it rise.

The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily the views of the Abbeville Institute.

Tom Daniel

Tom Daniel holds a Ph.D in Music Education from Auburn University. He is a husband, father of four cats and a dog, and a college band director who lives back in the woods of Alabama with a cotton field right outside his bedroom window. His grandfather once told him he was "Scotch-Irish," and Tom has been trying to live up to those lofty Southern standards ever since.

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