Vajtim and Gjëmë

Vajtim and Gjëmë (Gjâmë in the Gheg Albanian) is the dirge or lamentation of the dead in the Albanian custom by a group of men for the gjëmë and a woman or a group of women for the vajtim. It has been regulated by the Albanian traditional customary law.

Traditional lamentations have now almost become extinct both in the Islamic and Christian Albanian population, except in some parts of Northern Albania and Kosovo as well as in parts of North Macedonia such as Zajas and Upper Reka, where they exist in a very diminished form. The earliest figurative representations of this practice in traditional Albanian-inhabited regions appear on Dardanian funerary stelae of classical antiquity.

The many-voiced vajtim gave rise to the Albanian Iso-Polyphony and its instrumental expression, which evolved into the Albanian Kaba.