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Folk Music in the Aegean

      Παραδοσιακή μουσική του Αιγαίου (3/5/2006 v.1) Folk Music in the Aegean (4/5/2006 v.1)
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Συγγραφή : Panopoulos Panayotis (10/9/2005)
Μετάφραση : Papadaki Irene (19/12/2006)

Για παραπομπή: Panopoulos Panayotis, "Folk Music in the Aegean", 2006,
Πολιτιστική Πύλη του Αρχιπελάγους του Αιγαίου

URL: <http://www.ehw.gr/l.aspx?id=10490>

 
 

1. The question of musical identity in the Aegean

The sea has always been considered the element that separated but also united the inhabitants of the Aegean archipelago. Music, like water, has functioned variously as a distinguishing factor and a binding material for the local communities of the Aegean; a dynamic cultural symbol, which enabled people to come closer to each other, to share experiences and meanings, but also to get locked into their individuality. As a result, the music of the Aegean is characterized by rich super-regional osmoses, along with an intense regionalism. Musical elements circulated in networks of cultural exchange, which covered part of or the entire geographical area of the Aegean, or even transcended it; yet, each local society formed its own repertory, its unique style of performing, its individual interpretation, but also the social function of its music. In this context, it appears that there has never been a single musical conscience in the Aegean region, a feeling of common musical identity, which would unite these local musical expressions into an integrated whole characterized by common attributes. This certainly does not exclude the possibility of an ex-post study of the common traits of music in the Aegean, regarding musical morphology, poetics, organology and performance, or the social function and cultural significance of music alike. However, it’s important, in this early stage, to clarify certain terms.

2. The meaning of tradition

By the term traditional music, we usually refer to the songs and dance tunes, which were played in the local rural communities, during some celebration or in everyday life, when these communities prospered. We also consider that these songs and tunes were initially created, and continued to be created without interruption, by the members of local communities, in the framework of an essentially oral culture. In that sense, traditional music of the Aegean constitutes primarily the collective work of the oral culture of the inhabitants of the islands and the coastal areas of the Aegean region, during the flourishing years of local societies. This definition is based on certain fundamental principles regarding the particularities of creating and performing music and songs in a traditional context, according to which there is a conflict between tradition and modernity, orality and literacy, cultural stability and underdevelopment and historical dynamics and evolution. This debate creates difficulties to the scholars who attempt to examine music in the Aegean area.

The term traditional culture, although it includes some of the dominant features of certain sides of a local cultural system, it often omits some other significant aspects of cultural practices, part of which is the music of a region. In essence, it tends to rank behind or totally ignore the historical influences that shaped these practices in the course of time, the transformations in their structure and function, as well as the extraordinary plasticity and dynamics of the geographical boundaries and the various specifications of cultural phenomena. Moreover, another equally important problem related to this question is that of the multiple ideological uses that have been made of the term “tradition” in Greek society in the past but also in the present. For all the above reasons, the terms “tradition” and “traditional” will hence be used in inverted commas.

3. The factors, which determined the music of the Aegean

The “traditional” music of the Aegean has been determined, in the course of time, through complex procedures of intercultural and historical influences. Moreover, these cultural and historical qualifier terms concern areas, structures and procedures, which transcend by far the restricted geographical area of the Aegean. So for instance the lyrical structure of songs, with particular emphasis on rhyme, as well as the dominance of violin as the main melodic instrument, have influence from Western Europe. The combination of specific local musical expressions with urban musical elements is directly related to the integration of the Aegean area into constantly expanding social-economic and geopolitical networks. Moreover, geographical and historical terms created, at certain periods, various local specificities and strong variations in the music idioms of the Aegean areas.

Scholars of the Aegean music have given special emphasis to the continuity of musical patterns in the area, from Antiquity to the present day, overcoming the study of the manifold social-cultural osmoses which arose in the Aegean area in different historical periods, and determined, amongst others, the region’s musical culture. Although it is impossible to ignore the correlation between recent elements of Greek music in the Aegean area and ancient Greek musical elements, it is equally important to recognize the contribution of neighboring civilizations in the shaping of the area’s distinctive musical features, a subject less thoroughly studied. Finally, special consideration should be given to the fact that the area is open to influences as well as to the powerful impact of urban music and social-expressive elements on local music idioms.

