ARCHiPELAGOS | Passages (Chronicle)

ARCHiPELAGOS | Passages (Chronicle)

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ ΑΡΧΙΠΕΛΑΓΟΣ | Δίαυλοι (Χρονικό)
/PORTUGUÊS/ ARCHiPELAGOS | Passagens (Crónica)

Over the Aegean islands | – come out and see! –
angels are flapping their wings | scattering roses…

Michales Loukovikas

I. REVISITANDO O ARQUIPÉLAGO | THE ARCHIPELAGO REVISITED
1. O arquipélago | The Archipelago
(a. Is Ionia in Bloom? / b. Where Is Athens?)
2. Κατολοφύρομαι (Katolophýromae) | I’m Wailing in Lament (Orestes)

Hélia Correia is in our hearts; she’s also in the heart of our Archipelagos! Our longest sequence is mainly based on her long poem, The Third Misery, which she begins citing Friedrich Hölderlin (from his poem Bread and Wine: What’s the use, what is the purpose of a poet in times of such indigence?). We followed in her steps and chose to have as a starting point his poem, The Archipelago. Then, during a trip up north, Amélia Muge convinced her old mother, Maria José, to recite with her some parts of the poem, and José Martins was there to record them. Good material to begin with… Now that I’m thinking about it, I feel it was a pity that Amélia’s daughter, Cristiana, did not take part, as well: we would have three generations reciting together!

The Archipelago, as Hölderlin reminded us, was originally the Aegean Sea and its islands. Therefore we had to start with Aegean music. I think we could find no better melody as an introduction than the beautiful traditional song whose first stanza you can read above. Yet, we felt that some Portuguese flavour was needed. So, next to Kyriakos Gouventas’ violin, we added the guitarra of Ricardo Parreira. Excellent combination!

Then we had to solve the problem of the sea. Initially, I added sea sounds (waves, seagulls, etc.) but Amélia objected: Too realistic, she said. And then she had an excellent idea: What about voices instead of waves? José and me replied in chorus: Yes! That’s it! Well, these choral waves, designed by José, and sung by Maria Monda (Sofia, Susana, Tânia), Cramol and Teresa Campos, made me feel they’re not only sea waves, but also those angels flying over the Aegean, scattering roses…

Euripides

That was the first, bright, rosy part of the poem (Is Ionia in Bloom?). In the second part, the dark, gloomy one (Where Is Athens?), I rearranged an old composition of mine (from The Gold in the Sky, on poetry by Ares Alexandrou) to pave the way to Euripides and Orestes, his tragedy. The stasimon Katolophýromae, introduced by Harris Lambrakis on the ney and recorder, is performed in ancient Greek by a chorus composed by Amélia, Andreas Karakotas, Manos Achalinotópoulos, and me as the coryphaeus. (We write about Euripides and Orestes in our Archipaedia, in the eBook accompanying the CD, where there is a wealth of information around Archipelagos. Much of this information is also presented here in our blog, following the links you see in the titles of each sequence).

1. Friedrich Hölderlin (Der Archipelagus, 1800-1801, excerpts, adapted into Portuguese by Amélia Muge) | a. Aegean traditional / b. Michales Loukovikas | Arranged by M. Loukovikas, A. J. Martins
2. Euripides (Orestes, 408 BCE, fragments: strophe–antistrophe) | Adapted-Arranged by M. Loukovikas

II. CANTOS DA ARGILA | SONGS OF CLAY
3. Embalar meninos, acordar adultos | Lullabying Children, Waking Up Adults
11. Μάγισσα Θάλασσα (Νέοι Λαοί τής θάλασσας) | Sorceress Sea (New Sea Peoples)

Hurrian hymn to Nikkal, Ugarit (13th century BCE)

Entering a time/space ship, we voyaged a millennium back, from Athens in 408 BCE to Ugarit, Syria, ca. 1400, listening to a Hurrian hymn. To tell you the truth, after Euripides, I was not so much fascinated; but Amélia was amazed, struck by its similarity to a Portuguese anti-fascist hymn: José Gomes Ferreira and Fernando Lopes-Graça’s Acordai! (Wake Up!). My oriental heart, on the other hand, was moved by some renditions of the Hurrian hymn in the chromatic genus. The problem was that these renditions moved away from Acordai. That’s why we decided to have the hymn in two variations, as a diatonic lullaby close to Acordai, and as a diatonic-chromatic lament about the refugees’ tragedy.

Weeping Woman’s Head with handkerchief (1937, possibly a study on Guernica),
by Pablo Picasso

I was so shocked when I saw by the seaside the body of an infant who drowned while his family tried to pass from Turkey to Greece. My lyrics begin with a phrase I heard from another refugee in Morocco, who could not cross the Gibraltar Strait to Spain: Every time I turn and see the sea, tears start falling down… My friend Andreas Karakotas interpreted the song so well tele-directed by me: I was in Lisbon, he was in Salonica! Ana Dias with her harp created the proper background here, as well as in the Imaginary Island of Utopia.

3. Amélia Muge / José Gomes Ferreira (excerpt from Acordai!) | Ancient Hurrian hymn (fragment) / Fernando Lopes-Graça (excerpt from Acordai!) | Adapted by A. Muge. Αrranged by A. J. Martins
11. Michales Loukovikas | Ancient Hurrian hymn (fragment) | Adapted-Arranged by M. Loukovikas

III. MACARONÉSIA | MACARONESIA (Macárōn Nẽsoe: Fortunate Isles)
4. Ali no meio do mar | Out There Amid the Sea
5. Dança do trigo | Wheat Dance
6. Um gingado lamento | Swinging Lament

Cesária Évora

Macaronesia consists of four archipelagos in the North Atlantic: the Azores and Madeira (Portugal), the Canaries (Spain), and Cape Verde. The name is derived from the Hellenic term Μακάρων Νῆσοι (Macárōn Nẽsoe, or Fortunate Isles, Isles of the Blessed), used by geographers for the Elysian islands to the west of the Pillars of Heracles (Strait of Gibraltar), a winterless earthly paradise, which according to Hesiod were the Elysian Fields, inhabited by heroes. Strabo identified them with the isles of the Hesperides.

Amélia’s Swinging Lament, dedicated to Cesária Évora, has this magic touch: I’ve loved it since the first time I listened to it. As the finale of a Macaronesian saga, it’s even better! Featured in this sequence is Amélia in the lead voice – together with Rita Maria who sings the Castilian part of the Wheat Dance – as well as Maria Monda and me in the vocals.

4. Traditionals of the Canaries & the Azores, Amélia Muge | Arranged by A. J . Martins, A. Muge
5. Traditional of the Canaries, Amélia Muge | Arranged by A. J. Martins, A. Muge
6. Amélia Muge | Arranged by M. Loukovikas, A. J. Martins

IV. PENAS DE AMOR O QUE SÃO? | WHAT IS TO SUFFER FROM LOVE?
7. A tentação | Temptation
8. Δέδυκε ἀ σελάννα / Lua desceu, mergulhou | The Moon Has Set Down
(a. The Moon Has Set Down / b. Meanings Are Divided / c. Eros)

Sappho of Eresos, Roman copy of a 5th-century-BCE Greek original

Temptation, written by Hélia, is for me one of Amélia’s best songs. I told her many times it’s a pity it’s not in one of her own albums. So, here it is! And in a good company: that of Sappho’s.

Thanks to Amélia, who had the idea about her, I searched a lot, reading Sapphic poetry, and combined three fragments to compose:(*) The Moon Has Set Down, Meanings Are Divided, Eros. Moreover, I convinced Amélia she can also sing in ancient Hellenic (something that she described as… jumping into the abyss)! In this “jump” here, she is accompanied by Rita Maria, Catarina Anacleto and Maria Monda.

(*) Although her poetry was well-known and greatly admired in antiquity, most of it survives only in fragments, mainly because the Christian Church disapproved of her morals and the ecclesiastical authorities loved to burn her anthologies…

7. Hélia Correia | Amélia Muge | Arranged by F. Raposo
8. Sappho (in ancient Greek – and in Portuguese adapted by Amélia Muge) | Michales Loukovikas | Adapted-Arranged by M. Loukovikas

V. CANSAÇO DE SER | WEARINESS OF BEING
9. Sono de ser | Slumber of Being
10. The Hours

Fernando Pessoa

This sequence is dedicated to Fernando Pessoa. Slumber of Being is another favourite song of mine composed by Amélia. Her singing here is one of those rare moments; she’s accompanied excellently by Filipe Raposo.

The Hours, one of Pessoa’s English Poems, stands out, as well. I composed it for Sofia Vitória’s Echoes. I’m happy it was finally left out, so we can have it here with my… heavy metal arrangement reinforced by Kostas Hanís’ vibraphone and António Quintino’s double bass! Amélia and I synchronized our voices while the girls (Maria Monda) tuned themselves in chorus with us.

Amélia was fascinated by the way I composed this song. It was during one of my afternoon walks around my neighbourhood and I had The Hours stuck in my mind. I remembered Pink Floyd’s Time and the clocks ringing as soon as it started, and I decided to begin with clocks clicking the seconds, the minutes, The Hours… I walked that fast murmuring Fernando’s words and, all of a sudden, the bass line appeared! I kept on repeating this line, as I had nothing on me to record it, lest I forgot it until I reached home. By the time I arrived there, Fernando also offered me the basic melodic line! I worked furiously for Hours; I stopped only when I had even the arrangement ready. Overjoyed, I sent it immediately to Amélia…

9. Fernando Pessoa | Amélia Muge | Arranged by F. Raposo
10. Fernando Pessoa | Michales Loukovikas | Arranged by M. Loukovikas

VI. NA TAVERNA DO PORTO | IN A HARBOUR’S TAVERN
12. Versos quaisquer (Pedidos com instância) | Verses Whatever (Insistent Requests)
13. Ο Νικόλας ο ψαράς | Nicolas, the Fisherman

That’s the sequence of… fadobetiko (a term coined by Amélia). Her song, à la fado corrido, is based on a satiric poem by João de Deus, one of the greatest Portuguese poets of the 19th century. The intro to the song, played by Kyriakos Gouventas, has North Balkan flavour, because the poem starts with a reference to Transylvania.

Giorgos Mitsakis (L) and Vasilis Tsitsanis (R)

The tragic Nicolas, the Fisherman combines two of the greatest rebetiko composers: Vasilis Tsitsanis, one of the founders of modern rebetiko (paving the way for great composers such as Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis); and Giorgos Mitsakis, a skillful composer and lyricist, nicknamed the master as a bouzouki player.

With throbbing emotion (I burst out in tears while singing in the studio; Amélia and the sound engineer, Christos Megas, thought I was laughing…), I present the tragic figure of a black-dressed mother who is standing for months by the seaside, waiting for her son, Nicolas, to return to shore, as no one has the courage to tell her he drowned… This song moved the Portuguese, as well. I was told of black-dressed women who are still standing by the seaside gazing at the sea with empty eyes…

12. João de Deus | Amélia Muge | Arranged by A.J. Martins
13. Giorgos Mitsakis | Vasilis Tsitsanis | Arranged by M. Loukovikas

VII. ILHAS IMAGINÁRIAS | IMAGINARY ISLANDS
14. Uma ilha, Utopia | An Island, Utopia
15. Penélope de Ítaca | Penelope of Ithaca
16. Meninos perdidos | Lost Kids

Ulysses among the Phaeacians, by Jean Broc. Odysseus shows his physical arete by winning the discus-throwing contest after being taunted by a Phaeacian athlete. Long before Plato, Homer seems to be the first to describe Utopia, or even Atlantis, which he calls Scheria, the Phaeacians’ land.

Our fascination with imaginary and mythic places. So good that musically it ends up in Thrace, where I was born, with a… legendary zonarádikos dance, sung by Amélia and Maria Monda, and played by Manos Achalinotópoulos and Harris Lambrakis on the clarino (folk clarinet) and ney. But before that, we voyage to the islands of Thomas More’s Utopia (with Amélia also recalling Ares Alexandrou’s empty Mission Box), Odysseus and Penelope’s Ithaca, until, finally, we run aground on J. M. Barrie’s Neverland, finding not Peter Pan and Tinker Bell there, but some very peculiar Lost Kids.

14. Amélia Muge | Arranged by A. J. Martins, F. Raposo | Dedicated to Ares Alexandrou
15. Amélia Muge | Arranged by A. J. Martins, F. Raposo
16. Amélia Muge | Thracian traditional, A. Muge | Arranged by A. J. Martins, M. Loukovikas

VIII. EM TEMPO DE INDIGÊNCIA | IN TIMES OF INDIGENCE
17. Sem Deuses | Without Gods
18. Nós | We
19. Feitiço (Experimentos) | Spell (Experiments)
20. As ilhas do Egeu | The Aegean Islands
21. A ruína da Grécia | The Ruin of Hellas
22. Falamos de sombras (Democracia) | We Talk About Shadows (Democracy)
23. Um início | A Beginning

Hélia’s sequence based on excerpts from her poems The Third Misery and Indignation (We and Spell are from Indignation; the rest are from The Third Misery). As I have said, she begins citing Hölderlin: What’s the use, what is the purpose of a poet in times of such indigence? She also refers to him several times, especially when she speaks about Athens, as her poem is dedicated to Greece.(*) I was flattered when I saw the Parthenon on the cover of the book; Amélia was left speechless when she read the poem. We both decided this would be our main sequence.

(*) As I explained talking about Periplus, our previous work, Hélia is an enthusiastic hellenist and philhellene, who reinterpreted Hellenic myths from the point of view of female heroines, such as Antigone, Helen, and Medea. In her major poem, The Third Misery, and also in Indignation, both dedicated to Greece, she refers to Jason’s Argonauts, to the ancient Agora of the Hellenic poleis, to Homer’s Odyssey, to The Aegean Islands and The Ruin of Hellas, to the ancient gods, Pan and Alexandria, to Pericles and democracy. When she was awarded the Camões Prize (2015), the most prestigious literary distinction in the Lusophone world, she dedicated it to Hellas, where poetry comes from, without which we would be nothing and have nothing, as she said, concluding her speech with the exclamation Long live Greece! Therefore it’s a double pity that no one is interested in publishing The Third Misery in Greece. Well, this is a fourth misery on the modern Greeks’ part!

The Philhellene poet Friedrich Hölderlin, by Johanna Ebertz (1979)

Hölderlin’s citation in Without Gods is repeated in The Aegean Islands, in a completely different soundscape. Here, after many experiments, I used as a model the introduction to Echo, a composition by Manos Achalinotópoulos, developing it further as a free improvisation. As Manos is in our team, I was able to work on my idea with him. Harris Lambrakis, Amélia and Kyriakos Gouventas improvised, as well. So good, Hélia recited her own poetry!

We and The Ruin of Hellas are twin songs; Hélia’s poems here are also twins! I remember hearing inside me the melody of the Ruin already from the first time I read “Nós, os ateus, nós, os monoteístas,” (We, the atheists, we, the monotheists)… Then, changing the rhythm from five beats to six, I rearranged it to the verses of We.

I admit I knew almost nothing about Hölderlin. Trying to learn more in Wikipedia, I saw the card with the basic information: “Born – 20 March…” (Oh, I thought, same day with me!) “… 1770” (Gee, same year with Ludwig!!) At once, I thought of something that was more than crazy: Well, how about it? Third Misery… Third Symphony! Let me see… To tell you the truth, I didn’t expect much. I started humming the Misery to Beethoven’s Marcia funebre, in the Second Movement of his Eroica. I began with the 25th part of the poem, “Yes, we talk about shadows”… as it seemed to me more suitable. I was amazed! But there was more melody. So, now let’s go back and try the 23rd part, “The third misery is this one”… I was astonished!! A little more and we finish the first part of the Marcia, I thought. This little more was found in the 32nd part of the Misery: “All the squares seem like agoras of yore”… Most fantastic of all: Ludwig’s melody finished with Hélia’s “fervent word of democracy” – incredible!!! IT’S A MIRACLE!..

I searched for Beethoven’s score. I had adapted by heart the same melody in a previous work of mine (The Gold in the Sky); but this time I wanted to be precise. I meticulously rearranged his score, assigning his melodic lines to other instruments, leaving nothing out (I hope). The final crash test came when I presented my loucura to Amélia. As I don’t speak Portuguese, I realized that several words or phrases were out of place, not well adapted with the music. Her help in this matter was crucial. And then it was my turn to convince her that I did not want an operatic voice, I would hate such a voice, and perhaps even Ludwig might not like it – or else, why did he write Sotto voce under the title? I meant to say, I wanted her voice. Done! I’m very proud of the result – even if some purists will moan…

I can say here what I said before about Euripides: I do hope that if Ludwig listened to us, he would smile and applaud approvingly, despite the brickbats thrown by such purists! Featured also here, except Maria Monda, are Rui Vaz, José Manuel David and Pedro Casaes in the vocals, Filipe Raposo on the piano, as well as my friend Kosmás Papadópoulos with his clarinet.

What can anybody compose after such music? I guess Amélia did not even think about it – and she did very well; and presented such a graceful melody for A Beginning, standing next to Ludwig as equal! I consider this composition of hers as the best in our Archipelagos.

17. Hélia Correia | Amélia Muge | Arranged by A. Muge, A. J. Martins, M. Loukovikas
18. Hélia Correia | Michales Loukovikas | Arranged by M. Loukovikas
19. Hélia Correia (A. Muge) | Amélia Muge | Arranged by A. J. Martins, F. Raposo
20. Hélia Correia | Manos Achalinotópoulos, Amélia Muge | Arranged by M. Loukovikas
A free improvisation by H. Lambrakis, M. Achalanitópoulos, A. Muge, K. Gouventas
21. Hélia Correia | Michales Loukovikas | Arranged by M. Loukovikas
22. Hélia Correia | Ludwig van Beethoven (The Third Symphony, Eroica, 1804, Second Movement, first part: Marcia funebre, Adagio assai, Sotto voce) | Adapted-Arranged by M. Loukovikas
23. Hélia Correia | Amélia Muge | Arranged by A. J. Martins, F. Raposo

IX. JÁ SE DÃO AS VOLTAS TODAS | NOSTALGIA AND NOSTOS
24. Νοσταλγία: Το παράπονο του μετανάστη | Nostalgia: A Migrant’s Yearning
25. Nostalgia: Cantar de emigração | Nostalgia: Singing of Emigration
(a. Sodade / b. Run-Run se fue pa’l norte / c. Cantar de emigração / d. A Migrant’s Yearning)
26. Alegria | Jubilation (Alegria)

Rosalía de Castro (L) and Violeta Parra (R)

Our sequence about Migrations and Homecomings. Embracing several ideas of Amélia’s, I combined a rebetiko by Vasilis Tsitsanis (also known with the title Like an outcast I’m drifting about), with Rosalía de Castro and José Niza’s Cantar de emigração, Violeta Parra’s Run-Run se fue pa´l norte, and Armando Soares’ Sodade. Amélia had listened to me singing this rebetiko and sent me an adaptation of hers that reminded me of a fado. This was also included as an instrumental part. Moreover, I’m so happy to have here representatives of all four female choirs that Amélia invited for the project De Viva Voz (I was so deeply moved in that concert!): Cramol en masse, Maria Monda, Catarina Moura from Segue-me à Capela, and Teresa Campos from Sopa de Pedra, plus Rita, Rui, David and Pedro, Paló and Mariana Abrunheiro, Amélia and me – starting off in this adventure Like an outcast drifting about…

José Saramago,
by Carlos Botelho

An Amélia’s adaptation sums up this sequence, where José Saramago’s Alegria coexists with a fine melody by our friend, Giorgos Andreou, who is directing here the Plucked Strings Orchestra of Patras.

24. Vasilis Tsitsanis | Arranged by M. Loukovikas
25. a. Armando Soares (adapted by M. Loukovikas) / b. Violeta Parra / c. Rosalía de Castro (adapted into Portuguese by J. Niza) | José Niza / d. Vasilis Tsitsanis (adapted by A. Muge) | Arranged by M. Loukovikas, A. Muge
26. José Saramago | Giorgos Andreou | Adapted by A. Muge, A.J. Martins. Arranged by G. Andreou

X. O QUE AS ONDAS CONTAM | SEA WAVES TELLING TALES
27. Κύματα μύρια τού πελάγου / Ondas do mar de Vigo | Myriad Waves of the Sea of Vigo)
28. Contas do mar (Bulería de Sines) | Sea Tales of Pearls (Bulería of Sines)

Exuberance, by Penny Warden

Our last sequence begins with another adaptation of Amélia’s, combining a Cantiga de amigo by Martín Codax, with a rebetiko of Smyrna by Panaiotis Tountas, sung in both languages. Working at that time on Tountas’ songs, Women’s Portraits of Rebetiko, “painted” with his excellent Art of Modulation, I used to send copies of my work to Amélia; she thanked me, and wished me well on my birthday, with this beautiful adaptation.

Our finale is a peculiar Bulería I composed in Sines in 2012. We had gone there to arrange for our performance, presenting Periplus in the Festival Músicas do Mundo. We played the Bulería in its initial form in that concert. Since then we have changed the interposed song; what we have now is more suitable for a bulería as it also has a Spanish flavour, and I consider it Pan-Iberian; that’s why I combine Ricardo Parreira’s guitarra portuguesa with Thomás Natsis’ guitarra flamenca. It is sung so beautifully by Catarina Moura and Teresa Campos, together with Maria Monda, Amélia and, at last, a children’s choir. As Maria Graciete Besse aptly remarked analyzing Archipelagos:

“The disc begins with a voice of wisdom that recites Hölderlin’s verses (Amélia’s mother, aged 98) and ends with a children’s choir, thus designing an itinerary that is projected into the future.”

Enjoy!

27. Martín Codax (also adapted into Greek by Michales Loukovikas) | Panaiotis Tountas | Adapted by A. Muge. Arranged by M. Loukovikas (A major medieval Galician minstrel’s Cantiga de amigo combined with a melody by the greatest composer of the rebetiko of Smyrna)
28. Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas, Portuguese traditional | Arranged by M. Loukovikas, A. Muge

October 2017

● See also: PERIPLUS | Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (Chronicle) | GIORGOS ANDREOU on “ARCHiPELAGOS”
| MARIA GRACIETE BESSE on “ARCHiPELAGOS” | MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

ARCHiPELAGOS
Nucleus
Amélia Muge: voice, guitarra braguesa, percussion | Michales Loukovikas: voice, accordion, sound effects
Manos Achalinotópoulos: clarino (folk clarinet), voice | Kyriakos Gouventas: violin, viola (5-string violin) | Harris Lambrakis: ney, recorder (pipes) | Maria Monda trio: Sofia Adriana Portugal, Susana Quaresma, Tânia Cardoso | Dimitris Mystakidis: guitar, bouzouki, baglamás, tzourás (the bouzouki family) | Ricardo Parreira: guitarra portuguesa | António Quintino: double bass | Filipe Raposo: piano, accordion, synthesizers | José Salgueiro: percussion
Guests (pro-bono)
Mariana Abrunheiro: voice | Catarina Anacleto: cello, voice | Niovi Benou: claps | Teresa Campos: voice | Pedro Casaes: voice | José Manuel David: voice | Ana Dias: harp | Kostas Hanís: vibraphone | Andreas Karakotas: voice | António José Martins: music box, percussion | Catarina Moura: voice | Thomás Natsis: flamenco guitar, claps | Paló: voice | Kosmás Papadópoulos: clarinet | Rita Maria: voice | Rui Vaz: voice
Plus
Hélia Correia & Maria José Muge: recitation | Cramol: female vocal group of the Workers’ Library of Oeiras | PSO: Plucked Strings Orchestra ‘Thanasis Thipinakis’ of the Patras Municipality | Children’s Choir, dir. Catarina Anacleto: Santiago Fantasia, Gabriel Leite, Sophia Van Epps, Ana Pita, Marta Semblano, Patrícia Arens Teixeira.
Authors
Manos Achalinotópoulos | Giorgos Andreou | Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) | Rosalía de Castro (1837 – 1885) | Martín Codax (13th – 14th centuries) | Hélia Correia | João de Deus (1830 – 1896) | Euripides (c. 480 – 406 BCE) | José Gomes Ferreira (1900 – 1985) | Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 – 1843) | Anonymous Hurrian (c. 1400 BCE) | Fernando Lopes-Graça (1904 – 1994) | Michales Loukovikas | Giorgos Mitsakis (1921 – 1993) | Amélia Muge | José Niza (1938 – 2011) | Violeta Parra (1917 – 1967) | Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935) | Sappho (c. 630 – 570 BCE) | José Saramago (1922-2010) | Armando Soares (1920 – 2007) | Panaiotis Tountas (1886-1942) | Vasilis Tsitsanis (1915 – 1984)

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PERIPLUS | Deambulações luso-gregas (Crónica)

PERIPLUS | Deambulações luso-gregas (Crónica)

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ ΠΕΡΙΠΛΟΥΣ | Ελληνοπορτογαλικές περιηγήσεις (Χρονικό)
/ENGLISH/ PERIPLUS | Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (Chronicle)

O Periplus não é um cruzeiro. É uma tentativa de construção de
pontes interculturais e de pesquisar o passado a bem do futuro.
A viagem continua… (Michales Loukovikas)

A. DAS AUSÊNCIAS
1. Uma pena que me coube
2. Όσο βαρούν τα σίδερα | Pesado como ferro

Periplus, edição portuguesa

Periplus levanta âncora da “Terra das Ausências” com (quem sabe) a “Menina Lisboa” cantando uma composição de Amélia Muge dedicada à Grécia, um país julgado in absentia que quanto mais se contacta mais falta nos faz. São “Penas de Ausência”, semelhantes às da viúva de “Pesado como ferro”. Musicalmente, a viagem começa com o acompanhamento “característico” das canções portuguesas – quando um “estranho” som emerge: o clarino (clarinete tradicional) tocado por Manos Achalinotópoulos com a técnica peculiar, tradicional, usada pelos músicos dos Balcãs e da Ásia Menor, combinado com a guitarra portuguesa de Ricardo Parreira. ● Manos, que gravou em Atenas, fez dois improvisos que editei usando ambas as gravações.

As “Deambulações luso-gregas” tornam-se mais evidentes na segunda canção de origem cretense marcada por uma forte influência da Ásia Menor. No nosso período de pesquisa, enquanto trocávamos materais relacionados com as nossas músicas tradicionais, enviei esta canção como um exemplo excelente da canção cretense urbana. O que aconteceu a seguir foi qualquer coisa de extraordinário: Amélia respondeu com um… mp3, interpretando esta canção da forma como “se apropriou dela”, adaptando a letra para português e a música como se fosse um tema medieval, ocidental. Fiquei espantado! Era como se me tivesse ouvido a cantar a canção nalguma corte medieval e depois, ao regressar a casa, tentasse recriá-la; mas de facto, o que fez foi expressá-la à sua maneira, criando uma variação. Foi praticamente deste modo que a música se desenvolveu durante milénios, até começarem a ser usadas as partituras e os registos fonográficos. E foi esta a razão porque fiz o arranjo da canção mantendo estas duas variações.

1. Amélia Muge | Arranjo: F. Raposo
2. Tradicional, versão de Creta | Adaptação para português e para música antiga ocidental: A. Muge; arranjo: M. Loukovikas

B. DOS CAMINHOS
3. Caminhos de seda
4. Caminhos pentatónicos africanos
5. Caminhos pentatónicos epiróticos

Quando Amélia compôs esta espécie de morna desafiou-me: “Agora continua até à Grécia a partir de Cabo Verde!” A minha resposta deu-me a chave para continuar: “Como é que eu vou daqui até à Grécia? Temos a África pelo meio!” Só aí pensei na escala pentatónica que caracteriza alguma da música africana e da região do Épiro, na Grécia. Os dados estavam lançados! Harris Lambrakis deu-me depois “uma mãozinha” com a sua “flauta mágica” (ney)…

Parafraseando, como ponto de partida, algumas das frases quer da melodia quer da lírica do tema de Amélia, o meu trabalho nos “Caminhos pentatónicos” foi mais racional que o resultado da inspiração, baseado num ritmo de 10 tempos, coros e linhas melódicas cíclicas que funcionaram muito bem.

Chegados à Grécia, escolhi combinar esta paisagem sonora com uma canção de emigração do Épiro, “Ξενιτεμένο μου πουλί (Meu pássaro emigrante)”, baseada num ritmo de 4 tempos. Como acrescento pedi a Manos Achalinotópoulos, que não é apenas um excelente tocador de clarino mas também um cantor maravilhoso, para interpretar a canção, dotando-a do seu refinado “toque vocal” tradicional.

