Greece - Korina Miller [42]
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MUSICAL HERITAGE
Georgios Xylouris grew up with music – his late father was the legendary Cretan singer and lyra (lyre) player Nikos Xylouris – and it remains his passion.
‘Greece has a very rich musical tradition and music remains the most important form of cultural expression,’ he says. ‘We sing and play music at all events, happy and sad, from love songs to the dirges improvised by women.’
The different musical traditions found across Greece reflect the way people live, the environment and history of the area. Traditional folk music is the music of the rural and regional areas, while laïka (urban folk music) and entehni mousiki (artistic music) is the urban music of the cities.
While there are parts of Greece where traditional music is dead and nothing new is being produced, Xylouris says there are also places like Crete, where traditional music is alive and thriving.
‘In Crete, music is in the blood and one of the reasons the music has stayed alive is that there are always new lyrics because of the popularity of mantinadhes (rhyming couplets). Having new lyrics helps create new music.’
In the last 15 years there has been a revival in traditional musical and in young musicians learning to play traditional instruments such as the lyra or kanonaki (flat, multistringed instrument). Much contemporary Greek music now draws heavily on traditional music and instruments and there is a healthy local music scene.
‘In winter in Athens there are many live-music venues with constantly changing line-ups where you can hear today’s contemporary musicians play every night of the week. In summer, there are festivals and concerts all over Greece, in every town.’
Georgios Xylouris runs a specialist Greek music store Click here in Athens and presents a radio show covering the gamut of Greek music.
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REMBETIKA
Rembetika is often referred to as the Greek ‘blues’, because of its urban folk-music roots and themes of heartache, hardship, drugs, crime, and the grittier elements of urban life. The etymology of the term rembetika is highly disputed, as is its transliteration. The rhythms and melodies are a hybrid of influences, with Byzantine and Ancient Greek roots.
Two styles make up what is broadly known as rembetika. The first emerged in the mid- to late 19th century in the thriving port cities of Smyrna and Constantinople, which had large Greek populations, as well as in Thessaloniki, Volos, Syros and Athens. Known as Smyrneika or Cafe Aman music, it had a rich vocal style with haunting amanedes (vocal improvisations), occasional Turkish lyrics and a more oriental sound. The predominant instruments were the violin, outi (oud), guitar, mandolin, kanonaki and santouri (flat, multistringed musical instruments).
In Piraeus, rembetika was the music of the underclass and the bouzouki and baglamas (baby version of the bouzouki) became the dominant instruments. When the bulk of refugees from Asia Minor ended up in Piraeus after the 1922 population exchange (many also went to America where rembetika was recorded in the 1920s), it became the music of the ghettos. The lyrics reflected the bleaker themes of their lives; the slums, hash dens and prisons, infused with defiance, nostalgia and lament. Markos Vamvakaris, acknowledged as the greatest rembetis (musician who plays rembetika), became popular with the first bouzouki group in the early 1930s, which recorded at the Columbia factory in Athens. He revolutionised the sound of popular Greek music.
The protagonists of rembetika songs were often the manges, the smartly dressed (often hashish-smoking and knife-carrying), street-wise outcasts who spent their evenings singing and dancing in the tekedhes (the hash dens that inspired many of the lyrics).
Although hashish was