Abstract
Although ethnomusicologists do not ignore the close connection of music to emotional processes, they have left the subject aside for almost half a century. The purpose of this article is two fold. First, it aims to analyze the relations between emotions and music in a well-defined cultural context, namely that of a gypsy community in Transylvania (Romania). As a methodological criteria, we focused on situations in which tears and music go together. Three different performance contexts are analyzed: the provision of professional service, spontaneous parties and funerals. From these ethnographic descriptions, the second goal is to extrapolate information that can be compared with data from other societies. In the long term, this procedure will allow us to identify the recurrent, and perhaps universal, psychological and social processes of musical emotion.
Keywords
Music; Emotion; Empathy; Gypsies; Romania