3. Amélia Muge | Arranjo: F. Raposo
4. Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas e A. Muge
5. Tradicional, versão do Épiro | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas

C. DOS CANTOS
6. Φαίνου | Deixa brilhar (Ἐπιτάφιος | Epitáfio)
7. Canto em periplus

Amélia é amiga de longa data de Hélia Correia, compondo para poemas seus desde os anos 90 – de que é um excelente exemplo “A tentação”. Quando me encontrei pela primeira vez com Hélia estávamos no processo de construção do nosso Periplus. Depois de uma conversa sobre a antiga Hélade, como ela é uma helenista e filelena, ao falarmos do nosso trabalho disse-lhe: “Sabes, Hélia, também vamos ter no Periplus o Epitáfio de Seikilos”. A sua completamente inesperada resposta deixou-me de boca aberta. Sem qualquer comentário, começou a cantar em Grego antigo: “Ὅσον ζῇς φαίνου | μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ· | πρὸς ὀλίγον ἔστι τὸ ζῆν· | τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.” (Deixa brilhar a tua vida enquanto dura; não te entregues de nenhum modo à tristeza; a vida é curta e o tempo cobra o que lhe é devido). Foi uma reacção que eu só esperaria vir de um entre mil músicos gregos: os outros não conheceriam esta canção (!) a mais antiga encontrada completa, datada ca. séc. I (algures entre 200 AEC e um pouco depois de 200 EC). Mais tarde, disse à Amélia: “O Seikilos tem de ser cantado pela Hélia!” E de facto ela cantou-o maravilhosamente!

A Amélia encontrou-me na Net em 2009 graças ao meu trabalho baseado na poesia de Ares Alexandrou, Το Χρυσάφι τ’ Ουρανού, editado em Portugal em livro-cd O Ouro do Céu / Ares Alexandrou por Michales Loukovikas. Desapontado com a desatenção e não valorização com que o meu trabalho foi recebido na Grécia, tinha decidido não compor mais nada. A Amélia esforçou-se bastante para me convencer do contrário. Depois de repetidos falhanços teve uma ideia brilhante: fez um poema e compôs uma primeira parte pedindo-me para lhe dar seguimento. Não podia continuar dizer não; seria ingrato da minha parte. ● Quando ouvi o que ela compôs fiquei impressionado pela semelhança com o Epitáfio de Seikilos, que a Amélia, é claro, desconhecia. Assim, quando fiz o arranjo do “Canto em Periplus”, utilizei a composição do Seikilos como introdução (“Deixa brilhar”), bem como uma citação dentro do canto, adaptada para português por Hélia Correia: Ó mortal, deixa brilhar, | a luz da vida no teu rosto; | que a morte vai cobrar imposto | e a todos abate, sem dó por igual.

6. Seikilos | Adaptação para português: H. Correia; arranjo: M. Loukovikas
7. Amélia Muge | Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas

D. DAS ILHAS
8. Παράνομο σημείωμα | Nota ilegal
9. Calma / Ἰθάκη | Ítaca

Ares Alexandrou, Constantine Cavafy, Fernando Pessoa

O Ouro do Céu, nosso ponto de encontro, está em destaque no Periplus com três temas arranjados desta vez por Filipe Raposo, para que houvesse um outro tipo de abordagem às minhas composições. Recordo-me como se fosse ontem como fiquei deliciado quando ouvi pela primeira vez a Nota ilegal, adaptada e cantada para português pela Amélia. “Compus um fado!”, fantasiei sorrindo, enquanto assobiava a minha composição com as ornamentações vocais feitas por ela…

Se “Nota ilegal” é uma ilha-pesadelo de exílio, “Calma”, de Fernando Pessoa, composta por Amélia, é uma ilha de sonho, onde inserimos um excerto do poema “Ítaca” de Constantine Cavafy. Há uma probabilidade dos dois grandes poetas se terem encontrado num barco que se dirigia para Londres e que continuaria depois para os Estados Unidos, mesmo antes da Grande Depressão de 1929.

8. Ares Alexandrou | Michales Loukovikas | Adaptação para português: A. Muge; arranjo: F. Raposo
9. Fernando Pessoa e Constantine Cavafy | Amélia Muge | Arranjo: F. Raposo

E. DAS VOZES
10. Cântico do país emerso
11. Palavra dada

Esta composição de Amélia para o poema (excerto) de Natália Correia, estava para ser, quando fiz o seu arranjo, a primeira do Periplus (mais tarde escolhemos “Uma pena que me coube” para uma abertura mais “calma”). Optei por começar com um tributo à colaboração entre Carlos Paredes e Charlie Haden, propondo uma improvisação entre o contrabaixo de Kostas Theodorou e a guitarra portuguesa de Ricardo Parreira com o piano de Filipe Raposo. Além disso, quando Amélia me mostrou a melodia num teclado, encontrei semelhanças com o primeiro Hino délfico feito provavelmente por Ateneu em 138 AEC. Assim, entre os versos de Natália, juntei três Interlúdios, adaptando este hino (no I e III) e a canção “Não sou daqui” de Amélia (no II), do seu álbum homónimo (que considero a sua obra-prima). A utilização deste tema surgiu porque as palavras do seu título são iguais às primeiras palavras do excerto do Cântico de Natália.

“Palavra dada”, a mais complicada em termos de arranjo e edição de todo o Periplus, começa pelo fascínio e interacção da Amélia com um Syrtós cretense. A origem desta dança levou-me a um músico heleno da antiguidade, Mesomedes de Creta (séc. II) e ao seu Ὕμνος εἰς Νέμεσιν (Hino a Némesis), a deusa que exerce represálias contra os que são arrogantes (húbris [ὕβρις]: arrogância perante os deuses). Começando com o ritmo original de 15 tempos, muda-se a meio para os 4 tempos do Syrtos, adoptando a versão adaptada por Ross Daly, combinando-a com as Pragas algarvias. À medida que a música cresce, com o violino de Kyriakos Gouventas, passamos para a tradicional portuguesa Cantiga de rega; quando regressamos a Creta, o finale é apimentado com mais pragas ditas por Teresa Muge (irmã de Amélia) e Margarida Guerreiro.

10. Natália Correia | Amélia Muge | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas > Ateneu (Interlúdios I e III); Amélia Muge (Interlúdio II)
11. Mesomedes (Némesis); Tradicional de Creta (Syrtós, adaptação: R. Daly); Tradicional portuguesa e Amélia Muge (Cantiga de rega); Amélia Muge (Pragas) | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas e A. Muge

F. DOS EMBALOS
12. Νανούρισμα | Canção de embalar
13. Dorme, dorme

Noite estrelada, de Vincent Van Gogh

Outra canção no Periplus com poesia de Ares Alexandrou é a “Canção de embalar”, adaptada para português por Amélia. Na sua forma original (O Ouro do Céu), está dividida em seis partes, à semelhança de um sonho. Na versão do Periplus ouvimos a primeira parte da canção antecedida por excertos de canções tradicionais de embalar e lenga-lengas.

Em ligação com o tema anterior está uma tocante canção de embalar composta por Amélia e arranjada por José Martins e Filipe Raposo. Este “embalo” é cantado a uma menina e não a um menino, como é usual nas canções de embalar tradicionais.

12. Ares Alexandrou | Michales Loukovikas | Αdaptação para português: A. Muge; arranjo: F. Raposo (introdução: A. Muge e M. Loukovikas)
13. Amélia Muge | Arranjo: J. Martins e F. Raposo

G. DOS AMORES
14. Της τριανταφυλλιάς τα φύλλα | A folha da rosa
15. Da folhinha de uma rosa

Uma rosa em Mi sustenido, de Ernie Benton

Quando lhe enviei esta tradicional canção de amor da Ásia Menor e Esmirna, a Amélia reconheceu, espantada, que o poema era idêntico ao de uma canção tradicional galega que tinha gravado anteriormente com o ensemble de Vigo, Camerata Meiga. Não podemos ter a certeza se alguns gregos e iberos tiveram a mesma ideia (“vou vestir-me com a folha [pétala] de uma rosa”), ou se foi uma ideia que viajou de um lugar para o outro. Em Periplus, convidei Ziad Rajab, um músico amigo Sírio-Palestiniano, para tocar o oud. Cantei a primeira parte do tema em grego, enquanto o resto foi adaptado e cantado por Amélia em português.

Aqui a canção da Ásia Menor ecoa na Galiza através de uma “ponte” em Guimarães. Esta “ponte” é uma versão simplificada da canção grega (o ritmo de 9 tempos de uma dança de pares – antikrystós – passa para um ritmo de 4 tempos) adaptada por Amélia para o Outra Voz, um coro local com quem tivemos uma intensa e especial colaboração. Ainda lembro a minha enorme emoção quando os ouvi pela primeira vez cantando esta adaptação, que o grupo acabou por adoptar como parte do seu repertório. Quando se entra na canção galega, juntam-se outras vozes convidadas e a canção termina num improviso onde no fim se entrecruzam novamente os dois temas tradicionais do Ocidente e do Oriente.

14. Tradicional, versão da Asia Menor e de Esmirna | Adaptação para português: A. Muge; arranjo: M. Loukovikas
15. Tradicional grega e galaico-portuguesa | Adaptação musical e poética em português: A. Muge; arranjo: F. Raposo

H. DA ALMA | DE PROFUNDIS
16. Se o lamento apenas fosse
17. Τα ἔνδον ῥήματα | Os meus ditames

Um emocionante e pungente lamento composto por Amélia começando no Épiro, com uma dupla improvisão à moda tradicional feita ao clarino por Manos Achalinotópoulos. Criou-se sobre esta sonoridade a atmosfera da tragédia grega, com o coro da Outra Voz (arranjo de José Martins e Filipe Raposo), usando basicamente o ritmo de um solene zeibékiko. É de facto incrível ela conseguir compor para este peculiar ritmo de 9 tempos logo que se familiarizou com ele, pela sua proximidade à cultura helénica.

“Sejas amigo ou inimigo não o reveles em parte alguma. | Aqui me encontro prisioneiro obedecendo aos meus próprios ditames.” Ares Alexandrou usou este couplet como nota de rodapé (este é o seu título original) ou como post scriptum no seu último livro de poesia, parafraseando Simónides, que compôs para os espartanos caídos na batalha das Termópilas o famoso epitáfio-epigrama: “Ó, estrangeiro, vai dizer aos Lacedemónios que nós aqui | jazemos em obediência aos seus ditames”. No Periplus, a nota de rodapé de Ares tem, musicalmente, um ostinato menor que no meu original (O Ouro do Céu), mas Amélia cria o contraste com as suas vocalizações soando como as das Erínias, estendendo o trágico elemento do “Lamento” a “Os Meus ditames” que adapta e recita em português.

16. Amélia Muge | Arranjo: J. Martins e F. Raposo
17. Ares Alexandrou | Michales Loukovikas | Adaptação para português: A. Muge; arranjo: F. Raposo

I. DAS TASCAS E TAVERNAS
18. Um qualquer quê
19. Abertura da taverna
20. Τα μαγκάκια τής ταβέρνας | Os mangas da taverna

O Fado, de José Malhoa (1910)

Esta sequência acontece como se fosse uma gravação ao vivo da transformação do ambiente de uma tasca de fado no de uma taverna de rebético. É a realização de uma nossa ideia fixa para uma cena fantástica algures numa taverna de um porto durante um tempestuoso mau tempo, e onde as tripulações dos navios imobilizados se reúnem cantando cada uma delas as suas canções até que acontece começarem a cantar em conjunto. Tentámos dar vida a esta cena começando com uma canção de amor da Amélia evocando o fado. Segue-se depois uma necessária “ponte” com um instrumental de cortar a respiração ligando um improviso de fado e rebético com Ricardo Parreira (guitarra portuguesa) e Dimitris Mystakidis (bouzouki), que nos leva ao rebético finale.

Panaiotes Tountas, que se afirma como compositor deste rebético, chamou-lhe “Menor da taverna (Vlamáquia)” (diminutivo de vlames, um sinónimo de mangas). Indirectamente, Tountas refere-se claramente ao instrumental “Menor do tekke” que Iohannes Chalkiás (ou Jack Gregory) gravou nos EUA com um longo e fantástico taqsim (improvisação) no começo. Por isso a melodia parece ser tradicional. Existem várias teorias sobre a etimologia de vlames e mangas. Escolhemos como título “Os mangas da taverna” porque a palavra pode ter vindo do ibérico manga, lembrando que os antigos manges gregos costumavam vestir apenas uma manga do seu casaco. Uma boa combinação com a canção tradicional portuguesa “A mangar” cantada pelos manganões, parecidos com os manges gregos.

Panaiotes Tountas

A sessão de gravação em Lisboa da “Entrada na taverna” é algo que nunca esquecerei. Expliquei ao Ricardo e ao Pedro Pinhal (viola), que deviam tocar criando “ondas”, deixando espaços “abertos”, para o Dimitris, que gravaria mais tarde em Salónica. Por fim fi-los escutar o taqsim de Chalkiás, como fonte de inspiração. O resultado foi magia pura – um dos melhores solos de fado que alguma vez ouvi – ainda por cima em diálogo com um bouzouki! Quando regressei a Salónica, Dimitris juntou-se na perfeição ao duo português. Finalmente transferi o trio para… a taverna do porto de forma a pudermos ouvi-los tocar em conjunto! Esta é a magia chamada edição…

18. Amélia Muge | Arranjo: F. Raposo
19. Improviso instrumental de fado e de rebético por Ricardo Parreira e Dimitris Mystakidis | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas
20. Panaiotis Tountas | Rebético tradicional | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas

J. TÃO LONGE, TÃO PERTO
21. Dolor, ai dolor
22. Το βλέμμα σου πού να τελειώνει; | O teu olhar onde acaba? (Versão grega )
23. O teu olhar onde acaba? | Το βλέμμα σου πού να τελειώνει; (Versão portuguesa)
24. Zum zum

As primeiras três partes da sequência final são de facto uma única e longa canção. Na altura em que Amélia tentava em vão que eu voltasse a compor, mandou-me este poema. Passaram-se meses até que numa noite tive um sonho onde tinha rearranjado a sua canção “Arena” (Não sou daqui) como se fosse um rebético! Enfim, tive de passar horas ao piano para chegar à conclusão que o que se passa num sonho não quer necessariamente dizer que possa acontecer na vida real. No entanto o meu tempo não foi gasto em vão. Gradualmente fui deixando para trás a “Arena”, improvisando num outro aliciante modo musical! Felizmente, gravei este improviso e mandei-o para a Amélia, que por sua vez adaptou o seu poema à minha melodia e musicou a sua versão original (“Dolor, ai, Dolor”). Do meu lado, adaptei o seu poema para grego e convidei Eleni Tsaligopoulou para cantar a versão grega; convidei também Zoe Tiganouria para tocar acordeão. No fim da versão portuguesa Eleni e Amélia cantam “Dolor” em conjunto! Na opinião do compositor e pianista grego, Giorgos Andreou: “Um momento de excepção do ponto de vista emocional (e que considero ser o climax do CD) é a interpretação paralela da canção ‘O teu olhar onde acaba?’ por Eleni Tsaligopoulou em grego e Amélia Muge em português.”

Embora seja um tema composto por Amélia e a mim dedicado como prenda de aniversário, “Zum zum” é mais do que isso. Evoca “Run run se fué pa’l norte” de Violeta Parra, como uma espécie de tributo ao seu trabalho enraizado na canção tradicional chilena, exprimindo a vida e os problemas do seu povo. Zum zum significa em português uma espécie de rumor, passando de boca em boca, de uma pessoa para outra. Acorda, diz, porque “Todas as flores do campo / Todas as aves do céu / Todos os peixes do mar / Vieram à tua porta / P’ra te saudar / P’ra te cantar / Que há um zum zum / Que vem do sul”… É uma espécie de canção ibérico-latino-americana, que se liga com a melodia de “O teu olhar onde acaba?” – usada aqui como introdução. O ritmo de 9 tempos no fim da canção anuncia a chegada do Zum zum à Grécia – algo que também é validado pelas… cigarras!

Anel de prata com uma cigarra em latão, inspirado num antigo anel grego (séc. V AEC)

● Eu e Amélia estávamos em Escópelos, Grécia, de férias. Fomos um dia para uma praia cheia de gente e por isso sentámo-nos à sombra, debaixo de uma árvore, perto do bar da praia. Um altifante, instalado num ramo, tocava sobre as nossas cabeças. “Elas estão a tempo”, disse Amélia. Perante a minha perplexidade, explicou: “As cigarras ‘cantam’ a tempo, não saem do ritmo!” “Nem pensar!”, respondi. Mas rapidamente admiti que ela tinha razão! De facto elas seguiam muito facilmente o ritmo das canções pop. Tinham algum problema em acertar quando o ritmo mudava para alguma canção brasileira mas depressa se adaptavam… Eu estava fascinado! ● De volta a Lisboa tive uma ideia completamente louca enquanto trabalhava no “Zum zum”. Procurei sons de cigarra na net, mas o que encontrei foram “coros” de cigarras. Procurei então por cicadas, cigales, cigalas, mas continuava a não encontrar o que procurava – até que experimentei pela palavra grega τζιτζίκια: apareceu uma enorme abundância de sons e entre eles de cigarras solitárias (o que eu estava à procura), para que pudessem ser “amestradas” (através da “magia da edição”) para “‘cantar’ em conjunto” com o coro, mantendo os ritmos do “Zum zum”! Quando acabei, convidei a Amélia e o José Martins para escutarem o coro das minhas cigarras especialmente “amestradas”. O que nos rimos! É o significado da frase “amostras de cigarras gregas amestradas” mencionada no livrinho do Periplus em referência a mais esta minha contribuição para o trabalho. ● E as cigarras não apareceram apenas no CD: no fim dos nossos concertos do Periplus, a audiência saía dos teatros ouvindo as τζιτζίκια gregas!

21. Amélia Muge | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas
22. Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas | Adaptação para grego e arranjo: M. Loukovikas
23. Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas – e Amélia Muge (finale) | Adaptação para grego e arranjo: M. Loukovikas
24. Amélia Muge | Amélia Muge – e Michales Loukovikas (introdução) | Arranjo: J. Martins e M. Loukovikas

● Ver também: MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA sobre “PERIPLUS” | GIORGOS ANDREOU sobre “PERIPLUS”

Periplus, edição internacional

TROUPE MUSICAL do PERIPLUS: Amélia Muge: voz, guitarra braguesa, coros, fala, sons de ambiente. | Michales Loukovikas: voz, coros, fala, amostras de vozes e sons, estalos, percussão, acordeão, palmas.
António Quintino: contrabaixo. | Filipe Raposo: piano, teclados, acordeão. | Harris Lambrakis: ney (flauta oriental), flauta de bisel. | José Martins: percussão, kalimba, sintetizador, sons, palmas. | José Salgueiro: percussão, palmas. | Kyriakos Gouventas: violin, viola, bandolim. | Manos Achalinotopoulos: clarino (clarinete folk), voz, coros. | Ricardo Parreira: guitarra portuguesa.

CONVIDADOS ESPECIAIS: Hélia Correia, escritora: voz. | Eleni Tsaligopoulou, cantora: lengalengas, risos, coros, voz. | Outra Voz, coro dos cidadãos de Guimarães: sons de água, de vento, de mar, de ambiente, coros, lengalengas, respirações, falas.

OUTROS PARTICIPANTES: André Maia: fala. | Catarina Anacleto: violoncelo, coros. | Cristina Benedita: coros. | Dimitris Mystakidis: bouzouki, djurá, guitarra de rebético. | Eduardo Salgueiro: palmas. | Francisco e Sofia Van Epps: lengalengas, risos. | Irene Bakalopoulou: harpa. | José Barros: bandolim, cavaquinho, guitarra braguesa, coros. | José Manuel David: kalimba, voz, trompa, gaita, coros. | Kostas Theodorou: contrabaixo, percussão. | Mariana Abrunheiro: coros. | Margarida Guerreiro: pragas. | Pedro Pinhal: viola de fado. | Rui Vaz: fala, coros. | Teresa Muge: voz, pragas. | Ziad Rajab: oud. | Zoe Tiganouria: acordeão.

AUTORES: Amélia Muge | Ares Alexandrou (1922 – 1979) | Athenaeus (séc. II AEC) | Constantine Cavafy (1863 – 1933) | Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935) | Hélia Correia | Mesomedes (início do séc. II EC) | Michales Loukovikas | Natália Correia (1923 – 1993) | Panaiotis Tountas (1886 – 1942) | Seikilos (ca séc. I EC)

As damas do rebético, de A. Tassos (1970)

PERIPLUS | Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (Chronicle)

PERIPLUS | Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (Chronicle)

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ ΠΕΡΙΠΛΟΥΣ | Ελληνοπορτογαλικές περιηγήσεις (Χρονικό)
/PORTUGUÊS/ PERIPLUS | Deambulações luso-gregas (Crónica)

Periplus is not a cruise. It’s an effort to construct intercultural bridges
and explore the past for the future’s sake. The voyage goes on…

Michales Loukovikas

A. DAS AUSÊNCIAS (ON ABSENCES)
1. Uma pena que me coube (A Pain That Has Fallen to My Lot)
2. Όσο βαρούν τα σίδερα | Pesado como ferro (Heavy as Iron)

Periplus, the Portuguese edition

Periplus sails out from the “Land of Absences” with “Lady Lisbon” singing a composition by Amélia Muge, a Portuguese song dedicated to Greece, a country tried in absentia, a land that the more someone is linked to, the more he misses it. It’s a “Pain of Absences”, like that of a widow’s pain, which is “Heavy as Iron”. Musically, our voyage starts with a “normal” Portuguese accompaniment – though a “strange” sound emerges: the clarino (folk clarinet) played by Manos Achalinotopoulos with the peculiar, traditional technique used by folk musicians in the Balkans and Asia Minor, combined with Ricardo Parreira’s guitarra portuguesa. ● Manos, who recorded in Athens, improvised twice on the song and I finally chose to edit separately both “takes”.

The “Luso-Hellenic Wanderings” become far more obvious in the following Cretan song marked by strong Anatolian influence. In our period of research, when we exchanged traditional material, I sent it to Amélia as an excellent example of a Cretan urban song. What followed was quite extraordinary: she answered with… an mp3, interpreting this song the way she “understood” it, adapting both its music and lyrics into Portuguese as a medieval Occidental song. I was amazed! It was as if she listened to me singing the song in some medieval royal court, and then, back at home, tried to recreate it; but in fact, what she sang was her own impression of the song, creating a variation. That’s how music mostly developed for millennia until it started being published (with sheet music and phonograph records). That’s why I arranged the song keeping these two versions together.

1. Amélia Muge | Arranged by F. Raposo
2. Traditional, version of Crete | Adapted into Portuguese & as an old occidental song by A. Muge; arranged by M. Loukovikas

B. DOS CAMINHOS (ON ROUTES)
3. Caminhos de seda (Silk Routes)
4. Caminhos pentatónicos africanos (African Pentatonic Routes)
5. Caminhos pentatónicos epiróticos (Epirotic Pentatonic Routes)

After Amélia had composed this morna-like song, she challenged me: “Now take it from Cape Verde to Greece!” My answer gave me the key to continue: “But how can I take it to Greece? We have Africa in between!” And then, I thought of the pentatonic scale that mostly characterizes both the African and the Epirotic music. The die was cast! Besides, I had Harris Lambrakis to give me a hand – with his “magic flute” (ney) in hand…

Paraphrasing some of Amélia’s phrases, from either lyrics or music, as a starting point, my work on the “Pentatonic Routes” turned out to be more rational than inspirational, based on a 10-beat rhythm, vocals, and cycling melodic lines, which all worked well.

Entering Greece, I decided to combine this soundscape with the Epirotic migrant song “Ξενιτεμένο μου πουλί (My Migrant Bird)”, based on a 4-beat rhythm. And additionally, I asked Manos Achalinotópoulos, who is not only an excellent clarino player but also a wonderful singer, to interpret the song, endowing it with his fine traditional “touch”.

3. Amélia Muge | Arranged by F. Raposo
4. Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas | Arranged by M. Loukovikas & A. Muge
5. Traditional, version of Epirus | Arranged by M. Loukovikas

C. DOS CANTOS (ON SONGS)
6. Φαίνου | Deixa brilhar (Shine) / Ἐπιτάφιος | Epitáfio (Epitaph)
7. Canto em periplus (Song in Periplus)

Amélia is an old friend of Hélia Correia’s, setting lyrics of hers to music since the 90s – an excellent example is “A tentação (Temptation)”. When I first met Hélia, we were in the process of working on our Periplus. After a discussion about ancient Hellas, as she is a Hellenist and a philhellene, we started talking about our work and then I told her: “You know, Hélia, in Periplus we also have Seikilos Epitaph”. Her quite unexpected answer left me with my mouth open. She said nothing at all, but started singing in ancient Hellenic: “Ὅσον ζῇς φαίνου, | μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ· | πρὸς ὀλίγον ἔστι τὸ ζῆν· | τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.” (While you live, shine; | have no grief at all; | life exists only for a short while, | and time demands his due). That was an answer I would expect to hear from only one out of one thousand Greek musicians: the rest would know nothing (!) about the oldest extant complete song in the world, dating to ca 1st century (sometime between 200 BCE and a little after 200 CE). Later on, I told Amélia: “Seikilos must be sung by Hélia!” She did sing it wonderfully!

Amélia spotted me in the Net in 2009 thanks to my work based on Ares Alexandrou’s poetry, Το Χρυσάφι τ’ Ουρανού (The Gold in the Sky), issued in Portugal as O Ouro do Céu / Ares Alexandrou por Michales Loukovikas. Disappointed by the lack of feedback and appreciation in Greece, I had decided to compose no more. Amélia tried hard to convince me otherwise. After failing repeatedly, she had a bright idea: she wrote the lyrics and composed the first part of a song, asking me to finish it. I could resist no more; I would be ungrateful. ● When I listened to her part of the composition, I was struck by its resemblance to Seikilos Epitaph. Until then, of course, Amélia also knew nothing about it. So when I arranged our “Song in Periplus”, I used Seikilos’ composition as an intro (“Shine”), as well as a citation within the canto, adapted into Portuguese by Hélia Correia: “Ó mortal, deixa brilhar, | a luz da vida no teu rosto; | que a morte vai cobrar imposto | e a todos abate, sem dó por igual.” (Mortal man, you need to shine, | having the light of life on your face; | death shall levy heavy taxes | and all men will perish without leniency).

6. Seikilos | Adapted into Portuguese by H. Correia; arranged by M. Loukovikas
7. Amélia Muge | Amélia Muge & Michales Loukovikas | Arranged by M. Loukovikas

D. DAS ILHAS (ON ISLANDS)
8. Παράνομο σημείωμα | Nota ilegal (Illegal Note)
9. Calma (Calm) / Ἰθάκη | Ítaca (Ithaca)

Ares Alexandrou, Constantine Cavafy, Fernando Pessoa

Being our meeting point, Ares Alexandrou’s The Gold in the Sky is featured in Periplus with three songs, arranged by Filipe Raposo, for I wished to have some fresh approach to my compositions. I still remember quite vividly how delighted I was when I listened to Amélia for the first time singing her own adaptation into Portuguese: “I composed a fado!”, I fantasized smiling, while whistling my composition with her own ornaments…

If “Illegal Note” is a nightmarish isle of exile, Fernando Pessoa’s “Calm”, set to music by Amélia, is a dreamy island, where she inserted an excerpt from Constantine Cavafy’s “Ithaca”. There’s a chance that the two great poets met on a ship sailing to England and the USA, just before the Great Depression of 1929.

8. Ares Alexandrou | Michales Loukovikas | Adapted into Portuguese by A. Muge; arranged by F. Raposo
9. Fernando Pessoa & Constantine Cavafy | Amélia Muge | Arranged by F. Raposo

E. DAS VOZES (ON VOICES)
10. Cântico do país emerso (Ode to an Emersed Land)
11. Palavra dada (Word of Honour)

This poem (excerpt) of Natália Correia’s, set to music by Amélia, was meant to be the first track of Periplus when I arranged it (later we chose to have a “smoother” start with “A Pain That Has Fallen to My Lot”). I opted to start with a tribute to the collaboration of Carlos Paredes and Charlie Haden, with a free improvisation on Kostas Theodorou’s double bass and Ricardo Parreira’s guitarra portuguesa, adding Filipe Raposo’s piano. Besides, when Amélia played her melody for me on a keyboard, I found similarities with the first Delphic Hymn composed probably by Athenaeus ca 138 BCE. Thence, among Natália’s verses, I added three Interludes, adapting this hymn (in I and III), and Amélia’s song “Não sou daqui (I’m Not From Here”, in Interlude II), from her homonymous album (that I consider to be her masterpiece), because these are exactly the first words in the excerpt from Natália’s Cântico.