4. The attributes of the Aegean music

Notwithstanding the important variations in the course of time and from one area to the other, the Aegean music is characterized in general by certain significant similarities, which distinguish it from the music of continental Greece. Regarding the poetics of the songs, the rhyme and short improvisional poetic forms prevail, the most distinctive being the 15-syllable couplet, which in Crete is called mantinada, but can also be found with various other names in different regions of Greece. As far as musical scales are concerned, their main characteristic is the semitone, as opposed to the non-semitonal scales used in the music of mainland Greece. The extent of the melody is rather limited and this has to do with the small extent of the oldest melodic instruments in the region, the lyre, the fife and the bagpipe. The prevailing instruments in the Aegean music are the violin, the lute, the dulcimer (or santouri), the lyre (or lyra), several kinds of fifes, the bagpipe (or askavlos) and the drum (which, in local societies, carries various different names); the main melodic instrument of mainland Greece, the folk clarinet (clarino), is rare or practically inexistent. Finally, dances in the Aegean area are usually disimi (2/4) (syrtos, balos, sousta) and enniasimi (9/4 and 9/8) (zeibek dances and karsilamades), while the typical dances and rhythms of mainland Greece, namely tsamiko (danced to a 3/4 rhythm) and kalamatianos (danced in 7/8 rhythm) seldom appear here. Apart from the general features, in every local idiom there are certain particularities and, in some cases, important variations from what was described above.

Scholars consider the Aegean area as the birthplace of the rebetika songs, on which modern Greek popular music is largely based. The history and the first years of this music idiom that today is called rembetiko, designate the prolonged stay in the Aegean area of important urban musical expressions, which constituted the merger fields of different linguistic, musical and broader cultural elements in the big commercial harbours of the archipelago. Alongside the rural local music idioms, complex urban musical expressions also flourished in the Aegean from early on, influencing but also being influenced by them. Studies carried out regarding these urban musical expressions stress the importance of music for the creation and management of social and cultural identity in the region.

5. Music, sociability and identity

Social scientists, which regarded music and song as social practices in the Aegean area, have shown the importance of musical performances for local and gender identity. Music and song constitute dominant symbols and vehicles of sociability in communal feasts, in celebrations of the life cycle, as well as in same-sex gatherings, during which sexes are structured as social entities. In male groups, singing often constitutes the core of sociality. Women are the main carriers of collective memory of local cultural expressions and their participation in the death rites, with the collective lament, gives them a key role in the administration of the community through ritual procedures.

The improvisional nature of the songs in the local celebrations allows plasticity in the expression of oneself through the songs, creating an important context within which social issues that are crucial for the life of local communities, like migration, the change of living conditions, the new conditions that tourism sets for the islands, are dealt with. In areas where improvisional song flourishes, like Karpathos, local musical and dance expressions symbolically serve as equivalents of location, transforming the feast into a “symbolic village”. Musical and dance expressions also become areas of intense confrontation and political expression of the new social conditions in the community.

In the recent years, one notices in the Aegean area an effort towards the revival of local cultural practices, which had started to decline after the end of the war, when, in the islands, the phenomenon of permanent migration, into as well as out of the country, started to prevail. Since the mid 70s, when the immigrants started to return to their birthplace, music and singing have been placed at the heart of cultural practices at local level; they flourished again, through revived or incipient cultural performances, like the various festivals of local societies. These events ushered a wave of revival of a number of traditions in local level, which, although based on music, had a decisive influence on it.

6. The construction of tradition

Nowadays, the “traditional” music of the Aegean is constructed, to a great extent, in order to fit the dictates of the record industry and the increased demand for “authentic” cultural products. These two trends sometimes have a complementary relationship and other times lead to contradictory and incoherent results. The commercialization of music on a national level led to a new kind of music imaginary, the so-called “insular song”, which has its roots in the Aegean region, but systematizes in a simplistic way the ideal attributes of the Aegean music, thereby weakening or even entirely marginalizing the local specificities and particularities. In a later stage, the “insular” song and its vehicles merged with other aspects of the Greek music industry, creating musical osmoses of local, folk and pop elements, which are re-introduced into local societies in order to meet the increased demand and the revolving needs for “traditional” music.

Our ideas of the unity of the Aegean music idiom come from our knowledge of the history of the region as well as from other sources, less official and “valid”, such as the imagology of tourism and of the exotism surrounding it. The search for “traditional” Aegean music today should also be considered in line with the discovery of the “music of the Mediterranean”, which in the recent years has been one of the main aspects of the “world music” current. The local musical idioms of Amorgos, Karpathos, Naxos, Chios, Lesvos and other islands do not constitute one single “tradition”, unless we are determined to invent it and give specific attributes to it. In that case, common attributes of the various musical expressions of the Aegean area are no more important for the definition of the area’s unity than the broader historical, economical and social factors, or the cultural policies, which construct the unity of the Aegean.

(According to the author's request, the entry is not accompanied by multimedia music samples. Such material has been included in the entries of individual islands, as Kalymnos, Oinousses, Mykonos, Chios, Lesvos, Ikaria, Nisyros etc.)

 

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