Why people or strip dance at funerals

Slightly unlike the other posts in my blog, but this question has been lingering for quite a long time now. Although I personally haven't witnessed people dancing (called 'Dappankuthu', in TamilNadu, India), I've seen just too many films to ignore it as a figment of a movie director's imagination. The point is: people do dance during funerals. But why?

My question was: Isn't dancing supposed to be a 'fun' thing, lightening up the mood et al? Why would anyone want to do it during a funeral when you are supposed to mourn?

I think we could deduct some answers from the Chinese phenomenon. According to this BBC article, funerals in many Chinese villages are still accompanied not with dancing but with striptease. (yeah, you read that right!). According to the Chinese tradition, a good turnout for a funeral indicates that the person who died is a big-shot in the society or something and hence a striptease is organized to increase the people turnout. Incredible but true. Guess it can happen only in China.

I guess the phenomenon is similar to India. The Wikipedia article says the dance is performed in India to relieve emotional stress of the dead one.

During funerals, it is performed in all parts of Tamilnadu to pacify a departed soul when his/her funeral procession is taking place, therefore it also has the name 'Savoo Koothu' Which literally means 'Death Dance', most commonly accompanied by instruments specific to this type of dance.

I would imagine there is another reason since a bunch of hired guys (experts, if you will) always do these jobs. Although people might not turn out to watch the dance during the funeral, I think a dance accompanied with loud music creates quite a lot of ruffle in the surrounding to indicate that something is going on and to create awareness about the incident. This might have been especially applicable in old times when people lived in small villages and such an event accompanied with loud noise could be something for an entire village.

I think it might be a bit stupid to even think about all this, but why leave a ‘Why’ question unanswered? By the way, is there a link containing explanations for Indian cultural nuances anywhere on the web? Stuff that could answer long held traditions such as these that are inexplicable on first thought?