“Word of Honour”, the most complex track to arrange and edit in Periplus, began with Amélia’s fascination and experimentation with a Cretan Syrtos. The origin of this dance led me to an ancient Hellene musician, Mesomedes of Crete (2nd century CE), and his composition Ὕμνος εἰς Νέμεσιν (Hymn to Nemesis), the goddess enacting retribution against those who succumb to hubris (ὕβρις: arrogance before the gods). Starting off with the original 15-beat rhythm, we turn in the middle to the four beats of the Syrtos, adopting a version that was adapted by Ross Daly, and also combining it with Algarvian Pragas (Anathemas, Curses). As the music builds up, when Kyriakos Gouventas’ role with his violin is instrumental, we pass to a traditional Portuguese Cantiga de rega (Watering Song); and then we return to Crete for the finale that is peppered with more pragas by Amélia’s sister, Teresa Muge, and Margarida Guerreiro.

10. Natália Correia | Amélia Muge | Arranged by M. Loukovikas > Athenaeus (Interludes I & III); Amélia Muge (Interlude II)
11. Mesomedes (Nemesis); Cretan Traditional (Syrtos, adapted by R. Daly); Portuguese traditional & Amélia Muge (Watering Song); Amélia Muge (Pragas) | Arranged by M. Loukovikas & A. Muge

F. DOS EMBALOS (ON LULLABIES)
12. Νανούρισμα | Canção de embalar (Lullaby)
13. Dorme, dorme (Sleep, Sleep)

Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh

Another song on poetry by Ares Alexandrou in Periplus is “Lullaby”, adapted by Amélia into Portuguese. In its original form (The Gold in the Sky), it consisted of six parts, and resembled a dream. Here we listen to the first part of the song with additional lullabies and children’s songs in the beginning.

Connected with it is a lullaby composed by Amélia and arranged by José Martins and Filipe Raposo. The peculiar thing here is that the lullaby is sung to a girl (and not to a boy, as it is “normal” in traditional lullabies).

12. Ares Alexandrou | Michales Loukovikas | Adapted into Portuguese by A. Muge; arranged by F. Raposo (intro: A. Muge & M. Loukovikas)
13. Amélia Muge | Arranged by J. Martins & F. Raposo

G. DOS AMORES (ON LOVES)
14. Της τριανταφυλλιάς τα φύλλα | A folha da rosa (The Leaves of a Rose)
15. Da folhinha de uma rosa (The Foliage of a Rose)

A Rose in E Sharp, by Ernie Benton

When I sent this traditional love song from Asia Minor and Smyrma to Amélia, she was astonished since its lyrics are identical with a traditional Galician song she had recorded before with the local ensemble Camerata Meiga. We can’t be sure if some Greeks and Iberians had the same idea (“I’ll get dressed with the foliage of a rose”), or if it’s an idea that voyaged with sailors from one place to the other. In Periplus, I invited Ziad Rajab, my Syro-Palestinian friend, to play the oud, and sang half the Greek song, while Amélia adapted the rest into Portuguese.

In our case, the Anatolian song echoed in Galicia passing over a “bridge” in Guimarães, Portugal. This “bridge” is a simplified version of the Hellenic song (the 9-beat rhythm of the antikrystós couple dance becomes an easier 4-beat rhythm) adapted by Amélia for Outra Voz, a local choir we had a special and fruitful collaboration. I was overwhelmed with emotion, I remember, when I first listened to them singing this adaptation, which they eventually adopted as part of their repertoire. In the Galician part, guest singers join in chorus, while the Oriental and Occidental traditional themes intersect during the improvisation of the finale.

14. Traditional, version of Asia Minor & Smyrma | Adapted into Portuguese by A. Muge; arranged by M. Loukovikas
15. Traditional of Greece & Galicia | Adapted in music & lyrics by A. Muge; arranged by F. Raposo

H. DA ALMA | DE PROFUNDIS
16. Se o lamento apenas fosse (If the Lament Were Just That)
17. Τα ἔνδον ῥήματα | Os meus ditames (The Inner Dictates)

An enthralling and poignant lament composed by Amélia, starting off in Epirus, with a double traditional improvisation by Manos Achalinotópoulos on the clarino. Moreover, Amélia created the atmosphere of a Greek tragedy, accompanied by a chorus (arranged by José Martins and Filipe Raposo), using mainly the rhythm of a solemn zeibekiko. It is amazing, indeed, that she was able to compose on this peculiar 9-beat rhythm as soon as she was familiarized with it through her exposure to Hellenic culture.

“Be you a friend or an enemy, do not announce it anywhere. | I stand here as a prisoner induced by all my inner dictates.” Ares Alexandrou used this couplet as a footnote (this is its original title) or a post scriptum in his last poetry book, paraphrasing Simonides, who composed a famous epitaph–epigram for the fallen Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae: “Oh, stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that here | we lie obedient to their dictates.” In Periplus, Ares’ footnote is less ostinato than my original (The Gold in the Sky), but Amélia made a difference with her Erinyes-like vocalisms, extending the tragic element of the “Lament” to “The Inner Dictates”, which she adapted and recited in Portuguese.

16. Amélia Muge | Arranged by J. Martins & F. Raposo
17. Ares Alexandrou | Michales Loukovikas | Adapted into Portuguese by A. Muge; arranged by F. Raposo

I. DAS TASCAS E TAVERNAS (FADO & REBETIKO TAVERNS)
18. Um qualquer quê (Something Like That)
19. Abertura da taverna (The Entrance to the Tavern)
20. Τα μαγκάκια τής ταβέρνας (The Manges of the Tavern)

This sequence appears as a live recording of the transformation of a fado tasca into a rebetiko tavern. It’s due to our obsession by a fantastic scene in some harbour’s tavern during tempestuous weather, where the crews of stranded ships gather, each singing their own songs in turn, until eventually they all sing in chorus. We tried to revive this scene, beginning with an Amélia’s love song evocating fado. Then a necessary “bridge” followed, with a breathtaking instrumental fado and rebetiko improvisation by Ricardo Parreira (guitarra portuguesa) and Dimitris Mystakidis (bouzouki), introducing us to the rebetiko finale.

Panaiotes Tountas, who signed this rebetiko, entitled it “The Tavern Minor (Vlamákia)” (diminutive of vlames, a synonym of mangas). Indirectly but clearly, Tountas referred to the instrumental “Tekke Minor” that Iohannes Chalkiás (or Jack Gregory) recorded in the USA with a fantastic long taqsim (improvisation) in the beginning. So the tune seems to be traditional. There are several theories on the etymology of vlames and mangas. We have chosen “The Manges of the Tavern” as a title, because the word may come from the Iberian manga (sleeve; the old manges used to wear only one sleeve of their jacket), and it combines well with the traditional Portuguese song “A mangar” sung by the local manganões, who are similar to the Greek manges.

Panaiotes Tountas

The recording session in Lisbon for “The Entrance to the Tavern” has been engraved into my memory. I had explained to Ricardo and the viola (guitar) player, Pedro Pinhal, that they should play “in waves”, so as to leave “free” space for Dimitris, who would record later in Salonica. Then, in order to “charge” them, I obliged them to listen to the taqsim of Chalkiás as a source of inspiration. The result was pure magic: one of the best fado solos I’ve ever listened to – and moreover, in dialogue with a bouzouki! Back to Salonica, Dimitris added himself perfectly on the Portuguese duet. At last, I transferred the “trio” to the… harbour’s tavern, so that we could listen to them playing all together! This is the magic called editing…

18. Amélia Muge | Arranged by F. Raposo
19. Instrumental fado & rebetiko improvisation by Ricardo Parreira & Dimitris Mystakidis | Arranged by M. Loukovikas
20. Panaiotis Tountas | Traditional rebetiko | Arranged by M. Loukovikas

J. TÃO LONGE, TÃO PERTO (SO DISTANT, SO NEAR)
21. Dolor, ai dolor (Dolor, ah, Dolor)
22. Το βλέμμα σου πού να τελειώνει; | O teu olhar onde acaba?
(How Far Can Your Eyes Reach?) / Greek version
23. O teu olhar onde acaba? | Το βλέμμα σου πού να τελειώνει;
(How Far Can Your Eyes Reach?) / Portuguese version
24. Zum zum

The first three parts of the final sequence are in fact one long song. Amélia sent me the lyrics when she tried in vain to “reactivate” me as a composer. Months had passed, until I dreamed one night that I had rearranged her song “Arena” (from her wonderful album Não sou daqui) as a rebetiko! Alas, I had to spend hours on the piano before I realized that what happens in a dream doesn’t necessarily mean it can happen in real life. Yet, my time was not wasted. Gradually, I left “Arena” behind improvising in another mood that was so appealing! Luckily, I recorded it and sent it to Amélia, who in turn adapted the lyrics to my melody, and set to music her original version (“Dolor, ah, Dolor”). On my part, I adapted her lyrics into Greek, inviting Eleni Tsaligopoulou to sing the Greek version, and Zoe Tiganouria to play the accordion, while at the end of the Portuguese version, Eleni and Amélia sang “Dolor” together! According to the Greek composer and pianist, Giorgos Andreou: “A prime moment emotionally for me (which I consider to be the climax of the CD) is the parallel interpretation of the song ‘How Far Can Your Eyes Reach?’ by Eleni Tsaligopoulou in Greek and Amélia Muge in Portuguese.”

Although composed by Amélia as a gift for my birthday, “Zum zum” is more than that. It evokes Violeta Parra’s “Run run se fué pa’l norte”, as a tribute to her work, rooted in Chilean tradition and expressing the people’s lives and problems. Zum zum in Portuguese means a kind of rumour, passing from one person to another, by word of mouth. Wake up, it says, because “All the flowers in the fields | All the birds in the sky | All the fish in the sea | Are gathering at your door | To greet you and sing for you | That there is a zum zum | Coming from the South”… It is a kind of an Iberian-Latin American song, connected with “How Far Can Your Eyes Reach?” through its melody – adapted here as an intro. The conclusion of the song in a 9-beat rhythm announces the arrival of Zum zum in Greece – something that is also validated by the… cicadas!

Silver ring with a brass cicada, inspired by an ancient Greek ring from the 5th century BCE

● Amélia and I were on Skópelos, Greece, for vacation. One day we went to a crowded beach, so we sat under a tree in the shade, next to the beach bar. A loudspeaker played on a branch over our heads. “They are a tempo”, Amélia said. As she saw me puzzled, she explained: “The cicadas sound in time, keeping the rhythm!” “No way!”, I answered. But soon I admitted she was right! In fact, it was quite easy for them to follow rhythms of pop songs. They had a little problem when the stream of sound changed into some Brazilian song but they soon adapted… I was fascinated! ● Back to Lisbon, I had a crazy idea while working on “Zum zum”. I searched for cicada sounds in the Net, but what I found were cicadas in chorus. I then searched for cigarras, cigales, cigalas, but I could still not find what I was looking for – until I searched for Greek τζιτζίκια: there was a plethora of sounds, among them of lone cicadas (what I was looking for), so that they could be “trained” (through the “magic of editing”) to “sound in chorus” with the choir, keeping the rhythms of “Zum zum”! When I finished, I invited Amélia and José Martins to listen to my specially “trained” cicada choir! How we laughed! That’s the meaning of the phrase “samples of trained Greek cicadas”, mentioned in the Periplus booklet, with everything else I contributed to our work. ● And the cicadas sounded not only in the CD: at the end of our Periplus concerts, the audience left the theatre listening to Greek τζιτζίκια!

21. Amélia Muge | Arranged by M. Loukovikas
22. Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas | Adapted into Greek & arranged by M. Loukovikas
23. Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas – & Amélia Muge (finale) | Adapted into Greek & arranged by M. Loukovikas
24. Amélia Muge | Amélia Muge – & Michales Loukovikas (intro) | Arranged by J. Martins & M. Loukovikas

● See also: GIORGOS ANDREOU on “PERIPLUS” | MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on “PERIPLUS”

Periplus, the international edition

PERIPLUS MUSICAL TROUPE: Amélia Muge: voice, vocals, talk, guitarra braguesa, sound-effects. | Michales Loukovikas: voice, vocals, drone, talk, accordion, finger-snaps, hand-claps, percussion, samples of voices and sounds.
Manos Achalinotopoulos: clarino (folk clarinet), voice, vocals. | Kyriakos Gouventas: violin, viola, mandolin. | Harris Lambrakis: ney (oriental flute), recorder. | José Martins: percussion, synthesizer, hand-claps, kalimba, sound-effects. | Ricardo Parreira: guitarra portuguesa. | António Quintino: double bass. | Filipe Raposo: piano, keyboards, accordion. | José Salgueiro: percussion, hand-claps.

SPECIAL GUESTS: Hélia Correia, writer: voice. | Eleni Tsaligopoulou, singer: voice, vocals, children’s songs, laughs. | Outra Voz, a Guimarães citizens’ choir: sounds of the sea, water, wind, space, vocals, children’s songs, respirations, talk.

OTHER PARTICIPANTS: Mariana Abrunheiro: vocals. | Catarina Anacleto: vocals, cello. | Irene Bakalopoulou: harp. | José Barros: vocals, mandolin, cavaquinho, guitarra braguesa. | Cristina Benedita: vocals. | José Manuel David: voice, vocals, drone, kalimba, bagpipe, horn. | Margarida Guerreiro: anathemas. | André Maia: talk. | Teresa Muge: voice, anathemas. | Dimitris Mystakidis: bouzouki, djura, rebetiko guitar. | Pedro Pinhal: fado viola (guitar). | Ziad Rajab: oud. | Eduardo Salgueiro: hand-claps. | Kostas Theodorou: percussion, double bass. | Zoe Tiganouria: accordion. | Francisco & Sofia Van Epps: children’s songs, laughs. | Rui Vaz: vocals, talk.

AUTHORS: Ares Alexandrou (1922 – 1979) | Athenaeus (2nd century BCE) | Constantine Cavafy (1863 – 1933) | Hélia Correia | Natália Correia (1923 – 1993) | Michales Loukovikas | Mesomedes (early 2nd century CE) | Amélia Muge | Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935) | Seikilos (ca 1st century CE) | Panaiotis Tountas (1886 – 1942)

The ladies of rebetiko, by A. Tassos (1970)

MARIA GRACIETE BESSE sobre “ARCHiPELAGOS”

MARIA GRACIETE BESSE sobre “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/ENGLISH/ MARIA GRACIETE BESSE on ARCHiPELAGOS
/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Η MARIA GRACIETE BESSE για το ARCHiPELAGOS

Maria Graciete Besse: escritora e poetisa luso-francesa

 
Uma prática da Relação
 

ARCHiPELAGOS / Passagens, de Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas, Periplus

Maria Graciete Besse, Professeur émérite, Université de Paris IV – La Sorbonne

mariagraciete7@aol.com

Todo o pensamento arquipélago é pensamento do tremor, da não-presunção, mas também da abertura e da partilha.

Édouard Glissant

 

Autora, cantora e compositora, Amélia Muge é bem conhecida no panorama cultural português, pela beleza dos seus textos e composições musicais. Natural de Moçambique, a artista chegou a Portugal em 1984. O seu primeiro disco, intitulado Mugica, foi divulgado em 1992, seguido de Todos os dias (1994). Ao longo da sua carreira, Amélia Muge tem colaborado regularmente com José Mário Branco, Fausto, entre outros, e obteve em 1995 o prestigioso prémio Zeca Afonso com Maio maduro Maio (partilhado com José Mário Branco e João Afonso). De novo, este prémio foi-lhe atribuído em 1998, pelo álbum Taco a Taco, seguindo-se outros discos (A Monte, 2000; Não sou daqui, 2007) e numerosas participações em festivais nacionais e internacionais. Na actualidade, a autora continua a colaborar com diversos cantores, compondo também para fadistas bem conhecidos como Mísia, Camané, Ana Moura, Cristina Branco, entre muitos outros.

Em 2009, Amélia Muge conheceu Michales Loukovikas, cantor, compositor e instrumentista, originário da Trácia e especialista de música grega contemporânea, em particular do Rebético.¹ Este encontro, sob os auspícios da Internet, revelou-se imediatamente fecundo pois concretizou-se em diversos projectos e na publicação de três discos: um CD-livro em português e em grego (2011), que celebra a obra do poeta Ares Alexandrou, desenvolvendo um trabalho precedente de Michales Loukovikas, intitulado O Ouro do Céu; em seguida surge Periplus / Deambulações luso-gregas (2012), considerado em Portugal como um dos melhores discos do ano; e mais recentemente Archipelagos / Passagens (2018), que inclui um CD e um eBook, onde descobrimos uma aventura musical e poética que se desenrola entre Portugal e a Grécia, mas que se abre também a um mundo mais vasto. Neste trabalho, os dois artistas celebram a temática da viagem através de diferentes culturas e paisagens, num tempo múltiplo e num espaço variado – Portugal, a Grécia, a Macaronésia, a América do Sul, as ilhas da utopia –, para nos propôr um olhar cruzado, dotado de uma sonoridade original que prolonga as fascinantes deambulações luso-gregas de Periplus, de forma a oferecer-nos agora algumas passagens que nos conduzem para além da errância, até novas dimensões do imaginário.

• ¹ Forma popular marcada pela herança musical de Istambul (Constantinopla) e de Esmirna, que se desenvolve sobretudo nos anos 1920, na sequência das vagas de refugiados da Ásia Menor.

Dotado de uma grande qualidade literária e musical, Archipelagos / Passagens é composto por 28 rotas, distribuídas em 10 sequências-ilhas distintas, apresentando-se como uma obra em forma de arquipélago. Este termo, explicitado no eBook (Archipédia) que acompanha o CD (com textos em português, inglês e grego), remete para o sentido que vigorava na Grécia antiga em que o arquipélago designava o mar Egeu, passando mais tarde a significar o conjunto de ilhas do Egeu e finalmente, qualquer agrupamento de ilhas. Mas o conceito de arquipélago apresenta uma grande densidade de conotações poéticas, sendo tributário, no imaginário colectivo ocidental, das utopias dos séculos passados em que a ilha aparecia isolada. Quando falamos de arquipélago, podemos também evocar a cultura antiga e, depois de Hölderlin, toda a riqueza cultural helénica, universal e imortal. Para Saint-John Perse (1887-1975), outro grande poeta fascinado pelo universo insular, por detrás do écran luminoso do espaço mediterrânico, existe um ambiente atmosférico e uma base psicológica, impregnada de história e de civilização antiga. É com esta dimensão encantatória que abre o disco de Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas, a partir da adaptação de um poema de Hölderlin.

Édouard Glissant, por Jennifer Dionisio

No centro do universo literário e musical oferecido por este trabalho, podemos facilmente identificar o conceito paradigmático de Relação, desenvolvido pelo poeta, romancista e filósofo francês Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) que propõe uma poética rizomática aberta ao Diverso enquanto travessia entre o lugar e o mundo.² Ao remeter para o entrecruzamento de culturas diversas, a Relação traduz um pensamento arquipélago, em que as ilhas deixam de significar isolamento, para se abrirem à totalidade-mundo, isto é, a uma força que irradia, opondo-se ao conceito totalitário de fechamento e intolerância.³ Apesar das diferenças geográficas e culturais, pensamos que em Archipelagos / Passagens existem efectivamente ecos da obra deste grande poeta das Caraíbas, sobretudo pelo sentido de um trajecto, de um precurso e de um cruzamento que se encontram na base de um pensamento que se opõe à visão de um mundo fechado, unitário, para nos propôr a presença estimulante do Diverso, marcado pela ideia do movimento. Mas, como sublinhou em várias ocasiões Édouard Glissant, a Relação não significa a mistura confusa e desordenada de culturas, na medida em que o Diverso compreende as diferenças que se encontram, se ajustam umas às outras, se harmonizam. Para o poeta, a Relação possui uma dimensão arquipélica aberta à passagem e à totalidade-mundo, noção que permite conceber tanto a política como a identidade, a ética, a língua e as diferentes modalidades do pensamento. Na opinião de Glissant, o esquema do pensamento arquipélago não conduz à noção de território que se define como uma noção continental, porque o arquipélago é discontínuo, descentrado. Nesta perspectiva, o poeta-filósofo distingue:

● o pensamento continental que se identifica com o sistema, arrogante, feito de lógicas causais que podem conduzir à guerra;

● e o pensamento arquipélago que é uma outra forma de pensar, mais intuitiva, mais frágil, rizomática, associada ao imprevisto do caos-mundo, neologismo que caracteriza não a desordem mas o imprevisível.⁴

O Dia de Deus, de Paul Gauguin

• ² Para Édouard Glissant, a Relação é tudo que “relie (relaie), relate”, in Poétique de la Relation. Poétique III, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, p. 187.

• ³ Édouard Glissant, Traité du Tout-monde. Poétique IV, Paris, Gallimard, 1997.

• ⁴ Segundo Édouard Glissant, a noção de “caos-mundo é bem precisa: trata-se da mistura cultural, que não se reduz simplesmente a um melting-pot, graças à qual a totalidade mundo hoje está realizada.”, in Introdução a uma poética da diversidade, trad. Enilce do Carmo A. Rocha, Juiz de Fora, editora UFJF, 2005, p. 98.

Para Glissant, o pensamento arquipélago é também um pensamento do tremor, que condiz com a errância e se abre ao futuro. Assim, o estremecimento ou o tremor é a qualidade do que se opõe ao pensamento brutal, unívoco, do eu sem o outro, escreve o poeta, sublinhando que precisamos de estremecimento, porque sufocamos no meio de pensamentos sistemáticos e arrogantes. Poderíamos acrescentar que precisamos também, cada vez mais, de espaços de epifania, como os que Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas nos dão a ouvir neste disco que desenha arquipélagos inéditos, mobiliza culturas misturadas, apelando a uma dinâmica de subjectivações inesperadas que designam um olhar, uma voz, um sopro, uma tradição atravessada por múltiplas passagens, memórias fluídas e estremecentes, para pensar a complexidade do mundo, convidando-nos também a imaginar o Encontro e a alimentar a esperança para além de todas as formas de utopia.

Uma visão surrealista do artista haitiano Vanex Florestant

Para Glissant, como para Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas, a paisagem não é apenas um simples cenário, mas uma personagem activa da História. Assim, graças à poética da Relação, uma parte da natureza, vista pelo olhar humano, isto é, a paisagem escolhida em função de parâmetros subjectivos, emotivos e afectivos, não se encontra unicamente numa perspectiva horizontal, mas desenha uma profundidade vertical que nos convida à reflexão. Assim, o primeiro eixo temático do disco propõe-nos uma série de paisagens que remetem para a beleza da Grécia cantada por Hölderlin, postas em relação com fragmentos de Orestes, a tragédia de Eurípides, composta em 408 antes de Cristo, que evoca a dor, cantada em grego antigo por Michales Loukovikas e coro. Identificamos em seguida a presença de dois universos musicais distintos: o hino hurrita a Nikkal, datado de 1400 antes de Cristo – descoberto na Síria nos anos 50, num campo arqueológico (Ugarit) – e o Acordai, poema de José Gomes Ferreira, musicado por Fernando Lopes-Graça nos anos 40. A sequência começa como uma canção de embalar que vem da Antiguidade e chega aos nossos dias para despertar a nossa sensibilidade e inteligência, e se impôr como uma canção de luta. Paralelamente à pesquisa literária deste notável trabalho musical, podemos falar de uma dimensão ética e política no sentido mais nobre do termo.

Orestes matando Egisto e Clitemnestra, baixo relevo num sarcófago (ca 150 EC)

O disco começa com uma voz da sabedoria que recita versos de
Hölderlin (a mãe de Amélia, com 98 anos) e termina com um coro
infantil, desenhando assim um itinerário que se projecta no futuro.

Archipelagos / Passagens convida-nos a viajar através de espaços reais e imaginários, propondo-nos um percurso geográfico, literário e cultural que convoca vozes tão diferentes como as de Safo, Eurípides, Hölderlin, Pessoa, José Gomes Ferreira, Saramago, ou ainda Hélia Correia, que se encontra no centro de todo o CD. É de notar também que o disco começa com uma voz da sabedoria que recita versos de Hölderlin (a mãe de Amélia, com 98 anos) e termina com um coro infantil, desenhando assim um itinerário que se projecta no futuro. O mundo antigo e o espaço do Mediterrâneo, o mar fechado, abrem-se ao Atlântico e confundem-se com o universo da Macaronésia, introduzida através dum canto tradicional das Canárias posto em relação com um canto dos Açores e com ritmos caboverdianos numa belíssima homenagem a Cesária Évora.

Cesária Évora, por Sersun

Podemos ainda observar que todo este trabalho é atravessado por uma interrogação fundamental de Hölderlin, citado por Hélia Correia : “Para que servem os poetas em tempo de indigência?”. Esta pergunta eivada de melancolia, colocada em 1800 pelo poeta do Romantismo alemão, sublinha a desilusão de todos aqueles que viam as luzes da Revolução francesa apagar-se no Terror. Contudo, Hölderlin não se dirige exactamente aos desiludidos da História mas aos “abandonados por Deus”, constatando a queda espiritual, o eclipse da transcendência. Convém no entanto lembrar que, três anos mais tarde, surge a resposta a esta pergunta quando Hölderlin sublinha o papel e a responsabilidade do artista, afirmando que “os poetas fundam tudo o que permanece”. Em meados do século XX, Adorno evoca o crime contra a humanidade e considera que seria bárbaro escrever poesia depois de Auschwitz. Mas a poesia permanece, como sabemos e como o demonstra também o trabalho de Archipelagos / Passagens que celebra as palavras vindas de diversos horizontes culturais, para nos lembrar que a pergunta de Hölderlin se pode colocar novamente nos nossos dias, perante a perda de muitos valores que tocam o mundo contemporâneo.

Estátua de Odisseu descoberta por colectores de esponjas nos destroços
do naufrágio de Anticítera entre outras estátuas, moedas e artefactos (sécs. IV
a I AEC), bem como o mecanismo de Anticítera, o mais antigo computador analógico conhecido.

Archipelagos / Passagens celebra portanto uma paisagem múltipla, cruza memórias, estabelece um diálogo com a tradição escrita e oral, traduz o ritmo das línguas (o português, o grego, o espanhol, o inglês, o crioulo), faz ouvir o sopro que revela a harmonia, a dor e a violência da História – é de notar que numa das sequências mais belas do disco, Amélia Muge mergulha justamente na memória das palavras e canta Safo em grego antigo, convidando-nos a viajar no tempo e a enfrentar a tentação do silêncio, antes de convocar um poema inglês de Fernando Pessoa para insistir na cadência das horas, mostrando-nos que o tempo nos conduz para o que Glissant chamava o caos-mundo, onde encontramos o choque dos contactos, as misturas entre realidades muito diferentes, as identidades e as culturas que entram em relação umas com as outras, sem nada perder da sua originalidade. Este caos-mundo é dominado pelo mar feiticeiro cantado em grego por um outro colaborador do CD, Andreas Karakotas, que convoca um excerto do já evocado hino hurrita a Nikkal e nos conduz até uma Odisseia onde Ulisses vai encontrar o caminho até à sua ilha, depois de uma longa viagem através de terras desconhecidas. Mas “Ítaca já não há”, diz o poema. Ulisses transformou-se num estrangeiro que toma a forma de um mendigo, de um refugiado – poderíamos nós acrescentar hoje –, de um emigrante, que a Europa insulta e deixa morrer nesse imenso cemitério chamado Mediterrâneo. E entramos em seguida num novo eixo temático do disco que vai opôr utopia e distopia, onde se inscreve o imprevisto aberto à errância e por vezes à morte, como a do pescador Nicolas cantado por Michales Loukovikas, esse pescador esperado pela sua mãe que não sabe que o filho se afogou no mar.

A jangada de Medusa, de Théodore Géricault (1818-19). O naufrágio chocou toda a gente porque as vítimas eram europeias; inspirou uma oratória de Hans Werner Henze e um filme
de Iradj Azimi. Agora que estes naufrágios são de não europeus, tornaram-se uma rotina…

O percurso poético e musical abre-se contudo à visão de uma utopia, remetendo para a famosa ilha inventada por Thomas More em 1516, e cujas raízes se encontram em Aristóteles e Platão. A utopia representa, como sabemos, algo de perfeito, indissociável da busca. O sentido político da utopia relaciona-se com um governo imaginário impossível de realizar. A transformação da utopia em distopia revela um tropismo melancólico que diz respeito à nossa representação do tempo e da História marcada pela catástrofe (essa catástrofe de que falava Walter Benjamin, o filósofo judeu alemão, no início dos anos 1930, pressentindo já o horror da Shoah). Assim, o sonho pode-se transformar em pesadelo, onde erram os meninos perdidos, cantados por Amélia Muge numa bela adaptação de um ritmo tradicional da Trácia, com um arranjo de António José Martins e de Michales Loukovikas.

