Music, Ritual and Community among Romania’s Orthodox Pilgrimages

More than 20 years after the fall of the Communist regime, we are witnessing the unprecedented development of religious pilgrimage in Romania, a country where, according to the latest census, 84% of the population self-identifies as Orthodox Christian. Apart from the pilgrimages to well-known destinations (Jerusalem, Rome, etc.) organized by the Romanian Patriarchy’s Pilgrimage Bureau, a separate category is the improvised, hybrid pilgrimages, both religious and touristic, organized by individuals using hired minibuses. This paper offers an ethnographic description of a pilgrimage. The focus is on the relationship between music, ritual, the sacred space of the pilgrimage and the public space. Music is used as a barrier and immaterial border to the ritual space, while in its interior it is better suited for the emotional control and the proper management of pilgrims. The analysis of pilgrimages points to new forms of blending of music and ritual, outside established institutional frameworks, as well as to changing notions of pilgrimage, movement, religious practice and piety.