Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Mainland music
In the Peloponnese and central/western Greece , many folk songs - known as paliá
dhimotiká - hark back to the Ottoman occupation and the War of Independence;
others, in a lighter tone, refer to aspects of pastoral life. Their essential instrument is
the klaríno (clarinet), which reached Greece during the 1830s, introduced either by
Gypsies or King Otto's Bavarian entourage. Backing was traditionally provided by a
koumpanía consisting of kythára (guitar), laoúto , laoutokythára (a hybrid instrument)
and violí , with toumberléki (lap drum) or défi (tambourine) for rhythm.
Many mainland melodies are dances , divided by rhythm into such categories as
kalamatianó (a line dance), tsámiko , hasaposérviko or syrtó , the quintessential circle
dance of Greece. Those that aren't danceable include the slow, stately kléftiko , which
relate, baldly or in metaphor, incidents or attitudes from the Ottoman era and the fight
for freedom.
The folk music of Epirus (Ípiros) shows strong resemblances to that of neighbouring
Albania and the Republic of Macedonia, particularly in the polyphonic pieces sung by
both men and women. The repertoire divides into three categories, also found further
south: mirolóyia or laments; drinking songs or tís távlas ; and various danceable melodies
as noted above, common to the entire mainland and many islands also.
Macedonia and Thrace in the north remained Ottoman territory until the early 1900s,
with a bewilderingly mixed population, so music here still sounds more generically
Balkan. Worth special mention are the brass bands peculiar to western Macedonia,
introduced during the nineteenth century by Ottoman military musicians. Owing to
the huge, post-1923 influx of Anatolian refugees, these regions have been a treasure-
trove for collectors and ethnomusicologists seeking to document the old music of Asia
Minor.
Among Thracian instruments, the kaváli (end-blown pastoral flute) is identical to the
Turkish and Bulgarian article, as is the local drone bagpipe or gáïda , made like its
island counterpart from a goat-skin. The zournás , a screechy, double-reed oboe similar
to the Islamic world's shenai , is an integral part of weddings or festivals, along with the
deep-toned daoúli drum, as a typically Gypsy ensemble. Other percussion instruments
like the daïrés or tambourine and the darboúka provide sharply demarcated dance
rhythms such as the zonarádhikos . he klaríno is present here as well, as are two types of
lýra , but the most characteristic melodic instrument of Thrace is the oúti ( oud ), whose
popularity received a boost after refugee players arrived.
Rembétika
Often known as the Greek “blues”, rembétika began as the music of the urban
dispossessed. It existed in some form in Greece , Smyrna and Constantinople since at
least the very early 1900s - probably a few decades earlier. But its evolution is as hard
to define as American blues, with which half-useful comparisons are often made.
Although rembétika shares marked similarities in spirit with that genre, there's little or
none in its musical form.
The 1919-22 Greco-Turkish war and the subsequent 1923 exchange of populations
were key events for rembétika, resulting in the influx to Greece of over a million Asia
Minor Greeks, many of whom settled in shanty towns around Athens, Pireás and
Thessaloníki. Here a few men would sit around a charcoal brazier, toking from a
nargilés (hookah) filled with hashish. One might improvise a tune on the baglamás or
the bouzoúki (a long-necked, fretted, three-stringed lute) and begin to sing songs of
illicit or frustrated love, disease and death; their tone - resignation to the singer's lot,
coupled with defiance of authority - will be familiar to old-time blues fans.
By the early 1930s, key (male) musicians had emerged from the tekés culture. Foremost
among them was a Pireás-based quartet: the beguiling-voiced Stratos Payioumtzis ;
composer and lyricist Anestis Delias (aka Artemis ), who died in the street of a drug
 
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