A pergunta colocada por Hölderlin (“Para que servem os poetas em tempo de indigência?”), ganha grande intensidade, como uma litania, quando se exprime na voz de Hélia Correia que evoca a ruína da Grécia, abandonada por todos os deuses (sobretudo os deuses da Finança no momento da crise recente). O pesadelo distópico é transmitido pela música de Beethoven, mais precisamente pelo 2o movimento da Terceira Sinfonia, a Marcha Fúnebre, adaptada por Michales Loukovikas, para exprimir o que Hélia Correia designa como a Terceira Miséria (título de um magnífico livro de poesia).⁵ A “terceira miséria” de que fala Hélia Correia, é “a de quem já não ouve nem pergunta” e que corresponde à desumanização do mundo em que vivemos, povoado de sombras, esse mundo que perdeu todo o sentido da hospitalidade – Falamos de sombras é justamente o título deste tema que pertence a uma das mais belas sequências do CD.

• ⁵ Hélia Correia, A Terceira Miséria, Lisboa, Relógio d’Água, 2012 (com o Partenon na capa).

O terceiro eixo temático deste trabalho aborda por fim a emigração feita da nostalgia que alimenta o cantar do emigrante, onde ouvimos ecos de outros ritmos bem conhecidos, a voz de Violeta Parra, ou os versos de Rosalía de Castro, musicados por José Niza e já cantados por Adriano Correia de Oliveira.

Ao longo do álbum, podemos verificar que a Relação se apresenta como algo de dinâmico que diz o mundo na sua transição entre o interior e o exterior, o subjectivo e o objectivo, o próximo e o distante. Esta Relação é, como afirmava Édouard Glissant, um conhecimento no sentido de um saber acerca de si mesmo e acerca dos outros, quando o artista se abre ao drama do mundo, mas pode também significar um universo onde se inscreve por vezes a Alegria, título de um poema de José Saramago, adaptado por Amélia Muge e António José Martins, baseado numa composição e arranjo de Giorgos Andreou.

A viagem poética e musical converge finalmente numa celebração do mar, espaço do encontro que vai revisitar uma célebre cantiga de amigo de Martim Codax, Ondas do mar de Vigo, cantada em grego por Michales Loukovikas e em português por Amélia Muge, com uma melodia de Rebético de Panaiotis Tountas, música da Relação por excelência. A última sequência de Archipelagos / Passagens projecta-se no futuro pois tal como canta Amélia Muge, “há sempre outro barco a chegar” e “tudo pode acontecer”.

Promenade à Utopia, de Igor Bitman

Para concluir, podemos afirmar que este notável trabalho de Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas não pretende apresentar um mundo estático, de conhecimento formal, mas abre-se a um universo de relações e de revelações possíveis. Descobrimos assim o mundo na sua diversidade imprevisível através de uma viagem constituída por múltiplos itinerários que passam pelos lugares que povoam a nossa memória, desenhando um trajecto atento aos dramas da democracia contemporânea, mas também ao milagre sempre renovado da vida, do esplendor da paisagem, do estremecer da esperança. O album trabalha uma Relação constante entre o sujeito, o mundo, a escrita poética e musical, a utopia e a distopia, correspondendo a um percurso emblemático que nos leva a ultrapassar todas as fronteiras, todos os muros, para desenhar uma geopoética da insularidade arquipélica como um colar de ilhas que “estão por nós sempre a chamar” como podemos ouvir na última passagem do disco. Por todas estas razões, pensamos que Archipelagos / Passagens constitui uma bela ilustração do conceito glissantiano de Relação alimentada de mobilidade e de passagens, que incluem o descentramento, o estremecimento, a abertura ao Múltiplo e ao Diverso, mas também um convite à reflexão ética e política, projectando-nos num futuro possível, que deve ter em conta a generosidade da imaginação capaz de transformar o mundo.

● Apresentação de ARCHiPELAGOS / Passagens em Paris, Fondation
Calouste Gulbenkian – Délégation en France, 7 de Novembro de 2018.
● Publicado em Limite, Revista de Estudios Portugueses y de
la Lusofonía, Universidad de Extremadura, vol 12.2 / 2018

ARCHiPELAGOS Autores: Amélia Muge | Anónimo Hurrita | Armando Soares | Eurípides | Fernando Lopes-Graça | Fernando Pessoa | Friedrich Hölderlin | Giorgos Andreou | Giorgos Mitsakis | Hélia Correia | João de Deus | José Gomes Ferreira | José Niza | José Saramago | Ludwig van Beethoven | Manos Achalinotópoulos | Martín Codax | Michales Loukovikas | Panaiotis Tountas | Rosalía de Castro | Safo | Vasilis Tsitsanis | Violeta Parra
Núcleo: Amélia Muge: voz, braguesa, percussão | Michales Loukovikas: voz, percussão, acordeão | António Quintino: contrabaixo | Dimitris Mystakidis: guitarra, bouzouki, baglamás, tzourás | Filipe Raposo: piano, acordeão, teclados | Harris Lambrakis: ney (flauta oriental), flauta de bisel | José Salgueiro: percussão | Kyriakos Gouventas: violino, viola | Manos Achalinotópoulos: clarino (clarinete folk), voz | Maria Monda (Sofia Adriana Portugal, Susana Quaresma e Tânia Cardoso): trio vocal | Ricardo Parreira: guitarra portuguesa
Convidados especiais: Hélia Correia e Maria José Muge: voz falada
Convidados (pro-bono): Ana Dias: harpa | Andreas Karakotas: voz | António José Martins: caixa de música, percussão | Catarina Anacleto: violoncelo, voz | Catarina Moura: voz | José Manuel David: voz | Kosmás Papadópoulos: clarinete | Kostas Hanís: vibrafone | Mariana Abrunheiro: voz | Niovi Benou: palmas | Paló: voz | Pedro Casaes: voz | Rita Maria: voz | Rui Vaz: voz | Teresa Campos: voz | Thomás Natsis: guitarra de flamenco, palmas
Em especial: Cramol, Grupo de Canto Tradicional de Mulheres da Biblioteca Operária Oeirense | Orquestra de Cordas Palhetadas “Thanassis Tsipinakis” do Município de Patras | Coro de Crianças, dir. Catarina Anacleto: Santiago Fantasia, Gabriel Leite, Sophia Van Epps, Ana Pita, Marta Semblano, Patrícia Arens Teixeira

MARIA GRACIETE BESSE on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

MARIA GRACIETE BESSE on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/PORTUGUÊS/ MARIA GRACIETE BESSE sobre ARCHiPELAGOS
/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Η MARIA GRACIETE BESSE για το ARCHiPELAGOS

Maria Graciete Besse: a Portuguese-French writer and poet

 
Practice of Relation
 

ARCHiPELAGOS / Passages: Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas, Periplus

Maria Graciete Besse, Professor Emerita, University of Paris IV – La Sorbonne

mariagraciete7@aol.com
 

Every archipelago thinking is thinking of tremor, of non-presumption, but also of openness and sharing.

Édouard Glissant

 

Composer, songwriter and singer, Amélia Muge is well known in the Portuguese cultural panorama for the beauty of her lyrics and musical compositions. Born in Mozambique, the artist came to Portugal in 1984. Her first album, entitled Múgica, was released in 1992, followed by Todos os dias (1994). Throughout her career, Amélia Muge has regularly collaborated with José Mário Branco, Fausto, etc., and was awarded the prestigious Zeca Afonso Prize in 1995 for Maio maduro Maio (together with José Mário Branco and João Afonso). She received again this prize in 1998 for the album Taco a Taco, followed by other discs (A Monte, 2000; Não sou daqui, 2007) and numerous participations in national and international festivals. At present, the songwriter continues working with several artists, and composing for well-known fado singers such as Mísia, Camané, Ana Moura, Cristina Branco, and many others.

In 2009, Amélia Muge met the singer, composer and instrumentalist Michales Loukovikas, born in Thrace, a specialist in contemporary Hellenic music, especially rebetiko.¹ This meeting, under the auspices of the Internet, proved immediately to be fruitful, actualized in several projects and three albums: a CD-book in Portuguese and Greek (2011), which celebrates the work of the poet Ares Alexandrou, based on a previous work by Michales Loukovikas, entitled O Ouro do Céu (The Gold in the Sky); then Periplus / Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (2012), considered in Portugal as one of the best albums of the year; and more recently Archipelagos / Passages (2018), which includes a CD and an eBook, where we discover a musical and poetic adventure unfolding between Portugal and Greece, but also open to the wider world. In this work, the two artists celebrate the theme of voyage through different cultures and landscapes, in multiple time and varied space – Portugal, Greece, Macaronesia, South America, the islands of utopia –, proposing a crossed approach, endowed with an original sound that extends the fascinating Luso-Hellenic Wanderings of Periplus, to offer us now some passages that lead us beyond wanderings to new dimensions of the imagination.

• ¹ A popular genre, marked by the musical heritage of Smyrna (Izmir) and Constantinople (Istanbul), that mainly developed in Hellas during the 1920s, after the Greek refugee waves from Asia Minor.

Endowed with a great literary and musical quality, Archipelagos / Passages consists of 28 routes, distributed in 10 distinct island sequences, presenting itself as a work in the form of an archipelago. The term “archipelago”, as it is made explicit in the eBook (Archipedia) accompanying the CD (with texts in Portuguese, English and Greek), refers to a meaning prevailing in ancient Greece, where it designated the Aegean Sea, later denoting the Aegean Islands, and finally any island group. But the concept of an archipelago presents a high density of poetic connotations, being a tributary, in the Occidental collective imagination, to past centuries’ utopias in which the island appeared isolated. Talking about an archipelago, we can also evoke the ancient culture and, after Hölderlin, all the Hellenic, universal and immortal cultural richness. According to Saint-John Perse (1887-1975), another great poet fascinated by the island universe, there is an atmospheric environment and a psychological base behind the bright screen of the Mediterranean space impregnated with ancient history and civilization. The album of Amelia Muge and Michales Loukovikas opens with this enchanting dimension, emanating from the adaptation of a poem by Hölderlin.

Édouard Glissant, by Jennifer Dionisio

At the centre of the literary and musical universe this work offers, we can easily identify the paradigmatic concept of Relation, developed by the French poet, novelist and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), who proposed a rhizomatic poetics open to Diversity as a crossing between a place and the world.² Referring to the crossroads of diverse cultures, the Relation reflects an archipelago thinking, in which the islands cease to mean isolation, opening themselves to the whole world, that is, to a radiating force, opposing the totalitarian concept of closure and intolerance.³ Despite the geographical and cultural differences, we think that in Archipelagos / Passages there are in fact echoes of the work of this great Caribbean poet, mainly due to the sense of a trajectory, a precursor and a crossing, which are at the base of a way of thinking that is opposed to a vision of a closed, unitary world, proposing the stimulating presence of the Diverse, marked by the idea of movement. But, as Édouard Glissant has stressed on several occasions, the Relation does not mean a confused and disorderly mixture of cultures, inasmuch as the Diverse understands the existing differences, adjusting to each other, harmonizing. According to the poet, the Relation has an archipelagic dimension open to passage and to the whole world, a notion that allows conceiving not only politics but also identity, ethics, language and different modes of thinking. In Glissant’s opinion, the scheme of archipelago thinking does not lead to the notion of territory that is defined as a continental notion, because the archipelago is discontinuous, decentralized. In this perspective, the poet-philosopher distinguishes:

● continental thinking identifying with the system, arrogant, made of causal logic that can lead to war;

● and archipelago thinking, which is another way of thinking, more intuitive, more fragile, rhizomatic, associated with the unpredictable of chaos-world, a neologism that characterizes not disorder but the unpredictability.⁴

• ² According to Édouard Glissant, the Relation is everything that “relates”, in Poétique de la Relation. Poétique III, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, p.187.

• ³ Édouard Glissant, Traité du Tout-monde. Poétique IV, Paris, Gallimard, 1997.

• ⁴ According to Édouard Glissant, the notion of “chaos-world is very precise: it is a cultural mixture, which is not simply reduced to a melting-pot, thanks to which the whole world is realized today.” Introdução a uma poética da diversidade, translated by Enilce do Carmo A. Rocha, Juiz de Fora, UFJF publishers, 2005, p. 98.

The Day of the God, by Paul Gauguin

Poetics of Relation: opacity has the radical potentiality for social movements to challenge and subvert systems of domination. Glissant demands for the “right to opacity”, indicating the oppressed can be opaque, not completely understood, and simply exist as different. The colonizer perceived the colonized as different and unable to be understood, thereby constructing the latter as the Other and demanding transparency so that the former could somehow fit them into their cognitive schema and dominate over them. However, Glissant rejects this transparency and defends opacity and difference because other modes of understanding do exist; he calls for understanding and accepting difference without measuring it to an “ideal scale”, and comparing and making judgments, “without creating a hierarchy” – as Western thought has done.

Rhizome is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972–80). They oppose it to an arborescent (hierarchic, tree-like) conception of knowledge, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with planar-horizontal and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear ones. They use examples from the biological concept of mutualism, in which two different species interact to form a multiplicity. “The rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines, looks for the original source of ‘things’ and towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those ‘things’. A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by ‘ceaselessly establishing connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.’ Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a ‘rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, inter-being, intermezzo.’ The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favouring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.”

A surrealistic vision by Haitian artist Vanex Florestant

According to Glissant, archipelago thinking is also thinking of tremor, which is consistent with wandering and open to the future. Thus, shivering or tremor is the quality of what is opposed to the brutal, univocal thinking of oneself without the other, writes the poet, stressing that we need to shiver, because we suffocate in the middle of systemic and arrogant thoughts. We could add that we also need, more and more, spaces of epiphany, as the ones that Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas give us to listen to in this disc that designs unprecedented archipelagos, mobilizes mixed cultures, appealing to a dynamic of unanticipated subjectivations that designate a glance, a voice, a breath, a tradition traversed by multiple passages, fluid and shivering memories, in order to think about the complexity of the world, also inviting us to imagine the Encounter and to foster hope beyond all forms of utopia.

According to Glissant, as well as to Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas, the landscape is not just a simple scenario, but an active character in history. Thanks to the poetics of Relation, a part of nature, seen through the human eye, i.e. the landscape chosen according to subjective, emotional and affective parameters, is not only in a horizontal perspective, but designs a vertical profundity that invites us to reflection. Thus, the disc’s first thematic axis proposes a series of landscapes that refer to the beauty of Greece sung by Hölderlin, related to fragments of Orestes, the tragedy of Euripides, composed in 408 BC, evoking pain, sung in ancient Greek by Michales Loukovikas and chorus.

Orestes slaying Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, relief of a sarcophagus (ca 150 CE)

We then identify the presence of two distinct musical universes: the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal, dating to 1400 BC – discovered in Syria in the 1950s, in the archaeological site of Ugarit – and Acordai (Wake Up), a poem by José Gomes Ferreira, set to music by Fernando Lopes-Graça in the 1940s. The sequence begins as a lullaby that starts from antiquity and reaches our days to awaken our sensitivity and intelligence, and imposes itself as a protest song. Parallel to the literary research of this remarkable musical work, we can speak of an ethical and political dimension in the noblest meaning of the term.

The disc begins with a voice of wisdom that recites Hölderlin’s verses (Amélia’s mother, aged 98) and ends with a children’s choir, thus
designing an itinerary that is projected into the future.

Archipelagos / Passages invites us to a voyage through real and imaginary spaces, proposing a geographical, literary and cultural route that convokes voices as different as those of Sappho, Euripides, Hölderlin, Pessoa, José Gomes Ferreira, Saramago, or even Hélia Correia, which is in the centre of the entire CD. It should also be noted that the disc begins with a voice of wisdom that recites Hölderlin’s verses (Amélia’s mother, aged 98) and ends with a children’s choir, thus designing an itinerary that is projected into the future. The ancient world and the space of the Mediterranean, the closed sea, opens up to the Atlantic and is confounded with the universe of Macaronesia, introduced through a traditional song of the Canaries connected with a song of the Azores and Cape Verdean rhythms in a beautiful tribute to Cesária Évora.

Cesária Évora, by Sersun

We can also observe that all this work is traversed by a fundamental question of Hölderlin, quoted by Hélia Correia: “What is the purpose of the poets in times of such indigence?” This melancholic question, posed in 1800 by the German Romantic poet, underlines the disillusionment of all those who saw the lights of the French Revolution go out in the Reign of Terror. However, Hölderlin does not exactly aim at the disillusioned with history but at those “abandoned by God”, bringing about the spiritual fall, the eclipse of transcendence. Anyway, we should remember that, three years later, the answer to this question arose when Hölderlin underlined the role and responsibility of the artist, stating that “the poets established everything that persists”. In the middle of the 20th century, Adorno evoked the crime against humanity and considered that it would be barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz. But poetry persisted, as we know, and as is demonstrated by the work of Archipelagos / Passages that celebrates words coming from diverse cultural horizons, to remind us that Hölderlin’s question can be asked again in our days, due to the loss of many values that touch the contemporary world.

Odysseus’ marble statue (ca 1st century BCE) from the Anticythera (ship)wreck discovered by sponge divers near Anticythera in 1900. Statues, coins and other artifacts dating back to the 4th century BCE were found there, as well as the severely corroded remnants of the world’s oldest known analog computer, the Anticythera mechanism.

Archipelagos / Passages, therefore, celebrates a multiple landscape, crosses memories, establishes a dialogue with written and oral tradition, translates the rhythm of languages (Portuguese, Greek, Spanish, English, Creole), makes us listen to the breath that reveals the harmony, pain and violence of history – it is noteworthy that in one of the most beautiful sequences of the album, Amélia Muge dives right into the memory of the words and sings Sappho in ancient Greek, inviting us to travel through time and face the temptation of silence, before convoking an English poem by Fernando Pessoa to insist on the cadence of the hours, showing that time leads us to what Glissant called chaos-world, where we find the shock of contacts, the mixtures between very different realities, the identities and cultures that come into relationship with each other, without losing anything of their originality. This chaos-world is dominated by the sorcerer sea sung in Greek by another collaborator of the CD, Andreas Karakotas, that convokes an excerpt from the already evoked Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal and leads us to an Odyssey where Odysseus is on his way to his island, after a long journey through unknown lands. “Ithaca was everything”, says the poem, but it no longer exists. Odysseus has become a foreigner who takes the form of a beggar, a refugee – we might add today –, a migrant, whom Europe insults and lets him die in this immense cemetery called the Mediterranean. Then we enter a new thematic axis of the disc opposing utopia and dystopia, where the unforeseen, open to wanderings and sometimes to death, is inscribed, like that of Nicolas the fisherman, sung by Michales Loukovikas – the fisherman his mother is waiting for, as she does not know that her son drowned in the sea.

The Raft of the Medusa, by Théodore Géricault (1818-19). The shipwreck shocked everyone as the victims were Europeans (French); it became an oratorio by Hans Werner Henze, and a film by Iradj Azimi. Now that these wrecks concern non-Europeans, they became a routine…

The poetic and musical route opens up, nevertheless, to the vision of a utopia, referring to the famous island invented by Thomas More in 1516, and whose roots are found in Aristotle and Plato. Utopia, as we know, represents something perfect, inseparable from the quest. The political meaning of utopia is related to an imaginary government that is impossible to achieve. The transformation of utopia into dystopia reveals a melancholic tropism that concerns our representation of time and history marked by catastrophe where the dream can be transformed into a nightmare (this catastrophe of which Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish philosopher, spoke in the early 1930s, already sensing the horror of the Holocaust); or into Neverland’s lost kids, sung by Amélia Muge, in a beautiful adaptation of a traditional Thracian rhythm, arranged by António José Martins and Michales Loukovikas.

The question posed by Hölderlin (“What is the purpose of the poets in times of such indigence?”), gains great intensity, like a litany, when it is expressed with Hélia Correia’s voice that evokes the ruin of Hellas, abandoned by all the gods (above all the gods of Finance in the moment of the recent crisis). The dystopian nightmare is transmitted with Beethoven’s music, more precisely the 2nd movement of the Third Symphony, the Funeral March, adapted by Michales Loukovikas, to express what Hélia Correia describes as the Third Misery (title of a magnificent book of poetry).⁵ The “third misery” mentioned by Hélia Correia, is “that of those who just don’t listen nor ask questions… don’t remember”, and corresponds to the dehumanization of the world in which we live, populated by shadows, that world that has lost every sense of hospitality – We Talk About Shadows is rightly the title of this song, in one of the most beautiful sequences in the CD.

• ⁵ Hélia Correia, A Terceira Miséria, Lisbon, Relógio d’Água, 2012 (with Parthenon on the front cover).

The next thematic axis of this work finally addresses the issue of migration with the nostalgia that fuels the singing of the migrant, where we hear echoes of other well-known tunes, Violeta Parra’s voice, or Rosalía de Castro’s verses, set to music by José Niza and sung by Adriano Correia de Oliveira.

Throughout the album, we can see that the Relation presents itself as something dynamic that reveals the world in its transition between interior and exterior, subjective and objective, near and distant. This Relation, as Édouard Glissant certifies, is a knowledge in the sense of knowing about oneself and about others, when the artist opens himself up to the drama of the world, but it can also mean a universe where Alegria (Jubilation) is sometimes inscribed – it’s the title of a poem of José Saramago, adapted by Amélia Muge and António José Martins, based on a composition and arrangement by Giorgos Andreou.

The poetic and musical voyage finally converges in a celebration of the sea, a meeting space to revisit a celebrated cantiga de amigo (a friend’s song) of Martín Codax, Waves of the Sea of Vigo, sung by Michales Loukovikas (in Greek) and Amélia Muge (in Portuguese), with a melody of rebetiko by Panaiotis Tountas – a music of Relation par excellence. The last sequence of Archipelagos / Passages is projected into the future because, as Amélia Muge sings, “there is always a boat to appear” and “everything will soon converge”.

Promenade à Utopia, by Igor Bitman

In conclusion, we can certify that this remarkable work by Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas does not intend to present a static world of formal knowledge, but opens up to a universe of relationships and possible revelations. Thus we discover the world in its unpredictable diversity through a voyage made up of multiple itineraries that pass through places that populate our memory, designing a trajectory attentive to the dramas of contemporary democracy, but also to the ever renewed miracle of life, of the splendour of a landscape, the shivering of hope. The album works on a constant Relation between the subject, the world, poetic and musical writing, utopia and dystopia, corresponding to an emblematic route that leads us to overcome all borders, all walls, to design a geopoetics of archipelagic insularity like a necklace of islands that “are there always calling us”, as we listen to in the last passage of the disc. For all these reasons, we think that Archipelagos / Passages constitutes a beautiful illustration of the Glissantian concept of Relation fed by mobility and passages, which include decentralization, shivering, openness to the Multiple and the Diverse, but also an invitation to an ethical and political reflection that projects us into a plausible future, which must take into account the generosity of an imagination capable of transforming the world.

● Presentation of ARCHiPELAGOS / Passages in Paris, Fondation
Calouste Gulbenkian – Délégation en France, November 7, 2018.
● Published in Limite, Revista de Estudios Portugueses y de
la Lusofonía, Universidad de Extremadura, vol 12.2 / 2018
● Adapted into English: Michales Loukovikas

● See also: GIORGOS ANDREOU on “ARCHiPELAGOS”
● as well as: GIORGOS ANDREOU on “PERIPLUS”

ARCHiPELAGOS Authors: Manos Achalinotópoulos | Giorgos Andreou | Ludwig van Beethoven | Rosalía de Castro | Martín Codax | Hélia Correia | João de Deus | Euripides | José Gomes Ferreira | Friedrich Hölderlin | Anonymous Hurrian | Fernando Lopes-Graça | Michales Loukovikas | Giorgos Mitsakis | Amélia Muge | José Niza | Violeta Parra | Fernando Pessoa | Sappho | José Saramago | Armando Soares | Panagiotis Tountas | Vasilis Tsitsanis
Nucleus: Amélia Muge: voice, guitarra braguesa, percussion | Michales Loukovikas: voice, accordion, sound effects | Manos Achalinotópoulos: clarino (folk clarinet), voice | Kyriakos Gouventas: violin, viola (5-string violin) | Harris Lambrakis: ney, recorder (pipes) | Maria Monda trio: Sofia Adriana Portugal, Susana Quaresma, Tânia Cardoso | Dimitris Mystakidis: guitar, bouzouki, baglamás, tzourás (the bouzouki family) | Ricardo Parreira: guitarra portuguesa | António Quintino: double bass | Filipe Raposo: piano, accordion, synthesizers | José Salgueiro: percussion
Special Guests: Hélia Correia & Maria José Muge: recitation
Guests (pro-bono): Mariana Abrunheiro: voice | Catarina Anacleto: cello, voice | Niovi Benou: claps | Teresa Campos: voice | Pedro Casaes: voice | José Manuel David: voice | Ana Dias: harp | Kostas Hanís: vibraphone | Andreas Karakotas: voice | António José Martins: music box, percussion | Catarina Moura: voice | Thomás Natsis: flamenco guitar, claps | Paló: voice | Kosmás Papadópoulos: clarinet | Rita Maria: voice | Rui Vaz: voice
Plus: Cramol: female vocal group of the Workers’ Library of Oeiras | PSO: Plucked Strings Orchestra ‘Thanasis Thipinakis’ of the Patras Municipality | Children’s Choir, dir. Catarina Anacleto: Santiago Fantasia, Gabriel Leite, Sophia Van Epps, Ana Pita, Marta Semblano, Patrícia Arens Teixeira

Chronicle 7. INDO-IBERIAN ARC (Duende)

Chronicle 7. INDO-IBERIAN ARC (Duende)

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 7. ΙΝΔΟΪΒΗΡΙΚΟ ΤΟΞΟ (Duende)

● Lorca and Duende ● Pohren and Flamenco:
Dance and Guitar ● Cithara and Pandura

Michales Loukovikas

FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA gave lectures not only on cante jondo, but also on the Theory and Play of Duende (1930) – a keyword in order to get to the bottom of the essence of flamenco, of music in general, and penetrate the core of all the arts, especially the so-called performing arts. According to the dictionaries, duende means “fairy, demon, ghost, devil, goblin, spirit – holy or evil.” Dictionaries rarely clarify concepts related to music and culture. And why should we let ourselves in the mercy of lexicographers when we have Lorca as a guide? Let’s listen to him with due attention as we are introduced to the magic and mystical duende:

“All that has dark sounds has duende.” (Manuel Torre)

“All through Andalusia… people constantly talk about duende and recognize it every time it appears with a fine instinct… The old Gypsy bailaora [dancer] La Malena once heard Brailowsky play a piece of Bach, and exclaimed: ‘Olé! That has duende!’, but was bored by Gluck, Brahms and Milhaud. And [the Gypsy singer] Manuel Torre, a great artist of the Andalusian people, a man who has more culture in his veins than anyone I’ve known, on hearing Falla play his own Nocturno del Generalife, spoke this splendid phrase: ‘All that has dark sounds has duende’… – agreeing with Goethe who hit on a definition of duende, in speaking of Paganini: ‘A mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained.’⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ Lorca’s English texts on Cante jondo and Duende are based on A. S. Kline’s translations.

“I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘Duende is not in the throat: duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive; meaning, it’s in the veins; meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation. It is, in sum, the spirit of the earth, the same duende that scorched Nietzche’s heart as he searched for its outer form on the Rialto Bridge and in Bizet’s music, without finding it, and without seeing that the duende he pursued had leapt from the Greek mysteries to the dancers of Cádiz and the headless Dionysiac scream of Silverio’s siguiriya.”

Alhambra with Generalife by night

The “Dionysiac” and “mystic” Hellenes are here again in full force. Their theatre of action is Cádiz, the ancient Gádeira (Gadir), or Roman Gades.⁽²⁾ To this port of Andalusia outside the Mediterranean, on the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, or the Pillars of Heracles, we will shortly return. For the moment, we continue listening to García Lorca spellbound:

• ⁽²⁾ The ancient root is retained in the adjective gaditano: of/from Cádiz, its native/inhabitant.

Sea Melodies, by Herbert James Draper (1904)

“For every man, every artist called Nietzsche or Cézanne, every step that he climbs in the tower of his perfection is at the expense of the struggle that he undergoes with his duende, not with an angel, as is often said, nor with his Muse… Angel and Muse come from outside us: the angel brings light, the Muse form (Hesiod learnt from her)… While duende has to be roused from the furthest habitations of the blood. Reject the angel, and give the Muse a kick… The true struggle is with duende.

“The great artists of southern Spain, Gypsy or flamenco, singers, dancers, musicians, know that emotion is impossible without the arrival of duende. They might deceive people into thinking they can communicate the sense of duende without possessing it, as authors, painters, and literary fashion-makers deceive us every day, possessing no duende: but we only have to attend a little, and not be full of indifference, to discover the fraud, and chase off that clumsy artifice.

“Emotion is impossible without duende.” (García Lorca)

Pastora Pavón, la Niña de los Peines

“Once the Andalusian flamenco singer Pastora Pavon, La Niña de Los Peines [The Girl of the Combs], sombre Spanish genius, equal in power of fancy to Goya… was singing in a little tavern in Cádiz. She played with her voice of shadows, with her voice of beaten tin, with her mossy voice, she tangled it in her hair, or soaked it in manzanilla or abandoned it to dark distant briars. But, there was nothing there: it was useless. The audience remained silent… Pastora Pavón finished her song in silence. Only, a little man… sarcastically, in a very soft voice, said: ‘Viva, Paris!’ as if to say: ‘Here ability is not important, nor technique, nor skill. What matters here is something else.’

“Then La Niña de Los Peines got up like a madwoman, trembling like a medieval mourner, and drank, in one gulp, a huge glass of fiery spirits, and began to sing with a scorched throat, without voice, breath, colour, but… with duende. She managed to tear down the scaffolding of the song, but allow through a furious, burning duende, friend to those winds heavy with sand, that make listeners tear at their clothes with the same rhythm as the Negroes of the Antilles in their rite… La Niña de Los Peines had to tear apart her voice, because she knew experts were listening, who demanded not form but the marrow of form, pure music with a body lean enough to float on air. She had to rob herself of skill and safety: that is to say, banish her Muse, and be helpless, so her duende might come, and deign to struggle with her at close quarters. And how she sang! Her voice no longer at play, her voice a jet of blood, worthy of her pain and her sincerity”…

Donn Pohren and Baile Flamenco

WHAT AN EVENING, INDEED! I’D LOVE TO BE THERE! Well, here we are back to Cádiz with the captivating description of duende by Lorca. It’s where we meet again Donn Pohren, who will lead us to the ancient city of Gadir via… India!

Donn Pohren

“Today”, Pohren writes in his Biographical History, Lives and Legends of Flamenco, the second book of his flamenco trilogy, “nearly all theoreticians of the dance agree that the baile flamenco is directly descended from the ancient religious dances of the Indian Hindus… What in all likelihood has taken place is that the highly-civilized Brahmanic temple dances were adopted by a lesser-developed people, shorn of many subtleties, and returned to a more natural and primitive art form concerned only with the expression of oneself and one’s emotions.

“Let us attempt to construct a brief history of the development of these Indian dances within Spain. First of all, how did they reach Spain? Traditionally performed only in the temples during Brahmanic religious rites, these dances eventually began to be danced more popularly outside the shrines in India. It was then that they were first introduced into other lands by way of early Mediterranean trading vessels and overland caravans. The point of entrance into Spain was most certainly Gadir, later called Gades, today called Cádiz, the oldest city in Spain, founded by the Phoenicians around 1100 BC. Gadir was an extremely important city, and it is likely that professional Indian dancers were brought in to entertain the city’s royalty, probably during the time of the Greeks, c. 500–250 BC, less likely during the reign of the Romans, c. 250 BC – 475 AD. (Hindu musicians and singers surely accompanied the dancers, and thus also introduced their art forms into Spain during this same period. This would partly explain the strong similarities that still exist between certain types of Hindu singing and music, and flamenco).”

● Although we have just heard Lorca telling us that “duende had leapt from the Greek mysteries to the dancers of Cádiz”, there was probably no Hellenic period then in Gadir. From the Phoenicians and the Punics (whom Pohren seems to ignore), the city passed into the hands of the Romans in 206 BCE. Irrespective of the error, what’s important is not who the master of the city was at the time, but the fact that Gadir functioned as a gateway for the Indian dance and music influence into Andalusia. Whatever the case, we know that in their symposia, the Hellenes, both in mainland Greece and also in the colonies, used to enjoy the art of foreign singers and musicians, mostly women, who (according to the symposiasts’ “tastes”) appeared dressed or nude, as we are told by Athenaeus (“Deipnosophistae”, 3rd century CE) and Suda (“Lexicon”, 10th century).

Symposium scene with an aulos playing girl [modestly dressed up, not nude], by Nicias painter

“These civilizations,” Pohren goes on, “with their emphasis on culture, undoubtedly introduced this religious dancing into their own temples, so that by the arrival of the Visigoths in Andalusia (c. 450–700), this type of religious dancing had already become so traditional as to be carried over into the primitive Spanish Church, encouraged and even performed by early Christian priests. (El Baile Andaluz, by Caballero Bonald: ‘It is now known that the fathers of the primitive Church openly admitted, and even fomented with their examples, the adoption by the Christian cult of certain elements of the sacred oriental dances, frequently danced by the very priests themselves’). The Visigoths accepted Catholicism and merged with the Hispano-Roman population,⁽³⁾ and religious dancing continued throughout their reign.

• ⁽³⁾ Pohren, just like Mascarenhas Barreto in the Chronicle 5, put the cart before the horse, speaking about Catholicism before the Schism. Although this doubling of the error makes me wonder: may Catholicism be synonymous with Christianism, and Orthodoxy is a… heresy? Terra incognita: religious affairs have never been my forte!

“It is postulated that during the reign of the Moors (c. 711–1492) these sacred dances were danced more and more popularly outside the confines of the church, possibly even by Spain’s first gypsies, who were thought to have come as camp-followers of the Moorish armies (after having arrived in North Africa from their homeground, India, by way of Pakistan, Persia, and Arabia). As both the gypsies and the Moors already cultivated a type of dance largely derived from the Brahmanic religious dances, their arrival most certainly gave the existing Andalusian dances a shot in the arm…

“Another historical event in the development of the flamenco dance was the arrival of the second migration of gypsies to Spain around 1450, shortly before the Moors were expelled from their last footholds in Andalusia. The gypsies arrived from India by the northern route (Persia, Russia, etc.), bringing with them their interpretations of Indian dances and songs, and adding fresh fuel to the Andalusian folklore…

“After the Moors were forced out, all religious connotations in the dance ceased. The dances were not only banned from the Church because of their increasing sensuality and ‘sinful movements’, but at one time persecutions were carried out against interpreters of certain dances regardless of where they were danced. It was then that the dance, together with the cante, went underground, becoming an art of the ‘lawless elements’ of society. This happened more or less simultaneously with the 16th century edicts ordering the expulsion of the Moors, gypsies, and Jews, and can probably be cited as the beginning of the formation of flamenco as we know it today.”

Cithara/Kithara > Guitarra

This panorama on the evolution of dance from the Indian Brahmanic temples to the Andalusian gypsy camps, with all intermediate stages, has a negative side: it is one-dimensional, presenting India as the matrix of the art of dance – and even more – leading to wrong conclusions. But if, instead of the dance, we trace the evolution of the guitar, the entire mosaic of exchange becomes balanced and three-dimensional. Our guide, Pohren, as a guitarist, moves now into far more familiar waters:

Ancient Hellenic cithara/kithara

“The Spanish guitar”, he remarks in the chapter of the same book (Lives and Legends of Flamenco) dealing with his instrument, “is the direct offspring of, principally, the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) and, secondarily, the guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar), both of which are generally believed to have descended from the ancient kithara asiria (Oriental zither).⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ Note how terminology differs in the phases of the guitar’s development: cithara or kithara > guitarra. It refers to the time when the ancient cithara ceased to have the form of a large ancient lyre and acquired a “neck” or “arm”.

“First let us attempt to trace the kithara asiria [Assyrian]. José de Azpiazu, in his book La Guitarra y Los Guitarristas, makes the observation that we must look to Egypt and Babylonia for the earliest string instruments, including the zither, from whence they passed on to Syria, Persia, India, and the Middle and Far East in general. He bases this assumption on diverse archaeological finds, principally in Egypt, singling out in particular a bas-relief, dated at 3500 BC, discovered in the tomb of one of the Kings of Thebes. This bas-relief, now in the museum of Leyden (Holland), includes an instrument somewhat resembling today’s Spanish guitar. Azpiazu also states that around the time 1000–800 BC the Egyptians possessed an instrument greatly resembling the modern guitar. This instrument could easily have been the previously mentioned guitarra morisca, or one of its predecessors in its development from the kithara asiria.

Egyptian 3500 years ago playing a guitar-like instrument

“However, in view of continued archaeological discoveries, no date or place can be irrevocably pinpointed concerning the origin of any of the ancient stringed instruments. The discovery by an English archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, determining that the city of Jericho was teeming with life as far back as 6800 BC, makes the first Egyptian dynasty (3400 BC) seem relatively modern. In truth, the family tree of string instruments, in all of its rich variety, is as vague as civilization’s early history. Perhaps the only data available to sustain the belief that the guitar is descended from the ancient kithara asiria is the similarity and progression of the zither-guitar terminology in various languages, and the corresponding similarity and development of the instruments represented by the terms, as follows: qitâra (Chaldea – an ancient region in Southeast Asia, on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), quitar (Arabic), sitar (Hindi), kithara (Greek), cítara (Spanish) and guitarra (Spanish).

Vihuela: the bygone “aristocrat” cousin of the “folk” guitar, with six double strings, is the mother of the violas portuguesas, one of which accompanies the guitarra portuguesa, the lead instrument of fado.

“If we wish to follow the popular theory that the guitar was derived from the kithara (there is no good reason not to), the guitar’s development in Spain can be traced in rough outline. It is generally agreed that the kithara asiria (then called the kithara romana) was introduced into Spain during the time of the Romans, sometime before the birth of Christ.⁽⁵⁾ The kithara flourished in Spain until the fall of the Spanish Roman Empire (5th century), at which time it fell largely into disuse until the invading Visigoths were firmly established on the peninsula. The Visigoths set about reviving the old Roman culture, and the kithara again emerged. In the 7th century San Isidro wrote of wandering minstrels singing and accompanying themselves on the kithara… It was around this period that the guitarra latina, an instrument containing four sets of double strings and which resembled a small version of the present Spanish guitar, was developed in Spain, presumably, as we have stated, from the kithara romana.

• ⁽⁵⁾ “In my opinion”, footnotes Pohren, “it is more likely that visiting Hindu musicians introduced the kithara asiria, or similar instruments, into Cádiz before the coming of the Romans, probably during the reign of the Greeks”…

● Well, in my opinion, it is far more likely that the Greeks themselves introduced into Iberia their own version of this instrument: the cithara helénica!

A woman playing a lyre (an instrument that shows the
cithara to guitarra transition), by Cesare Saccaggi

“Meanwhile, in the Middle East the kithara asiria had long ago inspired the family of the guitarra morisca, an oval-shaped, three-stringed instrument introduced into Spain with the 8th century Moorish invasion. It is thought that the only significant characteristic that the Latin guitar borrowed from the Moorish guitar, in its development into Spanish guitar, was the idea of the single strings in place of the formerly-used sets of double strings.

“So by the 9th century there existed in Spain guitars not unlike those we play today, but until the troubadour period (the 11th through the 13th centuries) the guitar was not widely introduced to the general populace. Little structural change of any significance took place in this guitar until the 16th century, when Vicente Espinel began using a fifth string. (This was not Espinel’s invention, as guitars had existed previously with five strings. Espinel merely made the fifth string fashionable. Many musicologists express the belief that the famous Ziryab himself first innovated the use of the fifth string in the 9th century). With this development the Spaniards finally seemed to feel that the guitar was their instrument, and it was then that the guitarra latina was rechristened the ‘Spanish guitar’.⁽⁶⁾ Two centuries later the final radical development was made, which was the addition of the sixth string by fray Miguel García, a monk also known as Padre Basilio, an excellent classical guitarist and the guitar instructor of King Carlos IV, Queen María Luisa, and the famous concert guitarist, Dionisio Aguado. Thus, except for its growth in size and quality, by the latter third of the 18th century the Spanish guitar was as we know it today.

• ⁽⁶⁾ Except the guitarra española, there is also a guitarra portuguesa, which resembles more a lute than a guitar. It descends from a medieval “guitar”, the citole, and is now the solo instrument of fado. It is accompanied by a “normal” guitar, which is called viola to be distinguished from the guitarra portuguesa; the word viola probably comes from another old guitar, vihuela, or viola de mão. In the 15th century, some musicians played it with a bow, and that’s how the viol, or viola da gamba, was born; it was later replaced by the violin family, especially the cello.

Bayad plays the oud to the Lady (from the Arabic tale Bayad
and Riyad) – or Ziryab’s Garden (Andalusia, 13th century)

“Now that we know something of the development of the guitar, let us look into the development of the music. According to Lévi-Provençal (La Civilización Árabe en España), the great tradition of Andalusian music was molded together and developed in the Cordovan conservatory of music established and directed by the Mesopotamian musician, Ziryab, in the 9th century. (Ziryab arrived in Córdoba in 822, in his early thirties, and remained there the rest of his life). What he must have done was gather, and become proficient in, the Andalusian folklore of that period, which was, of course, highly Oriental in nature, and conserve and teach it to attending minstrels and nobility in his conservatory. As he had spent years in the courts of Baghdad, and was the supreme musician of his time, he undoubtedly added to, and purified, what he found. Ziryab, in fact, is credited with having played the major musical role in making Andalusia the outstanding cultural center of the world at that time.”

“Ziryab played the major role in making Andalusia the outstanding
cultural center of the world in the 9th century.” (Donn Pohren)

Chelys: lyre made with a tortoise shell

IN THIS MONUMENTAL MURAL, created mainly by Lorca and Pohren, with all the others contributing, we only need to apply some extra brushstrokes to… exonerate the Assyrians, who became notorious in history mainly for their cruelty, but also to show that in social processes, parthenogenesis is out of the question in all places and all times – even in the case of the ancient “Hellenic miracle” that has been feasible due to borrowing intellectual achievements and know-how from the Orient.

The cithara was an instrument of the professionals, while its little sister, the lyre, of the amateurs. According to the Encyclopedia of Ancient Hellenic Music by Solon Michaelides (the source of much valuable information throughout our Chronicles), the cithara was called Ἀσιάς (Asian). Plutarch (1st–2nd century CE) claimed that “it was called Asian because it was used by the Lesbian citharodes [or citharoedes, or citharedes (cithara + ode), i.e. cithara players who also sang] dwelling close to Asia”. This is, of course, a pretext – even if Lesbos is actually close to Asia Minor. The truth is found in the writings of Hesychius of Alexandria (5th century CE), who explained that the cithara was defined as such “for it was invented in Asia”. The adjectives Ἀσιάς and Ἀσιᾶτις (Asian, Asiatic) were used not only in relation to the cithara, but also to music in general; as Strabo points out: “… καὶ ἡ μουσικὴ πᾶσα Θρᾳκία καὶ Ἀσιᾶτις νενόμισται”; “… all music is thought to be Thracian and Asian” (see the Chronicle 11. “Music Is Thracian and Asian”). Ancient Thrace, mind you, was not a part of ancient Hellas.

A Konso girl playing a krar lyre (southern Ethiopia)

These instruments of the cithara and lyre family have been extinct for centuries now because they were left behind in the development of music, becoming inadequate and thus unable to satisfy the needs of the people – musicians and listeners. They are now rarely found still in use among primitive tribes, primarily in northeastern Africa – and this is indeed a pleasant surprise! Certain German ethnomusicologists recorded, among others, the sound of a lyre played by a cattleman, member of the Hamar tribe in Ethiopia, and put his photo on the cover of the album. Isn’t it impressive? The symbol of so many “serious” music institutions, the “musical instrument par excellence” of the ancient Greeks, the celebrated chelys of Hermes, who offered it to Apollo (to atone for stealing his oxen!), to be “degraded” in the hands of primitive Africans, and also been made with a tortoise shell? It can’t be, these Germans should have been related in some way to… Fallmerayer!⁽⁷⁾

• ⁽⁷⁾ Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer (1790 – 1861) was a German Tyrolean traveller, journalist, politician, and historian, best known for his controversial discontinuity theory concerning the racial origins of the Greeks.

In conclusion, if we assume that the guitar descended from the ancient cithara, the latter must have been combined with some kind of lute – that is, with an instrument having a “neck” – as the guitar belongs to this lute family. The only similar instrument in ancient Greece was the so-called tríchordon (three-string), or pandura, pandurís, pánduros, and phánduros. In the Hellenistic era there was already a whole family of such instruments that became later even larger with the additions of the erudite thambura (tambur of Constantinople), folk tanbur-saz or bağlama, and also bouzouki (see Chronicle 9. The Celebrated Tríchordon).

Bow harp (ennanga from Uganda): descendant of the musical bow and precursor of the string instruments

Pollux (2nd century CE), writing about the origin of the instrument, is very clear: “Tríchordon, which the Assyrians called pandura; it was also their own invention.” Therefore, etymologically and organologically, the pandura was Assyrian. We can assume, as a result, that the cithara asiria, which Pohren referred to, should have been related to the pandura. The term tríchordon that the Hellenes used for the pandura means that it was a three-string instrument. Let us not forget that the guitarra morisca, descending from the cithara asiria, was also a tríchordon.⁽⁸⁾

• ^(h) Cithara probably means tríchordon, three-string. The Indian sitar (of a common etymological origin), though it’s multi-stringed now (about 20 strings; 6-7 melodic and the rest sympathetic, “sympathizing”, i.e. vibrating, with the melodic ones) should have been three-string and Persian in origin (seh-tar in Farsi means “three-string”); besides, in Iran there is still in use a kind of three-string (already four-string) tanbur called setar.

It’s so thrilling to imagine that the starting point of all these instruments was the primitive hunter’s bow; that in time of rest could become a musical bow…

• >> Chronicle 8. A HYBRID’S HYBRIS…
• << Chronicle 6. INDO-IBERIAN ARC (Jondo)

Next Chronicle 8. A HYBRID’S HYBRIS… ● “Mosaic” of Andalusia ● Cultural “Crossroads” and “Purity” ● Natural and Artificial Hybrids ● “Creative” Commercialization ● Paco de Lucía

Musical bow

GIORGOS ANDREOU on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

GIORGOS ANDREOU on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Ο ΓΙΩΡΓΟΣ ΑΝΔΡΕΟΥ για το “ΑΡΧΙΠΕΛΑΓΟΣ”

Giorgos Andreou, a distinguished Greek composer and pianist

BETWEEN the Portuguese and the Greeks, they say, there’s a great affinity. They are two peoples with superb achievements at sea. We, Greeks, have given glamour to the Archipelago, i.e. the Aegean Sea, since ancient times with the awesome and, at the same time, dazzling archetype of the great voyager, Odysseus, an (almost) intertemporal person now, who has remarkably managed to get into the consciousness and cultures of all the peoples of the world, thanks to that major text, the “Odyssey”, which is essentially what? It is a man’s struggle with the sea – at times his friend, at times his enemy – in order to return to his land, Ithaca, to fulfill his “nostos”, to eat “nostimon” (delicious) bread, to experience what Homer calls “nostimon hemar” – the day of his return home. The significance of the word “nostimon” is so great that has ended up in us, Modern Greeks, having the meaning of a dish which is good and not “anoston” (tasteless). While “anostos” is the one who cannot return to his homeland. These are excellent wordplays of the language.

I’d like to point out some important lines of approach in this new work by Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas. Unfortunately, we live in a time when the idea of an “integral recording”, what we call a concept album, tends to fall apart, returning to an era of separate tracks that are being played on the radio inconsistently. I do not blame them; separate songs are fine, as well. But recording history has given us the opportunity to create masterpieces resembling literary works, novels: i.e. a whole disc having a single theme, or variations on a single theme, being a story. There are prominent Greek composers, who have set poetry to music producing significant work, as well as great foreign bands, such as Pink Floyd, and many others, who have benefited from this mode of recording.

Amelia and Michales have loved this mode; they have honoured it to the full. Both “Periplus”, their previous joint effort, and “Archipelagos”, are integrated acoustic, aesthetic, cultural immersions that you cannot listen to in parts; you have to listen to them in whole, seeing the development of their own aesthetics, sensitivity, artistic targeting, and through them, all the important parameters that inevitably come to light, even more so when two cultures meet, converging and also diverging.

Everything is featured and entertained in “Archipelagos”: great poets that I feel the need to mention. We begin with an anonymous hymnodist from Ugarit 3500 years ago; it is a Hurrian hymn, whose music is set to Greek and Portuguese lyrics, that curiously its musical motif sounds very much like a Portuguese anti-fascist anthem, “Acordai!” (Wake up!). Sappho, Euripides, with a choral ode from “Orestes”, Friedrich Hölderlin, João de Deus, Rosalía de Castro, José Gomes Ferreira, Hélia Correia and, of course, the two tremendous Portuguese literary personalities, Fernando Pessoa and José Saramago, are also present.

Regarding songwriters, those entertained here are Martín Codax (a medieval Galician bard), the celebrated Violeta Parra, Armando Soares, José Niza, as well as the Greeks Panagiotis Tountas, Giorgos Mitsakis, Vasilis Tsitsanis, along with some composers, most prominently Ludwig van Beethoven. Now what’s Beethoven doing in a meeting between Portuguese and Greeks? Alright, there are always some artistic… perversions! It is, of course, justifiable because, strangely enough, this “Marcia funebre”, in the Second Movement of the Third Symphony, has made a match in a “diabolical” and paradoxical way with a poetic creation by the eminent writer Hélia Correia,^(*) a philhellene, who has also produced significant work under the influence of the Hellenic spirit, the ancient above all. Other composers are Fernando Lopes-Graça and me… (I have not referred to Michales and Amelia, as I do not consider them to be just authors in this work; I regard them as pillars. I’ve just mentioned those who are entertained in their work).

• ^(*) Hélia Correia’s poem, referred to by Giorgos Andreou, is “The Third Misery” (A Terceira Miséria, 2012), dedicated to Greece, with the Parthenon on the cover. It’s a pity, indeed, if it’s not published in Greek.

A wonderful thing happened concerning myself: I had written a musical motif in the CD “Swallows in the Rain” (which I recorded with the outstanding Plucked Strings Orchestra “Athanasios Tsipinakis” of the municipality of Patras), asking the excellent poet Dionysis Karatzas to recite three of his poems, so as to have also his voice recorded along with the songs that were born within me due to his poetry. Indeed, he read the poems on a composition that I called “Like a Play”. Listening to this music, Amélia picked a poem by Saramago, “Alegria”, and perfectly matched melody and poetry as if by magic! There are more magic moments: Saramago’s wife has been a very interesting actress having also worked in Patras, a philhellene, as well. Thrilling coincidences…

Plucked Strings Orchestra “Athanasios Tsipinakis” of the municipality of Patras

In our cultures, those related to sea, the poetic phenomenon is central. We can compliment ourselves that we are musicians, but the cultures in which Hellenes and Portuguese belong are above all poetic cultures. Their great dynamic is poetic creation. Poetic creation, I would say, from Homer to Pessoa, dictates in a way the reflection of these cultures, the way they gaze at themselves and the world, the way in which they ponder on the idea of voyage. Great poetic texts in both cultures deal with the sea, the human adventure. There have been great voyagers – the Portuguese have their own great explorers, e.g. Vasco da Gama – people who have struggled with the sea, even drowned, so that we could improve our understanding of the world, find new seas, new lands. But what these cultures are looking for above all is a deeper poetic connection of our being with the universe around us.

Fado, by José Malhoa

It is no coincidence that these cultures, for which the Poetic Mode is of great importance, preserve what we call folk culture – have their own Folk musical Tradition. The Portuguese have the well-known Fado, beloved all over the planet; we have our great Demotic Tradition and, at the same time, an important branch that sprang out from it, our folk song, which started from Smyrna as an urban song, and developed from Rebetiko to a city Laïkó song, reaching its climax with geniuses, such as Tsitsanis or, sometime before, Tountas, who has been a bridge between these two routes.

What, then, is that which preserves folk tradition in these cultures? (Because there are cultures – great at every level – which no longer have a folk tradition, a folk song of their own, but only academic). It is this poetic reflection, poetic consciousness, which is not (only) individual. There is a collective universe behind every individual in these cultures. I firmly believe this is due to the relationship with the infinite that the sea symbolizes. The water is the unconscious, the long voyage, underneath our logic, where we put islands, meaning logic, surrounded by the subconscious of the immense sea. That’s how a sense of unity is born: while we are individuals, we are simultaneously a Community; and we express ourselves (how else?) through this Community.

The most important expression of the Community is Tradition – music, dance, visual arts. Whatever tradition we pick as an example, we realize there’s a sense of coherence, of discipline: I conform myself to a pattern that exists for centuries now, I work on it, taste it, add or remove something, and give it back to go beyond me, when I no longer exist, though I exist through it, within it. This is a way of approaching our reality, a way with which our two cultures, the Hellenic and the Portuguese, have learned to live and create for centuries and centuries.

Tradition, by Olin Levi Warner (1895). Bronze tympanum
over the main entrance of the Library of Congress in Washington.

All of the above are in a way recorded in “Archipelagos”. Of course, do not expect some musicological treatise. No creator or artist owes anything like that. First of all, what counts is his/her personal taste, mental euphoria, and the connections he/she has chosen. The artist defends a personal “meaning” while proposing a work of art. This meaning, however, at the same time symbolizes the whole, because Tsitsanis is also all the rest, just like Beethoven is in a way all Classical music. Thus a gesture has always a wider scope than the choice of a person.

I invite you, therefore, to listen, feel and love “Archipelagos” for what it is: the meeting of two creative persons, two important artists, two excellent musicians-composers, and the way they conform themselves to Tradition and at the same time renew it. Because a Tradition that remains stagnant and is not renewed will inevitably die and be “frozen”. As well as a renewal that is more “irreverent” than it’s proper – i.e. its audacity disturbs the balance of aesthetic and moral options, and is gradually transformed into an offense, damage, “unconventional” attitude, which anyway dissolves the fabric of Tradition – is equally reprehensible.

The Temple of Poseidon at Sounion; the point where Aegeus jumped into the sea, since his son, Theseus, blinded by arrogance and hybris (he had killed the Minotaur, but thanks to Ariadne, whom he later abandoned on Naxos), forgot to raise the white sail of good news
for his father waiting anxiously to see him back…

I believe that Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas have achieved this admirable balance creating in fact a work of art, so much flattering for us Greeks, as it is called “Archipelagos”. There are many archipelagos, but historically the first one and immortal throughout the ages, thanks to the “Odyssey” and the father of all, Homer, is the Aegean Sea, which, as Aeschylus has written, many times we see it blooming dead, either by a tempest, or some naval battle or catastrophe, or an unexpected return without a white sail, such as that which led Aegeus in despair to jump into the waters and henceforth the sea to be called Aegean.

There’s always a drama behind our cultures. However, we have already attained the manner, kindness, wisdom and mental integrity not to mourn this drama, but save it as a precious patrimony, a bittersweet balance between light and darkness, life and death – isn’t human destiny likewise throughout the ages?

Good luck and congratulations on your work!

Speech during the presentation of “Archipelagos”
at “Janus” bookstores in Athens on May 4, 2018

● See also: MARIA GRACIETE BESSE on “ARCHiPELAGOS”
● As well as: GIORGOS ANDREOU on “PERIPLUS”

Chronicle 6. INDO-IBERIAN ARC (Jondo)

Chronicle 6. INDO-IBERIAN ARC (Jondo)

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 6. ΙΝΔΟΪΒΗΡΙΚΟ ΤΟΞΟ (Jondo)

● Roma, Bartók, Pohren and Flamenco
● Lorca, Falla, Pedrell and Cante Jondo

Michales Loukovikas

IT’S A PLEASANT SURPRISE whenever you meet the familiar figures of ancient Hellenes emerging from the pages of books about other peoples’ ways of life and expression – such as fado and flamenco – and also playing leading roles in legends that are probably unknown to modern Greeks.

No doubt “casting” those heroic Hellenes in the mythological dramatis personae of the world is not so strange a phenomenon. It is a measure of the splendour of ancient Grecian civilization. But what’s quite unexpected is to find such legends in books dealing with music (see the previous Chronicle).

Indeed, there are so many myths, stories, and tales, about Heracles, Odysseus and, even more, Alexander! And it’s no coincidence at all. It’s them that have defined our common historical background: the westward voyages of Heracles and Odysseus, and the eastward drive of Alexander, outline this wider area, the one that, schematically more or less, I described as the historical space of the Mediterranean.

Alexander’s exploits in the Orient are still widely acclaimed and echo in so many legends about Iskandar. In the western Mediterranean, on the contrary, the whole picture is rather obscure; it lacks clarity. It was quite natural for me to focus my attention there for an extra reason: until recently almost everyone in Greece referred to the Eastern Mediterranean, not just as the “gravitational” centre of this historical space, but as though it constituted an area apart from both the western half of mare nostrum, and also the eastern extension of the Mediterranean space into continental Asia.⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ Now everybody’s talking of the one, unified Mediterranean. Well, that is something! Once upon a time – not so long ago – the cliché and catch phrase (overused ad nauseam) was “ἡ καθ’ ἡμᾶς Ἀνατολή”, meaning something like “our own Orient”, and referring to the long gone Hellenistic East. The exact meaning differed widely depending on the person using it. The best description of the phrase I know is Cavafy’s poem In the Year 200 B.C. (see Chronicle 2). The worst ones are found in the speeches of politicians who, in the past, combined it with the so-called “Megale Idea” (“Great Idea”, about an even “Greater Hellas”), which proved to be not a “great idea” at all, and has since become a national nightmare…

The Rock of Gibraltar, the European Pillar of Heracles (1850)

Andalusia, the western end of our historical space, has received
so many cultural elements from its eastern end, India, that
the wide scope of exchange becomes more than evident.

Well, I searched for evidence to the contrary; and I arrived to the conclusion that there’s no better and more convincing example than music – or rather, culture – of Andalusia: the western end of our historical space has received – and indeed repeatedly – so many cultural elements from its eastern end, India, that the wide scope of exchange becomes more than evident.

If the Hellenes have also been involved in this give and take, so much the better. But apart from les enfants terribles de l’antiquité, there are some others, as well, that delineate our historical space; a quite humble people who, without having bequeathed to mankind splendid monuments of art and literature, were able to leave their indelible mark wherever they passed through, despite the relentless persecution they suffered. I’m talking about the Gypsies, the Roma who, in their own way, remind us that civilization is not only sublime art and culture; it is also the primitive but authentic way of human expression – which, we need never to forget, was the starting point of every art form.

So, let’s go and meet them remaining on Iberian soil: from the world of fado in Portugal, we cross into that of flamenco in Andalusia – and what we hear first of all is… a passionate dispute about the origin of flamenco! It’s an old controversy still going on strong between the advocates of an Andalusian birth certificate and those who see the genre as a Romani creation.

Gypsy dance in the gardens of the Alcázar, in front of Charles V Pavilion, by Alfred Dehodencq (1851)

Even prejudiced persons are obliged to recognize that the Gypsies – or at least some of their tribes – have an innate talent for music. They are quick though to assert that the Roma are not distinguished for their creative inspiration, but just for their skill in the execution of music. Although self-contradictory, this view was expressed, in all seriousness, even from authoritative personalities, perhaps with good intentions. It’s true such controversies erupted in countries, like those in Eastern Europe, with a strong gypsy presence, during the formation of the so-called “national schools” in music. But the root of the problem goes far back:

Music was not a lucrative – and hence respectable – occupation for
centuries, when the only professional musicians around were Gypsies.
After the economic conditions had changed and many locals became
musicians, it was almost impossible to “purify” the local musical idioms…

Music as a profession was not a lucrative – and hence respectable – occupation for centuries, when the only professional musicians around were Gypsies. After the economic conditions had changed and many locals had become musicians, it was almost impossible to identify and set apart the indigenous musical elements from gypsy additions – or with a different phraseology, to “purify” local musical idioms. Still, we cannot blame the Gypsies for this “problem” (if, indeed, there was one)…

Béla Bartók

“Contact with foreign material,” according to Béla Bartók, the celebrated Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist, “does not merely imply the exchange of melodies, but – and this is even more important – is also a stimulus for new styles to arise… The current situation of Eastern European folk music can be summarized as follows: As a result of the continuous interaction of several peoples’ folk music, a tremendous wealth of melodies and melody types has emerged… Therefore, the lack of racial purity that has appeared as a final result has had crucially beneficial resonances. A complete separation from foreign influence means stagnation; well-assimilated foreign impulses offer possibilities of enrichment.”

“Contact with foreign material is a stimulus for new styles. Racial purity means stagnation; well-assimilated foreign impulses offer possibilities of enrichment.” (Béla Bartók)

Only racists would reject such important conclusions. But nationalism is also a problem, especially in an area like Eastern Europe as it was already described. Even Bartók was not immune to such “national sentiments”. When he realized that Hungarian folk songs traditionally employed by “classical” composers were not autochthonous, he decided to make a research. So, in 1908, he and Zoltán Kodály, his colleague and compatriot, travelled into the countryside to collect old Magyar folk melodies, which had previously been categorized as “gypsy music”. In contrast, they discovered that these folk melodies were based on pentatonic scales, similar to those in Asian folk traditions, as those of Anatolia, Central Asia and Siberia.

Gypsy Girl with a Mandolin,
by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

● First of all, the Magyars themselves are anything but autochthonous: they came from the Urals to what is now Hungary rather recently: in the 10th century CE. The Roma perhaps arrived there somehow later but without plundering the area around, as the Magyars did. (Alas, this is the reason why there’s no Roma state today…) Why, then, should the Magyars care so much about indigenity? What Bartók and Kodály proved after all was that old Magyar folk melodies originated in Asia, and therefore, were not autochthonous either!

● Concerning the other melodic treasures of this area, Bartók said: “As a result of the continuous interaction of several peoples’ folk music, a tremendous wealth of melodies and melody types has emerged.” All of these melodies and melody types have been neither Austro-Hungarian, nor Czecho-Slovakian, nor Serbo-Croatian, nor Romanian or even Romani (since the Gypsies have also participated in this give and take). They belong to all without exception – and this is quite annoying to all nationalists!

● As regards the erudite compositions implied above, the “classic” example is Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, which he based on popular tunes and melodies performed by Romani bands of the time. Another famous work (by a non-Magyar composer) is Brahms’ Hungarian Dances – his most profitable, although only three out of the 21 dances (11, 14, and 16) are his own compositions.

In a land of “gypsy violins” famous worldwide, playing mainly heptatonic scales, a heated controversy broke out in 1933 regarding the point at issue. When Bartók intervened, he claimed that:

“If we want to be precise, the term ‘gypsy music’ is incorrect, and what is described as ‘gypsy music’ is in fact nothing but Hungarian music played by Gypsies”…

Alas, this “contact with foreign material” seems rather a “great idea” as long as it excludes Romani contributions! Nota bene, any “pure”, “autochthonous”, melody anywhere in the world would be tantamount to a chimerical “Holy Grail”!

Gypsy school (of violin and other strings in Hungary), by Janos Valentiny (1896)

Gypsies in Andalusia and Flamenco

LET’S RETURN to Andalusia and flamenco to delve into the substance of this point at issue. The cultural substratum here is far richer in finds, with the successive layers of several civilizations. It is obvious how misleading the dilemma “Gypsies or locals?”, “black or white?” is – and if you don’t suffer from colour blindness, you realize very soon that this can be nowhere true.

“In flamenco music”, says Christian Scholze, “there are elements of Arab, Indian, North African, Greek and Jewish influence, and the respective proportions of these are hotly debated by flamencologists. What they do agree on is that the roots of flamenco lie in the suppression of the Gypsies. Wherever Gypsies found refuge and shelter over the centuries are today’s centres of flamenco.”

Voilà! There is Greek influence detected in flamenco! Most important, though seemingly paradoxical: among all those cultures referred to by Scholze, the only one that did not have “bearers” actually present in Andalusia, when flamenco’s formation began during the 16th century, was Hellenic culture. Additionally, at that time, both Greece and the Byzantine Empire were not “on the map”, having already lost their independence.

What I mean to say is that, apart from the local andaluces, there were at that time in Andalusia Arabs and North African Moors; there were also Gypsies (as “bearers” of North Indian culture), and Jews. They were all the heterodox people that the decrees of Ferdinand and Isabella had declared personae non grata in the name of religious “purity”, a kind of racism, in order to consolidate the “new (Catholic Castilian) order”. That was the end result of the Crusades: a sanctified ethnic cleansing!

Death and Apocalypse, by Hieronymus Bosch

The dilemma was clear-cut: convert to Catholicism or get the hell out of here! And “for fear – even terror – of the Jews” and the rest of the heterodox people, the infamous “Holy” Inquisition began a persecution spree “in the name of God”. Most Arabs and Jews (the Gypsies had no… address and it was difficult to track them down) were forced out of their homes, finding refuge mainly in Morocco and hoping that they would soon return – a hope shared by all refugees such as those from Asia Minor. Others (mainly Jews, not Moors who found themselves in a familiar environment in the Maghreb) chose to emigrate and ended up in the lands that until recently were Byzantine, but had already passed under the control of the Ottomans – inter alia, in Thessalonica.

All those who stayed without changing their religion, or some others, who were judged as insincere in their “repentance”, went underground, lived together and closed ranks out of necessity, despite all their differences, in order to confront the common enemy. Very soon this unlikely mixture of people was “enriched” with “new blood”: the Andalusians, who passed in turn to the other side due to various problems with the new authorities. The conquest of America, you see, started then, and the necessary “manpower” was recruited mainly in Andalusia.

Flamenco was born in such circumstances from these fugitives. But where were the Greeks? And how did they manage – being absent and from afar – to exert their influence? There can be only one answer: thanks to the splendour of their civilization – even though it was already a relic of the past.

El jaleo, by John Singer Sargent (1882)

An eristic could possibly dismiss scornfully Christian Scholze. His view, however, is not new-fangled. It is shared by most musicologists who say more or less the same. The editors of the Classic CD magazine e.g., publishing an interview with the guitarist Paco Peña, epitomized the origins of flamenco as follows:

“A synthesis of several styles, the music of the Gypsies at the base of the Iberian Peninsula comes from Moorish, Byzantine and Jewish sounds, and at a certain point of its evolution it acquired the name flamenco.” (These editors forgot a most important parameter: India).

If that is not enough for you, here’s the American flamencologist and guitarist Donn E. Pohren, author of a trilogy on flamenco (The Art of Flamenco, Lives and Legends of Flamenco, A Way of Life) translated into many languages, and teacher of the Andalusians, in Jerez de la Frontera’s Cátedra de Flamencología – without “lecturing” at all, as he has experienced flamenco’s way of life side by side with Gypsy and local performers of this music before it became fashionable:

“Contrary to a widespread belief, the Spanish gypsies were not the sole creators of the mysterious art called flamenco. Rather, it is generally agreed that flamenco is a mixture of the music of the many cultures that have played important roles, directly or indirectly, throughout the centuries in Andalusia, the most important of these being the Muslim, Jewish, Indo-Pakistani and Byzantine.”

It’s the very first paragraph in the main part of his book dealing with The Art of Flamenco when he sets out to examine it. This chapter, Origin and Background, ends up with the etymology of flamenco: “Where did the term flamenco come from?”, Pohren wonders. “Again, no one knows, but theories abound”… We have already met the fugitives who probably created flamenco. Dismissing several theories about the origin of the word, rather picturesque (e.g. Flemish, flamingo, flame, etc),⁽²⁾ Pohren presents the most credible:

• ⁽²⁾ Flemish, due to the Spanish Jews who found refuge in Flanders; flamingo, because of the supposed similarities in posture between the bird and a flamenco bailaor(!); and flame, as a graphic metaphor of flamenco’s essence.

“Possibly the most likely theory states that the word ‘flamenco’ is a mispronunciation of the Arabic words ‘felag’ and ‘mengu’ (felagmengu), which means ‘fugitive peasant’. It is likely that this term was borrowed from the Arabs (Arabic was a common language in Andalusia at that time) and applied to all the persecuted people who fled to the mountains. Through usage in Spanish ‘felagmengu’ was transformed into ‘flamenco’, until eventually the term flamenco was adopted by the fugitives themselves and in turn applied to their music.”

Cante jondo (Lorca, Falla, Pedrell)

If all the above are again not enough for you, I need to resort to… indisputable sages – meaning in other words to invoke the views of acclaimed Spaniards who surely know what they’re talking about. Well, how about Federico García Lorca, his friend and tutor, Manuel de Falla, or his mentor’s mentor, Felip(e) Pedrell?⁽³⁾

• ⁽³⁾ The composer, guitarist and musicologist Felip Pedrell has been the instructor of almost every outstanding composer of Spain’s “National School”: not only Manuel de Falla, but also Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina.

García Lorca used the title Poema del Cante Jondo for a collection of poems in 1921. The next year he helped Falla in the organization of the Concurso de Cante Jondo, held in Granada on 13 and 14 of June 1922, with a memorable series of performances held at the Alhambra. Cante jondo or grande (deep, great song) is the most breathtaking of the flamenco forms, the most authentic or pure and, in the interwar period, the most marginalized. That’s why the two friends tried to support it. The other two forms – cante (inter)medio and chico (intermediate and small) – were considered as rather vulgarized forms, a point of view perhaps corresponding to the realities of the interwar period; Lorca will soon present his own well-grounded explanation.

Federico García Lorca, by Emily Tarleton

To promote the Concurso, Falla wrote the essay El cante jondo (canto primitivo andaluz), in which he presented the results of his own research indicating that the primary foreign influences contributing to the origins of jondo were three: Byzantine ecclesiastical music coming from the eastern Mediterranean; Moorish music from North Africa and Arabia; and especially that distinct music of India and its rhythms, brought by gitanos, who began arriving in Spain more than five hundred years ago. Lorca on his part gave a lecture on February 19, 1922. Citing Falla, he also put forward these three historical events that shaped jondo:

• “a) the Spanish Church’s adoption of [Byzantine] liturgical chant;
• “b) the Saracen invasion; and
• “c) the arrival in Spain of numerous bands of Gypsies.⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ Lorca’s English texts on Cante jondo and Duende are based on A. S. Kline’s translations.

“This mysterious migrant folk”, Lorca went on, “arriving in Andalusia, united ancient indigenous elements to what they themselves had brought, and gave cante jondo its definitive form. That is shown by the qualifying term ‘gitana’ which the siguiriya retains. This is not to say, of course, that cante jondo is purely gypsy, since Gypsies exist throughout Europe and elsewhere in our peninsula, while these songs are only nurtured in Andalusia. It is a cante purely andaluz, the seeds of which existed in this region before the Gypsies arrived.”

Except local elements, there are Graeco-Byzantine, Arabo-Moorish,
Indo-Romani, perhaps even Jewish influences detected in flamenco
(García Lorca, Falla, Pedrell, Pohren, Scholze, et al.)

Flamenco guitar

In Falla’s conclusions, as well as in Lorca’s lecture, we find the same contributing factors in the formation of flamenco; with only one exception: Jewish influence is conspicuously absent… Regarding the Romani contribution, Lorca evaluated it in its proper dimensions, avoiding to speak neither in favour of an Andalusian parthenogenesis – for the Gypsies “gave cante jondo its definitive form” – nor of a Romani birth: despite the many similarities he cited among key elements of cante jondo and some Indian songs, mostly love songs (he will deal about that later, as well), Lorca persistently insisted that “jondo is a cante purely andaluz”.

Indeed, flamenco was impossible to be born in India; but, without the Roma, not even in Andalusia; just like rebetiko: it was impossible to be born in Asia Minor; but, without the Anatolian refugees, not even in Greece; or just like the blues: it was impossible to be born in Africa; but, without the black slaves, not even in America. If this is true about the blues, an almost exclusively black music, you can imagine how much more relevant it is in the cases of flamenco and rebétiko where two locals became leading figures: Paco de Lucía and Basiles Tsitsanes.

Flamenco was impossible to be born in India; without the Roma not
even in Andalusia. Rebetiko was impossible to be born in Asia Minor;
without the Anatolians not even in Greece. Blues was impossible
to be born in Africa; without the blacks not even in America.

Rebet, etching by Tassos

“Every cloud has a silver lining”: the truth of the apophthegm is revealed in these diamonds of musical culture. We can now enjoy their sparkling beauty thanks to the Roma, the Anatolians and the black Africans – those that played the role of a catalyst in processing and refinement of these diamonds of the Orphean art – who, nevertheless, suffered tremendously. Of course, some people had to play the role of the villains. For the Gypsies, among others, the villain was Timur. For the Anatolians, it was Kemal. For the blacks? Here we lose count…

Lorca also analyzed the difference between cante jondo and flamenco in general – “an essential distinction based on antiquity, structure and spirit”:

“The essential difference is that the origin of cante jondo must be sought in the primitive musical systems of India, that is, in the first manifestations of song… It is cante imbued with the mysterious colour of primordial ages; flamenco is relatively modern and it cannot be said to acquire its definitive form until the 18th century…

“Spiritual colour versus local colour: that is the profound difference. Cante jondo is, then, the rarest specimen of primitive song, the oldest in Europe, bearing in its notes the naked shiver of emotion of the first oriental races. Manuel de Falla affirms that the Gypsy siguiriya is the only genre on our continent that preserves in all its purity the primary qualities of the primitive songs of the oriental peoples.”

Let’s have a closer look at this siguiriya gitana, an appropriate song to express sorrow, deep pain, despair. According to Falla, it is the archetype of cante jondo, as Lorca defined it in another lecture entitled Architecture of Cante Jondo (1931). Whether the siguiriya is “gitana” or “purely andaluz” we better leave it to the Spaniards. For us outsiders, far more interesting is the common position of the three musicians mentioned above, namely Pedrell, Falla, and Lorca (he was also a musician, let’s not forget). I quote from his lecture of 1922:

Felip Pedrell

“The great master Felipe Pedrell, one of the first Spaniards to treat questions of folklore scientifically, writes, in his magnificent Cancionero popular español:

“‘Musical orientalism survives in various popular songs and is deeply rooted in our nation through the influence of ancient Byzantine civilization on the ritual used in the Spanish Church, from the conversion of our country to Christianity until the 11th century when the Roman liturgy [i.e. Gregorian chant] can be said to have been fully introduced.’⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ So, we can also speak of siguiriya griega, or bizantina, not only of indiana, gitana or andaluza!

“Falla adds to this statement of his old master, specifying the elements of Byzantine liturgical chant revealed in siguiriya, which are: the tonal modes of primitive systems (not be confused with those known as Greek modes), the enharmony inherent in those modes, and the lack of metric rhythm in the melodic line.

“‘These same properties characterize certain Andalusian songs which appeared long after the Spanish Church’s adoption of Byzantine liturgical music, songs which have a close affinity with the music which in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia is still called… «the music of the Moors of Granada».’ [The siguiriya gitana has] ‘specific forms and characteristics distinct from its relationship to sacred chant and the music of the Moors of Granada’.”

Falla, concludes Lorca, “has found an extraordinary agglutinative Gypsy element… of Indic origin.”

“Chanting is the earliest form of language”. (Falla, García Lorca)

Nevertheless, the findings of this triad (Pedrell, Falla and Lorca) go far beyond the relatively recent past, to prehistoric times. Lorca explains:

Manuel de Falla: “El… músico brujo”

“The essential similarities that Manuel de Falla notes between cante jondo and certain songs of India are:

“‘Enharmonics, as in intermediate modulation; a restricted melodic line, rarely exceeding the compass of a sixth; and the reiterative almost obsessive use of a single note, a process proper to certain forms of incantation, including recitations which might be termed prehistoric, and have led many to suppose that chanting is the earliest form of language.’⁽⁶⁾

• ⁽⁶⁾ Chanting: a short, simple series of syllables or words sung on or intoned to the same note or a limited range of notes; a monotonous rhythmic call; a primitive “recitative”, vocalism; prosody (“melos of speech”, according to Aristoxenus), i.e. the “melody” produced during ancient Hellenic speech (see Chronicle 12, footnote 7, and Chronicle 14, Music as the Mother of Speech).

“In this manner cante jondo, especially siguiriya, creates the impression of sung prose, destroying all sense of rhythmic metre, although in fact its literary texts are assonant tercets and quatrains.”

Going way back into history, we can parallel this incantation-recitation with the so-called paracatalogē (παρακαταλογή) of ancient Hellenic tragedy, “a kind of melodramatic recitation of tragic and pathetic parts”, as Giorgos Iohannou says, “something intermediate between the catalogē, i.e. the usual recitation of chants, and the proper song, the ode.” Note that Iohannou defines as a “chant” even the catalogē. Let us not forget that the ancient drama was all in verse. That is why the modern Grecian word for song, tragoudi (τραγούδι), comes from tragedy, while out of paracatalogē the word paralogē (παραλογή, ballad) was coined. Besides, the above quotation comes from an Iohannou’s collection of ballads.

The paracatalogē was accompanied – usually by aulos; in this sense it differed from the catalogē; as a melodramatic recitation, it was not a sung recitative; it also differed from the ode, because there was no melos (melody), other than a certain rhythmic emphasis, and the tonal or pitch accent of the ancient Hellenic language, which was musical, not dynamic like modern Greek. The tragic and pathetic effect was achieved by inserting paracatalogē within sung parts (ἐν ταῖς ᾠδαῖς). This technique enhanced the dramatic appeal of the text.

In Hellenic tragedy, “paracatalogē, a kind of melodramatic recitation
of tragic and pathetic parts, was something intermediate between the catalogē, the usual recitation of chants, and the proper song, the ode.” (Giorgos Iohannou)

• >> Chronicle 7. INDO-IBERIAN ARC (Duende)
• << Chronicle 5. IBERIA’S ODYSSEY

Next Chronicle 7. INDO-IBERIAN ARC (Duende) ● Lorca and Duende ● Pohren and Flamenco: Dance and Guitar ● Cithara and Pandura

Roman sarcophagus with scenes of Bacchus depicting various ancient instruments:
tympanum, aulos and cymbala (210-220 CE)

Chronicle 5. IBERIA’S ODYSSEY

Chronicle 5. IBERIA’S ODYSSEY

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 5. ΙΒΗΡΟΥ ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙΑ

● Hellenes in Portugal ● Fado and Fate ● Odysseus
and Calypso in Lisbon; Their Son in Santarém
● Creto-Iberian Ties: Bull Worship and Bullfight

“Mosaic of a Phoenician trading ship” was the caption. Almost every word is a lie: the ship is neither Phoenician, nor trading; we also see in BIG, Hellenic letters: ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙΑ (ODYSSEY)… Inopportune comments of someone unable to read Greek!

Michales Loukovikas

“IN REMOTE TIMES, even prior to the 6th century BC, the Greeks colonised what is now Portuguese territory, exploiting mines, founding and fortifying towns, especially along the coast and in the basins of the larger rivers.”

Fado has been proclaimed as Intangible Cultural Heritage. Rebetiko, too: better late than never!

This historical flashback is Augusto Mascarenhas Barreto’s starting point in his bilingual (in Portuguese and English) book on Fado / Origens Líricas e Motivação Poética (Lyrical Origins and Poetic Motivation). It is the first chapter (Identity and Origins), following the preliminaries about fado: Portugal’s urban folk song was born in two of its oldest cities, Lisbon and Coimbra (with a distinct form in each); it is Provençal in origin, with Arabic melodic and poetic influence; it is a way of life (like rebetiko, flamenco, blues, tango, or any other authentic folk mode of expression, however “humble”, or even “marginal”, it is considered in origin); it’s dominated by nostalgia, by saudade, a keyword in fado coming from the Arabs, as well, and found corrupt elsewhere: it is Cape Verde’s sodade characterizing its nostalgic song, morna.

The Hellenes, says the Portuguese author, “mingled with the aboriginal inhabitants and the Iberians, who inherited from them certain ethnic and cultural characteristics. It is presumed that the Iberians were a people originating in the East of Europe. Iberus was the ancient name of the River Ebro, in Spain.”

Such homonymous toponyms are quite strange. It’s not only the Ἕβρος (Hebrus or… Maritsa) in Thrace, the river dividing Greece and Turkey; it is also Caucasian Iberia, west of Caucasian… Albania (a part of Azerbaijan), i.e. Caucasian Georgia, in the hinterland of Medea’s homeland, the ancient Colchis, where Jason sailed with the Argonauts for the Golden Fleece. Logic says the Iberians’ cradle should have been there – but most scholars, on the contrary, show to the direction of North Africa or the eastern Mediterranean.

North of the Greater Armenia, between the Black and Caspian Seas:
Colchis, Iberia and Albania. The Amazons were further north.

Among the cultural characteristics the Greeks bequeathed to Iberia (the Iberian Peninsula), Mascarenhas Barreto singles out the Moerae:

“The Hellenic Moira is to be found in the spirit of Fado… The word fado, derived from the Latin fatum, means fate, destiny – what has been foretold by the Oracle and which nothing can alter… Later, Moira became allied to Arab Fatalism.”

The foreigners, you see, attribute to the Hellenes cultural characteristics that the latter claim they are due to the 400-year-long Ottoman yoke…

Odysseus and Calypso in Odyssey-Lisbon

Odysseus blinding Polyphemus, Attic black
figured amphora (ca 7th century BCE)

MUCH MORE IMPRESSIVE is what Portuguese mythology says about the Iberian adventures of that “man of many ways”, “man for wisdom”, “of many wiles”, “of many turns”, “of twists and turns”, “of much resource”, the “skilled”, “ingenious” and “very resourceful” man,⁽¹⁾ Odysseus. He was the one who founded and walled Lisbon (see Chronicle 21: Iberian “El Dorado”):

• ⁽¹⁾ The… “polytropic” versions of Homer’s word “πολύτροπος” (polytropos) rendered into English by Richmond Lattimore, George Chapman, Alexander Pope, Allen Mandelbaum, Martin Hammond, Albert Cook, Robert Fagles, Robert Fitzgerald, Samuel Butler, Emil V. and D.C.H. Rieu.

“Legend”, says Barreto, “attributes the building of the ancient walls of the city [Lisbon] to the great Greek hero of antiquity, Ulysses, king of Ithaca and conqueror of Troy, who is supposed to have given the place the name of Ulissea – whence the word Ulissipo.⁽²⁾ Anyway, what is certain is that Lisbon was inhabited by the Phoenicians about 600 BC, and they named it Alis Ubbo, meaning ‘Calm Bay’. It was certainly visited by Greeks and Carthaginians, who established trade relations with the primitive peoples inhabiting the country. These tribes, who had mingled with the Celts and the Iberians, formed an ethnic sub-group: the Celtiberians.”

• ⁽²⁾ Ulissea, that is, Odyssey, from the Latin version of the hero’s name, Ulysses or Ulisses, hence Ulissipolis (Odysseupolis) > Ulissipo(na) or Olisipo(na).

“Legend attributes the building of the ancient walls of Lisbon to
the great Greek hero of antiquity, Ulysses”, i.e. Odysseus (Barretο)

The “Snake God” found in Tavira – the only Portuguese town, next to Huelva, where the Phoenicians actually settled.

● Ulysses’ Ulissipo is a “legend”, according to Barreto, but the Phoenicians’ Alis Ubbo is a “certainty”: it is the “classic” historical… science fiction. How can he really combine this conclusion with his starting point that “in remote times, even prior to the 6th century BC, the Greeks colonised what is now Portuguese territory”? Well, “what is certain is that”… if we are based on facts, neither the Hellenes, nor the Phoenicians or also the Punics ever settled in Portugal. This land could not compare with Andalusia that magnetized all the above due to its mineral wealth and strategic importance. The only area of Portuguese interest that drew their attention was the also mineral-rich Galicia. (By the way, I mean Galicia of Iberia and not that of Eastern Europe). Generally, Alis (Allis) Ubbo (Ubo) is also interpreted as “Safe” (or “Pleasant”, “Enchanting”, “Serene”, “Delightful”) “Harbour” (or “Port”, “Haven”, “Gulf”, “Cove”, “Shore”, “Inlet”): all versions describe a good anchorage and, therefore, all have something to do with the sea. In an article about the presence of Mycenaeans in Sardinia, Demetris Michalópoulos wrote inter alia:

“In ancient times, Cagliari, the current capital of Sardinia, was called Caralis. In all likelihood, the toponym derives from the Semitic word car, which means ‘white rock’”.

We assume that Caralis meant Bay (or Harbour, etc.) with a white rock, a toponym that was probably given by the omnipresent Phoenicians. Can we associate the Semitic alis with the Indo-European root sal-, e.g. the English salt, and Grecian ἅλς (hals), meaning both salt and sea? If so, Indo-European and Semitic languages should have had some common ground (at least on matters shared in common, such as navigation), with loan words probably derived from Mediterranean tongues, e.g. the Minoan Cretan.

“During the Punic Wars – between Rome and Carthage – the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Romans and, in 205 BC the town – then called Olissipo – was raised to the category of a Roman municipium. In 100 AD it was named Felicitas Julia, in honour of Julius Caesar, and the name was a promise of good fortune. In the year 376, the Visigoths invaded the peninsula. In 404 the territory was still occupied by Romans and barbarians, but in 522, after the departure of the Romans, a single Visigoth kingdom was formed, and the town came to be known as Olissipona. In 711 the Arabs invaded the peninsula from North Africa and occupied the town, to which they gave the name Lissibona… In 1147 Lisbon was re-conquered by Dom Afonso Henriques.”

An English frigate in choppy waters in the Tagus passing the Belém Tower,
by John Thomas Serres (1823)

That’s how we ended up to Lisboa, the current capital of Portugal, adds Barreto. But this is not the end of his story. There’s more to it:

“Santarém is believed to have been founded in the 10th century BC
by Abidis, of Greek origin,” son of Ulysses and Calypso. (Barretο)

“Santarém, [which] stands looking over the River Tagus… is believed to have been founded in the 10th century BC by Abidis [or Habis],⁽³⁾ of Greek origin, who gave it the name of Esca-Abidis. This prince, grandson of Gregoris [Gárgoris], king of the Iberian Peninsula, is also said to have founded towns… in Spain. According to legend, he was the son of Ulysses. Betraying the trust of Gregoris after having been given Alis-Ubbo (Lisbon), Ulysses secretly espoused Calypso, daughter of the peninsular king, who rushed with his army on Lisbon. Ulysses fled by sea, abandoning his spouse”…

• ⁽³⁾ Or Habido, Abido, Abidas, Αbidis, Gabis, Gabid: his name’s versions in various variations of the legend.

Odysseus and Calypso (with… Habis?), by Gerard de Lairesse

Consequently, Calypso was not a nymph on the Isle of Ogygia, as Homer says. Deviating from the greatest of the rhapsodes, the Lusitanians adopted Calypso as a princess of Iberia and daughter of Gregoris/Gárgoris, not of Atlas. Note that we remain in the same places that Heracles had earlier toured for the golden apples of the Hesperides and Geryon’s cattle. It is assumed that Ogygia must have been nearby the Pillars of Heracles, since Odysseus had to travel for 18 days in an easterly direction to reach Scheria, the Phaeacian Island, which many identify with Corfu. There’s a chance that Ogygia was one of the Pillars, today’s Spanish Ceuta on Moroccan soil, opposite the other Pillar, the Rock of Gibraltar. Although it is not an island now, it may have been one in the days of Homer.

According to Hesiod, the conqueror of Troy – and also of numerous… women (for he was so “skilled”, “ingenious” and “resourceful”) – had in total 16 sons and a daughter from six women. But in his long list, he includes no Abidis, Habis, or what. Odysseus had three sons from Penelope, one from the daughter of Thoas the Aetolian, eight sons and a daughter from Circe, two sons from Calypso, one from Callidice, the queen of Thesprotia, whom he later married, and another from Euippe, daughter of Tyrimmas, king of Dodona in Epirus. Note that, if we accept Hesiod’s genealogy of Odysseus, with nine children from Circe and two from Calypso, we must reverse the time he lived beside these two nymphs, according to Homer: one year with Circe and seven with Calypso.

Circe, by Charles Gumery

With such a “proliferation”, of course, Odysseus was in danger of falling by the hand of some… close relative – something that did happen in the sequel of the Odyssey, in the Telegony, or Thesprotis, the Epic Cycle’s final episode, attributed to Eugammon of Cyrene or Cinaethon of Sparta. Circe’s son, Telegonus, so the story goes, while searching for his father, landed on Ithaca where – according to the custom of the era – started plundering and slaughtering, among others, also his genitor. Overwhelmed with remorse, as he realized he became a patricide, he collected Odysseus’ body and, accompanied by his half-brother, Telemachus, and Penelope, returned to the island of his mother, who turned them immortal. This “saga” ends merrily there with a happy end worthy of… a Greek film of the ’60s: with the marriages of Circe with Telemachus and Penelope with Telegonus! Finally, only poor Odysseus was enveloped by murky darkness!

A similar end awaits our hero in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The father of Italian poetry presents a traditional variation of the Homeric version, in which Odysseus himself says that he never returned to Ithaca. From Circe’s island, Aea, Aeaea, or Aeaeë,⁽⁴⁾ he passed through the Pillars of Heracles into the Atlantic, crossed the Equator, sailing in the southern hemisphere for five months, until he reached a big mountain. Then a tornado had the ship spin three times and sink. They all drowned there. But where? In the “underworld”, or in the “new world”, in America? Logic, based on today’s geographical knowledge, makes us draw wrong conclusions. Moreover, the narrative takes place in Dante’s Inferno (see also Chronicle 15. Sailing to Rio de Janeiro!, Homer’s Odyssey is a poetic periplus).

• ⁽⁴⁾ It’s another homonymous toponym with the capital of Colchis, Aea (today’s Kutaisi). But there’s an explanation now: Circe was the sister of Aeëtes, the king of Colchis, and aunt of Medea, with whom she shared magic powers – and also temperament: they say that Circe was exiled to the solitary island of Aeaea by her subjects and father because she had killed her husband…

The Lusitanians, however, didn’t bother to… “set out for Ithaca” with Cavafy, nor cared about Odysseus, after he escaped, leaving Calypso behind. Naturally, they were more concerned about what happened “at home”; hence they paid much more attention to Abidis/Habis:

Olissipo-Lisboa with the port on the Tagus (16th century)

“When Abidis was born,” says Barreto, “Gregoris ordered him to be thrown in a cave to be devoured by wild beasts. In answer, however, to the entreaties of his daughter, he consented that the child should be delivered to Fate, according to primitive custom, and the boy was put in a basket and taken away by the current of the river.⁽⁵⁾ A hind adopted him and when the child was later found in a wild state by some huntsmen, his mother recognised him by a mark. Gregoris forgot his former anger and gave him schooling, so that he could succeed him in the government of the peninsula. The name Esca-Abidis (Escalabis) in Greek means ‘food of Abidis’,⁽⁶⁾ in memory of the place where he was reared by the hind.

• ⁽⁵⁾ Quite biblical the image, recalling “Moses baby” on the waters of the Nile… Conclusion: there’s no originality in the Judaic mythology, although it has since acquired “dogmatic authority”… (See also Chronicles 18, footnote 2, and 21, footnote 4).

Roman mosaic in Pedrosa de la Vega (Castile and León). The only known evidence of transparency.

• ⁽⁶⁾ Ἐσχάρα (eschara): hearth, fire-place (like ἑστία); pan of coals, brazier; (the camp’s) watch-fires; sacrificial hearth; fire-stick.

Ἑστία (hestia): hearth of a house; the house itself, home; household, family; altar; the hearth goddess Hestia, or Vesta in Latin. Hestiatórion is the Greek word for restaurant.

“As regards history, the Romans rebuilt the town in 153 AD and called it Scalabis-castrum. Julius Caesar raised it to the status of a capital – one of the four in Lusitania… In the year 500 when the Visigoths came to Lusitania, the barbarians and Lusitanians formed in that region a single people. In 632 the town of Tomar was the scene of the martyrdom of Irene… a nun. Her body, thrown into the river, was carried down as far as Scalabis… Nineteen years later, King Recceswinth, who was Catholic,⁽⁷⁾ changed the name of Scalabis to Santa Irene. When… the Arabs occupied the town (715), they called it Chantireyn” – and that’s how we ended up to Santarém.

• ⁽⁷⁾ Force of habit: “Catholic” is what Barreto wrote, instead of “Christian”, as he should, because the Schism was still to come…

Creto-Iberian ties due to Mediterranean Minoan Thalassocracy.
A common cultural characteristic was bull worship and bullfight.

GRAECO-IBERIAN TIES, clearly suggested by Portuguese mythology, date back to much earlier times than the Trojan War, to the pre-Hellenic era of Minoan Thalassocracy in the Mediterranean: they were Creto-Iberian. A common cultural characteristic of the Cretans and the peoples of Iberia was bull worship and bullfight, or rather bull-leaping (taurocathapsia; see Chronicle 17. Minoan Cretan Thalassocracy, conclusion).

In his Memoriae Historicae, Strabo, a geographer-historian of Roman times, who was born in Amaseia of Pontus (64-63 BCE) and died probably in Rome (24 CE), referred to the Lusitanian equestrian bullfight (“… the peoples of the coastline, who are fond of meeting, on horseback, the fierce Hispanian bulls”, he wrote).⁽⁸⁾

Reconstruction of a relief fresco of a bull by Arthur Evans
at the northern Propylaea of Knossos

• ⁽⁸⁾ The ancestor of the Iberian bull, aurochs, was described by Julius Caesar as “somewhat smaller than an elephant, swift and powerful; attacks both men and animals.” Charlemagne hunted a similar animal, known as bubalo. It is likely that the savage creature killed by St. George was an aurochs, and not a dragon, as the plastic artists present him. The aurochs (aur = wild + ochs = ox), or urus, is the bos primogenius that is now extinct. It survived until 1627 in a forest of Poland.

Apart from bullfighting on horseback, there was also the pega – from the verb pegar, which means catch, seize… the bull by the horns! In one kind of pegas, the so-called forcado was not only completely unarmed, but had nothing to fool the bull (e.g. cape). He should withstand the initial impact (the tremendous weight of the attacking animal plus speed), and the subsequent shaking of his head so as to get rid of an unwelcome rider on his neck…

There were more forcados, usually eight, as assistants in the pega to master the bull. It is the picture we have from the Minoan bull-leaping in an extant fresco of Taurocathapsia dating back to the 15th century BCE. Isn’t it impressive? Even more so if we take into account that these Cretan “forcados” included women!

Taurocathapsia (bull-leaping), Minoan fresco

Arriving at the other side of the Mediterranean, we can find the earliest known description of such a bullfight in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the legendary hero of Mesopotamia, whose name became associated with his futile struggle to obtain immortality. The epic, dating back to c. 2100 BCE, describes how the hero and his companion, Enkidu, kill the Celestial Bull that the goddess Ishtar has sent to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances:

“Enkidu seizes the celestial bull by the horns”, while Gilgamesh “approaches it slowly and jumps on its back; then grabs it by the tail”…

“The pegas”, Barreto concludes, “probably originated in the Neolithic ritual hunts. We may wonder whether the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula learnt this from the Cretans of the 3rd millennium BC, or if they themselves may have been the teachers, since the bulls were taken from their natural habitat in the peninsula to the island of Crete.”

But still, if you talk about so extensive exchange going on five millennia ago – whether it is bull-leaping, or even bull shipments from Iberia to Crete – how is it possible to be concerned about trivial “problems”, as to who were the initiators of this practice?

● Bull-leaping was a Minoan ritual connected with bull worship, where the bull was not killed, contrary to bullfight. When it passed to the Mycenaeans, it was called in Greek ταυροκαθάψια; from ταῦρος (“bull”) and κάθαψις, a rare noun composed of the words κατά- (“across”) and ἅπτομαι (“touch, reach”); thus, literally, “touching of the bull”. Representations (frescoes, statuettes, seals, etc.) of the ritual, outside Crete or Hellas, have been found in Asia Minor (Smyrna, Hattusa), Canaan, Egypt, Bactria, and the Indus Valley.

Juanito Apinani‘s speed and bravery in the bullring of Madrid,
from the etchings “La Tauromaquia” by Francisco Goya (1815-16)

● Non-violent taurocathapsia (bull-leaping), practiced in Spain, were called recortes. The recortadores competed at dodging and leaping over bulls without a cape or sword. Some used a long pole to literally pole-vault over the charging animal, which was not restrained by any guiding rope or similar safety device. The recortes were common in the 19th century. Etchings by painter Francisco Goya depict these events.

● In neighbouring Portugal, the bullfight’s second stage, called pega (“holding”), was the one referred to by Barreto. The so-called forcados challenged the animal directly without protection or weapon of defense. The front man provoked the bull into a charge to perform a pega de cara (face grab), secured its head and was aided by his fellows who surrounded and subdued the animal. The bull was not killed in the ring, in the audience’s sight, but by a butcher. After an exceptional performance, some bulls were healed, released to pasture until their end days and used for breeding.

● A “safer” style of this ritual, practiced in French Gascony, used young cows instead of bulls, which were furthermore guided by long ropes attached to their horns, so that they ran directly towards the sauteurs (“leapers”) and écarteurs (“dodgers”), and were restrained from trampling or goring them should they miss a trick.

● In faraway South India, in Tamil Nadu, there was a related ritual, the jallikattu, as part of the harvest celebration. The participants tried to leap onto a bull, reaching for the money packets tied to its horns as a prize. The event has been depicted in rock art dated at least to the 3rd century BCE.

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Χρονικό 21. ΙΒΗΡΙΚΟ “EL DORADO”

Χρονικό 21. ΙΒΗΡΙΚΟ “EL DORADO”

/ENGLISH/ Chronicle 21: IBERIAN “EL DORADO”

● Μινωίτες, Μυκηναίοι, Φοίνικες στην Ιβηρία ● Ἑσπερίδες, Μακάρων Νῆσοι
● Σαρδηνία ● Ὀδυσσεύς, Καλυψώ, Ὀφιοῦσα ● Ταρτησσός

του Μιχάλη Λουκοβίκα

“ΣΥΧΝΑ ΒΡΙΣΚΕΤΑΙ ΚΑΝΕΙΣ ΑΝΤΙΜΕΤΩΠΟΣ με ισχυρισμούς πως υπήρχαν επαφές ανάμεσα στα απώτερα δυτικά παράλια της σημερινής Ισπανίας και Πορτογαλίας, και στην Κρήτη των μινωικών χρόνων”, σχολιάζει ο Dan Stanislawski στη Μελέτη ιστορικοπολιτικής γεωγραφίας: Η ιδιαιτερότητα της Πορτογαλίας, και πιο συγκεκριμένα στο 7ο κεφάλαιο, για τις Επαφές μεταξύ των αρχαίων πολιτισμών τής ανατολικής Μεσογείου και της Ιβηρίας.

“Δεν πρόκειται απλώς για ιδέα δελεαστική, αλλά και για λογική υπόθεση, καθώς οι Μινωίτες ήταν ικανοί στη ναυσιπλοΐα, το εμπόριο, και την ανίχνευση μετάλλων. Αν είχαν μάθει κάτι για την Ιβηρική χερσόνησο, θα τους είχε κάλλιστα προσελκύσει. Όμως, ενώ πιθανότατα χρησιμοποιούσαν τη νησιωτική ρότα τής Μεσογείου που οδηγούσε προς δυσμάς (Rhys Carpenter, Οι Ἕλληνες στην Ισπανία), μέχρι στιγμής δεν υπάρχουν πειστικές ενδείξεις περί αυτού. Οι ανασκαφές στην Αλμερία για τον πολιτισμό Los Millares, χρονολογημένο μάλλον στο 2000–1800 π.Χ., αποκάλυψαν κάποια είδη που θυμίζουν αιγαιακούς πολιτισμούς, μα δεν υπάρχει καμιά ένδειξη ώστε ν’ αποδεικνύει σαφώς τη σύνδεση. Τέτοια είδη δεν αντιπροσωπεύουν μάλλον τίποτε περισσότερο από κάποιον περιστασιακό παραλληλισμό. Άλλα ευρήματα, μιας κάπως μεταγενέστερης περιόδου στην Ισπανία, παρέχουν πιο συγκεκριμένες ενδείξεις επαφών με τις χώρες τής ανατολικής Μεσογείου, εφόσον μπορούν άψογα ν’ αντιστοιχιστούν με υλικά από την αιγυπτιακή Αμάρνα, του 1400–1200 π.Χ. Τα αιγυπτιακά εμπορικά είδη αυτής της χρονικής περιόδου είναι πολύ γνωστά στην ισπανική αρχαιολογία, και σχεδόν σίγουρα ίσως συνδέονται (almost surely may be associated) [!] με Φοίνικες μεσάζοντες. Προς το παρόν, τέτοια είδη ίσως αποτελούν τις παλαιότερες ενδείξεις για άμεσες επαφές μεταξύ Ιβηρίας και θαλασσοπόρων τής ανατολικής Μεσογείου.”

Πού έβρισκε κασσίτερο η Μεσόγειος της εποχής τού μπρούντζου για
την παραγωγή μπρούντζου; Ποιοι ήταν οι καθιερωμένοι θαλάσσιοι
έμποροι για τη μεταφορά τού πολύτιμου μετάλλου στη Μεσόγειο;

Los Millares: μακέτα τού οικισμού με τα τείχη του

Να λοιπόν ένα “άψογο” δείγμα τής “κλασικής” νοοτροπίας των καθιερωμένων ιστορικών: επιφυλακτικοί, όταν γράφουν, ή μιλούν, για τους Μινωίτες, ακόμη και για τους Έλληνες, αλλά ομιλητικότατοι, όταν αναφέρονται από καθέδρας στους Φοίνικες! Όντως, γιατί ήταν τόσο δύσκολο να φτάσουν στην Ιβηρία οι Αιγαιώτες; Οπωσδήποτε, δεν ήταν κατώτεροι των Φοινίκων στη ναυτοσύνη, κι επιπλέον, το Αἰγαῖον είναι πολύ πιο κοντά στην Ιβηρία, σε σύγκριση με την Φοινίκη. Εκτός αυτού, ποιος ήλεγχε τότε (“1400-1200 π.Χ.”) στη Μεσόγειο το εμπόριο; Οι Φοίνικες, ή οι Μυκηναῖοι – που ο Stanislawski τούς “λησμονεί”;(!) Γιατί “σχεδόν σίγουρα ίσως συνδέονται με Φοίνικες μεσάζοντες” τα εμπορικά είδη ἐξ Αἰγύπτου που βρέθηκαν στην Ισπανία; Το κρίσιμο ερώτημα, όμως, που η ἐν λόγῳ νοοτροπία δεν απαντά, είναι: Πού έβρισκε κασσίτερο η Μεσόγειος της εποχής τού μπρούντζου, για την παραγωγή μπρούντζου; Ποιοι ήταν τότε οι καθιερωμένοι θαλάσσιοι έμποροι, για τη μεταφορά τού πολύτιμου μετάλλου στη Μεσόγειο; Προφανέστατα, οι Μυκηναίοι. Να γιατί οι αποδείξεις για την παρουσία Αιγαιωτών στην Ιβηρία κάθε άλλο παρά “πειστικές” είναι… Υπάρχει, όμως, και η “αντίρροπη” οπτική γωνία, με λεπτομερείς περιγραφές Μινωιτών να εξορύσσουν μέταλλα στη λίμνη Superior, και να τα μεταφέρουν, μέσω του ποταμού Μισσισσιππή, στον Κόλπο τού Μεξικού, για την αποστολή τους στη Μεσόγειο! Αν και αυτό δεν μπορεί ν’ αποκλειστεί, δεν έχω καμιά πρόθεση να σας πάω τόσο μακριά. Καλύτερα να παραμείνουμε στο έδαφος της Ιβηρίας…

Los Millares, της Marianne Weil, χυτός μπρούντζος (2008)

Υπάρχουν κάποιοι “μη καθιερωμένοι” ιστορικοί, που συνδέουν την ξεχωριστή κουλτούρα Los Millares, στην Αλμερία, με τον Πρώιμο μινωικό αποικισμό τής Ισπανίας (W. Sheppard Baird). Ίσως μεγαλύτερο ενδιαφέρον να παρουσιάζει ο επόμενος πολιτισμός, ο αργαρικός, που άνθισε στην περιοχή El Argar, επίσης στην Αλμερία, στη σημερινή ανατολική Ανδαλουσία, μεταξύ τού 1800 και 1300 ΠΚΧ. Η ἐν λόγῳ κουλτούρα χαρακτηρίζεται από την πρώιμη υιοθέτηση του μπρούντζου, που της επέτρεψε να κυριαρχήσει τοπικά στους γείτονές της, οι οποίοι ήταν ακόμη στην εποχή τού χαλκού (την χαλκολιθική).⁽¹⁾ Οι τεχνικές εξόρυξης και μεταλλουργίας των ανθρώπων τού αργαρικού πολιτισμού ήταν προηγμένες, με το ασήμι, το χρυσάφι, και τον μπρούντζο, που εξόρυσσαν ή επεξεργάζονταν, φτιάχνοντας όπλα και κοσμήματα. Ανέπτυξαν εξελιγμένες τεχνικές, και συναλλάσσονταν με άλλες φυλές.

• ⁽¹⁾ Να το επαναλάβω, για να εμπεδωθεί: Bronze Age είναι η εποχή τού μπρούντζου (αν θέλετε, του κρατερώματος), και όχι η εποχή τού χαλκού, όπως επικράτησε να λέγεται. Υπήρξε, όντως, εποχή τού χαλκού, στο μεταίχμιο της νεολιθικής περιόδου και της εποχής τού μπρούντζου (ἐξ οὗ χαλκολιθική), προτού, δηλαδή, ο άνθρωπος ν’ ανακαλύψει πόσο πιο ανθεκτικό γινόταν το μέταλλο, αν έβαζε και λίγο κασσίτερο στον χαλκό, φτιάχνοντας μπρούντζο. Ο πολιτισμός Los Millares υπάγεται στην ἐν λόγῳ μεταβατική περίοδο. Κάποιος προσπάθησε να διορθώσει το λάθος στη Βικιπαίδεια, διαπράττοντας ακόμη μεγαλύτερο ατόπημα: απέδωσε το Bronze Age ως “εποχή τού ορείχαλκου” (θεωρώντας πιθανόν τη λέξη μπρούντζος “μαλλιαρή”, και τη λέξη κρατέρωμα “εξεζητημένη”)! Αρχαίοι συγγραφείς αναφέρουν κάποιο άγνωστο και στους ίδιους μέταλλο της προϊστορίας, τον ὀρείχαλκο. Ο γνωστός μας ορείχαλκος (ο χαλκοπυρίτης: κράμα χαλκού με σίδηρο, ή ψευδάργυρο), ἤτοι το μπράσο, φτιάχτηκε στα ελληνιστικά χρόνια. Πόσο αναχρονιστική υπήρξε όντως αυτή η “διόρθωση”… (Βλέπε Χρονικό 17, υποσημείωση 1, και κατόπιν Μπρούντζος-κρατέρωμα και ορείχαλκος ή χαλκοπυρίτης).

Αργαρικό χρυσό ξίφος

Η αρχαία παράδοση της ομαδικής ταφής, που αποτελεί χαρακτηριστικό τής ευρωπαϊκής μεγαλιθικής κουλτούρας, εγκαταλείφθηκε υπέρ των ατομικών τάφων, ενώ παράλληλα, οι θολωτοί τάφοι αντικαταστάθηκαν από μικρούς κιβωτιόσχημους. Οι νέες συνήθειες κατάγονταν μάλλον από την ανατολική Μεσόγειο, κατά πάσα πιθανότητα τις Μυκήνες, παρακάμπτοντας τη Σικελία και την Ιταλία, όπου η παράδοση της ομαδικής ταφής συνεχίστηκε για κάποιο διάστημα ακόμα. Στην επόμενη φάση τού ἐν λόγῳ πολιτισμού, από το 1500 ΠΚΧ περίπου και μετά, η ταφή μέσα σε πίθους (μεγάλα πιθάρια) απαντάται συχνότερα. Το έθιμο αυτό, που παρέμεινε αποκλειστικά στους κόλπους τής αργαρικής κουλτούρας, πρέπει να είχε επίσης προέλευση την Ἑλλάδα, όπου χρησιμοποιήθηκε μετά από το 2000 ΠΚΧ. Οι πολιτισμικές ανταλλαγές στην περιοχή τής Μεσογείου, κατά τη μυκηναϊκή εποχή, είναι σαφέστατες, με την αργαρική κουλτούρα να υιοθετεί ελληνικά ταφικά έθιμα, ενώ και οι Έλληνες εισήγαγαν τον ιβηρικό θολωτό τάφο.

Σημειώστε πως όποιος έφθανε στην Ιβηρία, μπορούσε να βρει εύκολα τον δρόμο προς τα μεταλλεύματα κασσίτερου της Βρετάνης και της Κορνουάλλης, μέσω των πολιτισμών τού μπρούντζου τής δυτικής Ιβηρίας, που είχαν κάποιο βαθμό επικοινωνίας, όχι μόνο μεταξύ τους, μα και με άλλες κουλτούρες τού Ατλαντικού, όπως της Βρετανίας και της Γαλλίας. Πρόκειται για το λεγόμενο σύμπλεγμα της ατλαντικής εποχής τού μπρούντζου, γύρω στο 1300–700 ΠΚΧ, που απαρτιζόταν από πολιτισμούς όπως της Ανδαλουσίας, της Πορτογαλίας, της Γαλικίας, της Αρμορίκης (η περιοχή τής Γαλατίας με την Βρετάνη), ή των Βρετανικών νήσων. Η ατλαντική εποχή τού μπρούντζου χαρακτηριζόταν από οικονομικές και πολιτισμικές ανταλλαγές, με συγγένειες και συνάφειες, που είναι φανερές στις παράκτιες κοινότητες από τη Γαλικία ως την Σκωτία, ενώ οι εμπορικές επαφές εκτεινόταν από την Μεσόγειο μέχρι την Σκανδιναβία.

Ο Ηρακλής μάχεται με τον Γηρυόνη (περί το 540 ΠΚΧ)

Ο επόμενος αξιοσημείωτος πολιτισμός υπήρξε αυτός της Ταρτησσού, μιας παράκτιας πόλης με λιμάνι, και της γύρω περιοχής στη νότια Ιβηρία (κυρίως Ανδαλουσία). Ήταν η πρώτη αναπτυγμένη πολιτισμικά και πολιτικά Πολιτεία τής χερσονήσου στο τέλος τής 2ης χιλιετίας ΠΚΧ. Η περιοχή υποδηλώνεται και στην ελληνική μυθολογία τής ίδιας περιόδου, ως υπόμνηση της παρουσίας των Μυκηναίων με τις εξορμήσεις τους στην Ιβηρία. Ο Ἡρακλῆς πήγε εκεί για να επιτελέσει δυο άθλους: να σκοτώσει τον Γηρυόνη, αποκτώντας τα βόδια του, και να κλέψει τα μήλα των Ἑσπερίδων. Ο Γηρυόνης ζούσε στην Ἐρύθεια (Ἐρυθείη, ή Ἐρυθηίδα), ένα νησί των Εσπερίδων, στη μακρινή Δύση (το… Far West τού αρχαίου κόσμου): Ἑσπερία ήταν η Δύση, ιδίως η Ιβηρία, ενώ Ερύθεια λεγόταν μια από τις Εσπερίδες, αλλά και η κόρη τού φοβερού και τρομερού γίγαντα. “Ο Γηρυόνης σκοτώθηκε από την υπέρτερη δύναμη του Ηρακλή στην περιτριγυρισμένη από θάλασσα Ερυθηίδα”, μας λέει ο Ἡσίοδος στην Θεογονία του. Ο Ηρακλής έστησε δυο τεράστιες πέτρες, τις λεγόμενες Ηράκλειες Στήλες, για να σταθεροποιήσει την περιοχή, και να διασφαλίσει έτσι τον διάπλου τού στενού τού Γιβραλτάρ. Ίδρυσε και αποικίες, μεταξύ πολλών άλλων τα Γάδειρα, στο νησί τού Γηρυόνη, όπου οι Φοίνικες θ’ αποκτούσαν αργότερα την έδρα των επιχειρήσεών τους: το Gadir (νῦν Cádiz). Ένας τύμβος, κοντά στα Γάδειρα, ήταν, λένε, ο τάφος τού Γηρυόνη. Υπάρχουν, μάλιστα, κάποιοι μύθοι πως ο Ηρακλής είναι επίσης θαμμένος στην Ισπανία.

Ο Γηρυόνης φιγουράρει μεταξύ των μυθικών βασιλιάδων τής Ταρτησσού. Ο εγγονός του, Νώραξ (Norax, ή Norace), κατέκτησε τη νότια Σαρδηνία, ίδρυσε την πόλη Νώρα, κι έγινε ήρωας της νουραγικής μυθολογίας. Υπαγόρευσε τους πρώτους νόμους, χώρισε την κοινωνία σε “επτά τάξεις”, και υποχρέωσε τους αριστοκράτες να εργάζονται. Αργότερα, ο Gárgoris εισήγαγε το εμπόριο, τη μελισσοκομία, και νέα γεωργικά εργαλεία, όπως το αλέτρι. Άλλοι, πάλι, λένε πως τις γεωργικές καινοτομίες τις εισήγαγε ο γιος (κι εγγονός) του, ο Habis (Habido, Abido, Abidas, Abidis, Gabis, ή Gabid, όπως αναφέρεται σε ποικίλες παραλλαγές τού θρύλου), που τον διαδέχθηκε στον θρόνο. Οι μεταγενέστερες γενιές Ελλήνων συνέδεσαν την περιοχή με την Ταρτησσό. Επιπλέον, οι αρχαίοι πίστευαν ότι κάπου έξω από τις Ηράκλειες στήλες βρίσκονταν ο Κῆπος τῶν Ἑσπερίδων και οι Μακάρων νῆσοι, τα Ἠλύσια πεδία.

Ἡρακλῆς, Ἑσπερίδες, Μακάρων νῆσοι, Σαρδηνία

Μπρούντζινη πλάκα με τη Μέδουσα

● O Ἡρακλῆς ήταν δισέγγονος του Περσέα, του θρυλικού ιδρυτή των Μυκηνών, που σκότωσε τη Γοργόνα Μέδουσα. Για να το πετύχει αυτό, έπρεπε να βρει τις Εσπερίδες, ώστε να τον εξοπλίσουν κατάλληλα. Ἐν τέλει, κόβοντας το κεφάλι τής Μέδουσας, από τον λαιμό της ξεπήδησαν ο Πήγασος και ο Χρυσάωρ (χρυσὸς + ἄορ = σπαθί, ἤτοι “Χρυσοσπάθης”), λόγω της συνεύρεσής της με τον Ποσειδῶνα. Ο Χρυσάωρ έγινε βασιλιάς τής Ιβηρίας. Γιος και διάδοχός του ήταν ο Γηρυόνης, που ζούσε σε νησί των Εσπερίδων, την Ερύθεια, την “ερυθρά νήσο” τής εσπέρας, επειδή την έλουζαν οι ακτίνες τού ήλιου κατά τη δύση του. Την ταύτιζαν με τα Γάδειρα, μα υπάρχουν και άλλες εκδοχές, όπως οι Βαλεαρίδες, ή και το Δέλτα στις εκβολές τού Γουαδαλκιβίρ (βλέπε Χρονικό 26, Η Ταρτησσός και οι Φοίνικες). Καθώς πήγαινε ο Ηρακλής προς την περιοχή, μας λέει ο Ἡρόδοτος, διέσχιζε την έρημο της “Λιβύης”, ἤτοι του Μαγρέμπ, και αγανάκτησε τόσο από την ζέστη, ώστε έριξε ένα βέλος του ενάντια στον Ἥλιο. “Θαυμάζοντας το θάρρος του”, ο θεός έδωσε στον ήρωα το χρυσό του κύπελλο (το σκάφος), με το οποίο έπλεε στις θάλασσες από τη Δύση στην Ανατολή κάθε βράδυ. Με αυτό έφτασε ο Ηρακλής στην Ερύθεια. Ήταν ένα αγαπημένο θέμα των αγγειογράφων. Αντίθετα, ο Διόδωρος λέει πως ο Ηρακλής πήγε στην Εσπερία διὰ θαλάσσης, αφού συγκέντρωσε στην Κρήτη μεγάλο στόλο, ώστε να πολεμήσει εναντίον τού πλούσιου βασιλιά τής Ιβηρίας, του Χρυσάωρος, και των τριών γιων του. Ο Στησίχορος συνέθεσε ένα τραγούδι για τον Γηρυόνη, με τίτλο Γηρυονηΐς (6ος αιώνας), κάνοντας την πρώτη αναφορά στην Ταρτησσό, και διευκρινίζοντας ότι βρίσκεται δίπλα στις Εσπερίδες. Την εκδοχή θα επαναλάβει κατόπιν ο Στράβων στα Γεωγραφικά του.

Ο Ηρακλής, ο Πάνας, ένας σάτυρος και γυναίκες
στον Κήπο των Εσπερίδων, του Ζωγράφου των
Εσπερίδων, ὑδρία (στάμνα), αρχές 4ου αιώνα ΠΚΧ

Ο γυρισμός στην Ελλάδα με τα βόδια ήταν άθλος τού Ηρακλή. Αρχικά, διέσχισε τα Πυρηναία, που ο ίδιος δημιούργησε, όταν η αγαπημένη του, Πυρήνη, γέννησε ένα ερπετό, κατατρομοκρατήθηκε και άρχισε να τρέχει στο δάσος, ώσπου ξεψύχησε. Ο ήρωας έφτιαξε τον τύμβο της, συγκεντρώνοντας βράχους και σχηματίζοντας έτσι τα Πυρηναία. Σαν βρέθηκε στη Γαλατία, έφτασε στην περιοχή τού Μονακό, όπου έδιωξε τους παλαιούς θεούς. Γι’ αυτό χτίστηκε σ’ ένα ακρωτήρι ο ναός τού Ηρακλή Μόνοικου (μόνος + οἶκος)· ονομάστηκε έτσι επειδή ήταν ο μοναδικός στη μετέπειτα Κυανή Ακτή. Στον 6ο αιώνα ΠΚΧ, οι Φωκαείς έχτισαν εκεί την αποικία Μόνοικος. Το μοναδικό βαθύ λιμάνι στο Μονακό είναι αφιερωμένο στον μεγάλο ήρωα: Port Hercule. Παράλληλα, ο Ηρακλής ίδρυσε τις πόλεις Ἀλεσία και Νέμαυσο, κι έγινε ο πατέρας των Κελτών. Φτάνοντας στη Λιγυρία, δυο γίγαντες, ο Ἀλεβίων και ο Βεργίων, γιοι τού Ποσειδώνα, θέλησαν ν’ αρπάξουν τα βόδια, μα πλήρωσαν με την ζωή τους. Στην αναμέτρηση αυτή είχε τη βοήθεια του Δία, που έριξε στους γίγαντες μια βροχή από πέτρες. Η διαδρομή στην Ιταλία ήταν σχετικά ήρεμη, ως τα νότια της χερσονήσου, κοντά στο Ῥήγιον, όταν ένα βόδι πήδηξε στην θάλασσα κι έφτασε στη Σικελία, όπου το ιδιοποιήθηκε ένας άλλος γιος τού Ποσειδώνα, ο Ἔρυξ, βασιλιάς τής ομώνυμης πόλης και άριστος πυγμάχος. Ο Ηρακλής πάλεψε μαζί του και τον σκότωσε για να πάρει πίσω το ζώο. Το μοναδικό πρόβλημα που προέκυψε κατόπιν ήταν στην Θρᾴκη, όταν η Ἥρα τρέλανε τα βόδια. Ο Ηρακλής χρειάστηκε να φτάσει ως τον Ἑλλήσποντο για να τα ξαναμαζέψει, και τελικά να τα παραδώσει στον Εὐρυσθέα, που τα θυσίασε στη σύζυγο και αδερφή τού Δία.

● Οι Ἑσπερίδες, στην ελληνική μυθολογία, ήταν νύμφες, λάτρεις τού τραγουδιού, που φρόντιζαν έναν γαλήνιο κήπο στη δυτική άκρη τού κόσμου, κοντά στα όρη τού Άτλαντα της βορειοδυτικής Αφρικής, “στο χείλος τού μεγάλου Ωκεανού που περιβάλλει την οικουμένη”. Θεωρούνταν κόρες τού Ἕσπερου, ἤτοι εσπερινού, ή και αποσπερίτη: του πλανήτη τής Ἀφροδίτης. Ήταν τρεις (όπως και άλλες ελληνικές τριάδες, σαν τις Χάριτες, ή και τις Μοίρες): η Αἴγλη (“εκθαμβωτική”), η Ἀρέθουσα (“υδροχόος”), και η Ἐρύθεια (“ερυθρά”). Ο Κήπος των Εσπερίδων ήταν το περιβόλι τής Ήρας στη Δύση, όπου υπήρχε κάποιο δέντρο, ή άλσος, που έβγαζε “χρυσά μήλα”, τα οποία χάριζαν την αθανασία. Σε κατοπινά χρόνια συνέδεσαν τα φρούτα αυτά με τα πορτοκάλια, που ήταν άγνωστα στην Εὐρώπη και τη Μεσόγειο πριν από τον Μεσαίωνα. Βάσει της υπόθεσης αυτής, η ελληνική βοτανική ονόμασε όλα τα κιτροειδή “ἑσπεριδοειδῆ” – υπονοώντας ότι μας ήρθαν από τη Δύση, ενώ στην πραγματικότητα κατάγονται από την Ανατολή: τη νοτιοανατολική Ἀσία.⁽²⁾

Παραδοσιακό Rabelo στον Δούρο, που μετέφερε
επί αιώνες ανθρώπους και αγαθά, κυρίως κρασί.

• ⁽²⁾ Σε ορισμένες γλώσσες, η λέξη πορτοκάλι προέρχεται από τ’ όνομα της Πορτογαλίας, της πάλαι ποτέ κύριας πηγής των εισαγωγών: πορτοκάλι στα ελληνικά, portokal στα βουλγάρικα και σλαβομακεδόνικα, portocală στα ρουμάνικα, και phortokhali στα γεωργιανά· ή portogallo, purtualle, σε διαλέκτους τής νότιας Ιταλίας. Σχετικά ονόματα βρίσκουμε και σε μη ευρωπαϊκές γλώσσες: portakal στα τούρκικα, al-burtuqal στ’ αράβικα, porteghal στα πέρσικα, και birtukan στα αμχαρικά (την αιθιοπική γλώσσα).

● Όσο για τη λέξη Πορτογαλία, αυτή προέρχεται από το ρωμαϊκό Portus Cale, που εξελίχθηκε σε Portugale κατά τον 7ο-8ο αιώνα ΚΧ. Το Cale ήταν ένας πρώιμος οικισμός στις εκβολές τού ποταμού Δούρου, στα βόρεια της χώρας. Μυστήριο καλύπτει την ετυμολογία τού ονόματος, ή και την ταυτότητα των ιδρυτών τής πόλης. Κάποιοι ιστορικοί υποστηρίζουν πως οι πρώτοι κάτοικοι του Cale ήταν Έλληνες, και ότι τ’ όνομα προέρχεται από την ελληνική λέξη κάλλος, λόγω της ομορφιάς τής κοιλάδας τού Δούρου. Η γενικά αποδεκτή εξήγηση, όμως, είναι πως πρόκειται για εθνώνυμο, προερχόμενο από τους Callaeci, ή Gallaeci, που ζούσαν εκεί. Το ίδιο ισχύει για τα ονόματα Γαλικία και Γάια, όπως λέγεται η δίδυμη πόλη τού Πόρτο, στις εκβολές τού Δούρου. (Για τον ελληνικό αποικισμό Λουζιτανίας-Γαλικίας, βλέπε Χρονικό 5, Οι Οδύσσειες του Τρωικού).

● Ποταμός Δοῦρος: ίσως < Δούριος: δουρά, ξυλεία, ή Δωρίας: Δωρίς.

Μακαρονησία: Αζόρες, Μαδέρα, Κανάρια και Πράσινο Ακρωτήρι

● Οι Μακάρων νῆσοι, στην ελληνική, αλλά και την κέλτικη μυθολογία, ήταν ένας παράδεισος γαλήνιος, χωρίς χειμώνες, όπου γίνονταν δεκτοί ήρωες και άλλοι θνητοί που είχαν την θεϊκή εύνοια. Οι Έλληνες πίστευαν ότι τα νησιά βρίσκονταν στον Δυτικό ωκεανό, στον Ωκεάνιο ποταμό που περιέβαλλε τη γη. Ο Στράβων τα τοποθετούσε απέναντι από τη Μαυριτανία, τη Δυτική Σαχάρα και το Μαρόκο (“Μαυρουσία”). Ήταν νήσοι πέρα από τα πέρατα της γης, όπου δεν έπεφταν ποτέ χιόνια ή δυνατές βροχές, αλλά ο Ωκεανός έστελνε πάντα ζωογόνα την πνοή τού Ζέφυρου για να δροσίζει ευεργετικά τους ανθρώπους. Ο Πλούταρχος, που συχνά-πυκνά αναφερόταν στα νησιά, τα τοποθετούσε με βεβαιότητα στον Ατλαντικό, λέγοντας πως έφτανε κανείς εκεί από την Ιβηρία μετά από ολιγοήμερο ταξίδι:

“Λένε πως πρόκειται για δυο νησιά, που χωρίζονται από έναν πολύ στενό πορθμό, σε απόσταση [2000 χιλιομέτρων] από την Αφρική… Μια ακράδαντη πεποίθηση έχει ριζώσει, ακόμη και μεταξύ των βαρβάρων, πως εκεί βρίσκονται τα Ηλύσια πεδία, και ο τόπος διαμονής των Μακάρων, που τραγούδησε ο Ὅμηρος.”

Η σύγχρονη γεωγραφία ονομάζει αυτά τα νησιά Μακαρονησία (από το ελληνικό τους όνομα Μακάρων νῆσοι). Είναι τέσσερα αρχιπελάγη: οι Αζόρες και η Μαδέρα (Πορτογαλία), τα Κανάρια (Ισπανία), και το Πράσινο Ακρωτήρι.

Νουραγικό μεταλλικό μοντέλο πλοίου

● Οι διασυνδέσεις Ιβηρίας και Σαρδηνίας, που υποδηλώνει σαφώς η μυθολογία, επιβεβαιώνονται από αρχαιολογικά, αρχιτεκτονικά, γλωσσικά, πολιτισμικά, ή και ιστορικά στοιχεία. Στ’ ανατολικά τους, οι Σαρδηνοί είχαν, φυσικά, επαφές με τους Μυκηναίους, που συναλλάσσονταν σε όλη τη δυτική Μεσόγειο, καθώς και με τους Κρῆτες, λ.χ. με την Κυδωνία, τα σημερινά Χανιά, όπως φαίνεται από τ’ αγγεία που αποκάλυψαν οι ανασκαφές στη Σαρδηνία. Προφανώς οι επιρροές ήταν ευρύτερες. Μια βαθμιδωτή πυραμίδα στο Monte d’Accoddi, κοντά στο Σάσσαρι, παρουσιάζει κάποιες ομοιότητες με το μνημειακό συγκρότημα Los Millares, στην Ανδαλουσία, ή επίσης με κατοπινά οικοδομήματα στις Βαλεαρίδες. Ορισμένοι μελετητές βρίσκουν ομοιότητες με μεσοποτάμια κτίσματα, και τις αποδίδουν σε μεταναστεύσεις, ιδίως Σουμερίων, στη δυτική Μεσόγειο. Έλληνες ιστορικοί και γεωγράφοι χαρακτήριζαν τα μυστηριώδη μεγαλιθικά nuraghe ως δαιδάλεια, αποδίδοντάς τα, εμμέσως, στον Δαίδαλο, που εγκαταστάθηκε στη Σικελία, κι έπειτα στη Σαρδηνία, αφού απέδρασε από την Κρήτη, όπου, μεταξύ άλλων, είχε χτίσει τον Λαβύρινθο. Λένε πως ο Μίνως τον κυνήγησε ως τη Σικελία, αλλά ο Δαίδαλος κατάφερε να τον σκοτώσει.

Με το ξεκίνημα του νουραγικού πολιτισμού στον 18ο αιώνα κατά την χαλκολιθική περίοδο, ο χαλκός χρησιμοποιήθηκε για την κατασκευή όπλων και άλλων ειδών. Σύντομα το νησί, που ήταν πλούσιο σε ορυκτά, κυρίως χαλκό και μόλυβδο, γέμισε καμίνια για την παραγωγή κραμάτων, που μεταφέρονταν στα λιμάνια όλης τής λεκάνης τής Μεσογείου – πιθανόν με πλοία μινωικά, αργότερα μυκηναϊκά, ίσως και σαρδηνιακά. Ο νουραγικός πολιτισμός απέκτησε έμπειρους μεταλλουργούς, από τους σπουδαιότερους παραγωγούς μετάλλων στην Ευρώπη. Περνώντας στην εποχή τού μπρούντζου, άρχισαν να φτιάχνουν πλήθος προϊόντων με αυτό το νέο κράμα, όπως όπλα, εργαλεία, ή αναθήματα, λ.χ. μπρούντζινα πλοία, που δείχνουν την στενή τους σχέση με την θάλασσα. Μα η Σαρδηνία δεν συγκαταλεγόταν στον σημαντικό εκείνον χάρτη των πηγών κασσίτερου της αρχαιότητας (Κορνουάλλη-Ντέβον, Βρετάνη, Ιβηρία, Βοημία–Σαξωνία). Ωστόσο, λόγω του υπόλοιπου ορυκτού της πλούτου, απετέλεσε κέντρο εμπορίας μετάλλων τής εποχής εκείνης, και δεν αποκλείεται να εισήγαγε κασσίτερο από την Ιβηρία, για να τον διαθέτει μετά στην υπόλοιπη Μεσόγειο. Συνεπώς, οι έμποροι από το Αιγαίο, όπως και άλλες περιοχές, όπου ο κασσίτερος σπάνιζε, έριχναν πάρα πολύ συχνά άγκυρα στα λιμάνια της. Έτσι εξηγούνται και οι πολιτισμικές επιρροές στη νουραγική κουλτούρα, από τους πολιτισμούς των Μυκηνών, της Κρήτης, και της Κύπρου, καθώς και η παρουσία μυκηναϊκών, κρητικών, και κυπριακών αγγείων, ή και ντόπιων αντιγράφων τους, σε 5-6 νουραγικές κοινότητες, που αποτελούσαν διαμετακομιστικούς κόμβους κατά την ύστερη εποχή τού μπρούντζου.

Φυλές Σαρδηνίας και Κορσικής

Όπως είδαμε και στο προηγούμενο Χρονικό, εκείνη την εποχή (15ος – 13ος αιώνας ΠΚΧ) σημειώθηκαν τεράστιες μετακινήσεις πληθυσμών, μεταξύ των οποίων και των Λαών τής Θάλασσας, που έφεραν την καταστροφή στους Μυκηναίους και τους Χετταίους, ενώ αποπειράθηκαν να καταλάβουν την Αίγυπτο. Υπενθυμίζουμε πως ορισμένοι μελετητές συνδέουν μια από τις φυλές των Λαών τής Θάλασσας, τους Shardana, με τους Σαρδηνούς τής νουραγικής εποχής, που εγκαταστάθηκαν στο νησί είτε πριν, ή μετά από την αποτυχημένη εισβολή στην Αίγυπτο. Πρόκειται γι’ αμφιλεγόμενες θεωρίες, που δεν αποδέχονται οι περισσότεροι αρχαιολόγοι και ιστορικοί. Ο Σιμωνίδης ὁ Κεῖος, ωστόσο, σ’ ένα χαμένο έργο του, που αναφέρει ο Ζηνόβιος, έκανε λόγο για επιδρομές Σαρδηνών στην Κρήτη, κατά την περίοδο της εισβολής των Λαών τής Θάλασσας στην Αίγυπτο. Αυτό ίσως να επιβεβαιώνει πως οι Σαρδηνοί, κατά τη νουραγική εποχή, σύχναζαν και στην ανατολική Μεσόγειο. Επιπλέον, έχουν βρεθεί νουραγικά αγγεία τού 13ου αιώνα στην Τίρυνθα, και την περιοχή τού σικελικού Ακράγαντα, κατά μήκος τής θαλάσσιας ρότας που συνέδεε το ανατολικό με το δυτικό τμήμα τής mare nostrum.

Το δεύτερο σε μέγεθος νησί τής Μεσογείου, μετά από τη Σικελία, ονομαζόταν από τους Έλληνες Ἰχνοῦσα. Πήρε τ’ όνομα Σαρδηνία μάλλον από τον Σάρδο, μυθικό ήρωα του νουραγικού πανθέου, που αποίκισε το νησί από τη Λιβύη. Πατέρας του ήταν ο Μακήρις, σχετιζόμενος ίσως με τον Φοίνικα Μελκάρτ, που ταυτιζόταν με τον Λίβυο Ηρακλή. Συναφής παράδοση συνέδεε τον Σάρδο με τους Ηρακλείδες, που εγκαταστάθηκαν εκεί μ’ επικεφαλής τον Ιόλαο, ανιψιό τού Ηρακλή, σύμφωνα με τον Διόδωρο Σικελιώτη. Ο Ἰόλαος θεωρείται γενάρχης τής φυλής των Ιολαίων,⁽³⁾ που, παρά τις επανειλημμένες προσπάθειες Καρχηδονίων και Ρωμαίων, έμειναν ανυπότακτοι. Ίδρυσε επίσης πολλές πόλεις, από τον Εὔξεινο Πόντο ως τη Σικελία και τη Σαρδηνία, ζητώντας τη συνδρομή τού Δαίδαλου. Είναι εντυπωσιακό πως οικοδομήματα του τελευταίου σώζονταν ακόμη κατά την εποχή τού Διόδωρου (1ος αιώνας ΠΚΧ). Τέλος, γύρω στα 1000 ΠΚΧ, πρωτοεμφανίστηκαν ἐπὶ σκηνῆς οι Φοίνικες, ρίχνοντας ολοένα και συχνότερα άγκυρα σε ήδη υφιστάμενα λιμάνια, όπως Caralis, Νώρα, Βύθια, Σολκοί, Θάρρος, και Ὀλβία (ελληνικά ονόματα τα πιο πολλά), ενώ από τον 8ο αιώνα, άρχισαν να ιδρύουν (ή να ιδιοποιούνται) οχυρά και πόλεις, κυρίως στα στρατηγικής σημασίας νοτιοδυτικά παράλια.⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽³⁾ Φυλές Σαρδηνίας και Κορσικής: Κορσικανοί (ίσως από Λιγυρία) αποίκισαν την Κορσική από τη βόρεια Σαρδηνία· Βάλαροι των Βαλεαρίδων (από Ιβηρία, ή νότια Γαλλία, σχετιζόμενοι με τους Βάσκους) αποίκισαν τα βόρεια-κεντρικά τής Σαρδηνίας· Ιολαίοι (από βόρεια Αφρική, ή δυτική Σικελία, ή ανατολική Μεσόγειο) αποίκισαν τα κεντρικά-νότια. Οι διάλεκτοι Gallurese, Logudorese, και Campidanese, αντιστοιχούν ενδεχομένως στις ἐν λόγῳ φυλές.

Launeddas

• ⁽⁴⁾ Η Σαρδηνία και η Κορσική αποτελούν ιδιαίτερη περίπτωση και στη μουσική, καλλιεργώντας μια από τις παλαιότερες μορφές φωνητικής πολυφωνίας, εξίσου αρχαίας με την πολυφωνία τής Ηπείρου (μαζί και της Αλβανίας). Η UNESCO ανακήρυξε αυτό το είδος τραγουδιού, cantu a tenore, ως άυλη πολιτιστική κληρονομιά, το 2005. Το cantu a cuncordu, ένα παρόμοιο στυλ, αντιστοιχεί στην κορσικάνικη paghjella, κι έχει χαρακτήρα θρησκευτικό.

● Η πολυφωνία επεκτείνεται και στα όργανα. Ένα χαρακτηριστικό πολυφωνικό πνευστό, που απαρτίζεται από τρεις αυλούς, είναι οι launeddas (το λεγόμενο “τριπλό κλαρίνο” ή “τρίαυλος”). Οι αυλοί παίζονται με κυκλική αναπνοή, και ο ήχος τους μπορεί να είναι συνεχής. Ο ένας αποτελεί τον ισοκράτη, οι άλλοι δυο αποδίδουν τη μελωδία σε τρίτες κι έκτες. Οι πρόγονοι των launeddas μάλλον βρίσκονταν στην Αίγυπτο των αρχών τής 3ης χιλιετίας ΠΚΧ. Εκείνοι οι αυλοί με γλωσσίδα λέγονταν memet· αναπαραστάσεις τους βρίσκουμε σε ανάγλυφα τάφων, ή και σε πυραμίδες. Οι launeddas εμφανίζονται στον 8ο αιώνα ΠΚΧ τουλάχιστον, και ως τώρα συνοδεύουν θρησκευτικές τελετές, ή χορούς (su ballu). Οι μουσικοί αποδίδουν εκτεταμένες παραλλαγές κάποιων μελωδικών φράσεων, κι έτσι ένας σκοπός μπορεί να διαρκέσει ως μια ώρα, δημιουργώντας ήχους που, όπως εύστοχα παρατήρησε ο Alessio Surian, ανήκουν στους “στοιχειωδέστερους και με τον μεγαλύτερο συντονισμό τής ευρωπαϊκής μουσικής”.

Ὀδύσσεια Λισαβόνα τού μύθου

Γραφή Κυνητών με ανθρώπινη φιγούρα (8ος αιώνας ΠΚΧ)

Ο GÁRGORIS ΑΝΑΦΕΡΕΤΑΙ ΩΣ ΜΥΘΙΚΟΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΑΣ ενός από τους λαούς τής Ταρτησσού, στη νότια Πορτογαλία (Algarve και κάτω Alentejo), στο δυτικό άκρο τής Ευρώπης: ήταν οι Κυνήτες, Κυνήσιοι, ή Κόνιοι, τους οποίους ο Ηρόδοτος διέκρινε από τους Κέλτες. Ο βασιλιάς, λέει ο θρύλος, είχε αιμομικτικές σχέσεις με την κόρη του, που τ’ όνομά της δεν έχει διασωθεί. Το… “μοιραίο” συνέβη μια μέρα που την τσίμπησε μέλισσα· ο Gárgoris θέλησε να γιατρέψει την πληγή, μαλάσσοντάς την με το στόμα του, με αποτέλεσμα να κυριευτούν από το πάθος (είναι άγνωστο πού ακριβώς ήταν το τσίμπημα)! Όταν έμεινε έγκυος, την φυλάκισε, και διέταξε την θανάτωση του παιδιού. Το εγκατέλειψαν σ’ έναν λόφο, δίπλα σε άγρια θηρία που, ωστόσο, το θήλασαν και το περιέθαλψαν. Σαν έμαθε ο βασιλιάς πως ο γιος (κι εγγονός) του ήταν ζωντανός, διέταξε να τον πάρουν από την σπηλιά, και να προκαλέσουν τον θάνατό του με κάποιον άλλον τρόπο: να τον ποδοπατήσουν βόδια σε άτακτη φυγή, να τον κατασπαράξουν σκύλοι και πεινασμένοι χοίροι, ή αλλιώς, να τον πετάξουν στην θάλασσα για να πνιγεί. Όμως, χάρη στην προστάτιδα Μοίρα, ο Habis (Abidas) κατάφερε να επιβιώσει: όλα τα ζωντανά τον φρόντισαν, ενώ η θάλασσα, μ’ ένα της κύμα, τον έβγαλε σώο στην ακτή. Τελικά, αναθράφηκε από μια ελαφίνα (τ’ όνομά του, στην γλώσσα των Κυνητών, σημαίνει ελάφι), μεγάλωσε σαν θηρίο, κι έγινε επιτήδειος ληστής, μα τον έπιασαν κάτι αγρότες, που τον οδήγησαν στον βασιλιά. Τότε αυτός, βλέποντας ορισμένα ἐκ γενετῆς σημάδια, κατάλαβε πως ήταν ο γιος (κι εγγονός) του. Εντυπωσιασμένος από το θαύμα τής επιβίωσής του απ’ όλες τις δοκιμασίες, τον όρισε διάδοχο του θρόνου… Τον θρύλο κατέγραψε ο γαλατικής καταγωγής Λατίνος ιστορικός, Πομπήιος Τρόγος (1ος αιώνας ΠΚΧ), ενώ τον αφηγήθηκε έμμετρα ο Jerónimo de Arbolanche στο ποίημά του, Abidas (1566).

Περσέας και Ανδρομέδα (1572), του Gustave Moreau

Σύμφωνα με τον Λατίνο ιστορικό, Ιουστίνο, που συνέγραψε την Ἐπιτομὴ τῶν Φιλιππικῶν τοῦ Πομπηίου Τρόγου, ο Habis, ως βασιλιάς πλέον, προχώρησε σε ρηξικέλευθες κοινωνικές μεταρρυθμίσεις, “κατανέμοντας τους πολίτες μεταξύ επτά πόλεων”, και απαγορεύοντας τη δουλεία λόγω χρεών, που ήταν σύνηθες φαινόμενο στ’ αρχαία χρόνια. Ο Ιουστίνος σχολίασε επίσης τις αναλογίες τού θρύλου με παρόμοιες ιστορίες γι’ άλλους γενάρχες όπως οι Περσεύς, Μωυσής, Ρωμύλος και Ρώμος, εκφράζοντας την άποψη πως ο Habis υπερτερεί έναντι των ιδρυτών τής Ρώμης, που αναγκάστηκαν απλώς να έχουν ως τροφό μια λύκαινα, χωρίς να περάσουν από χίλιες δυο δοκιμασίες, ώστε να επιδείξουν ανάλογη ή και υπέρτερη ικανότητα επιβίωσης.⁽⁵⁾ Με τόσο χαρισματικό βασιλιά, η περιοχή μεταξύ των εκβολών τού Γουαδαλκιβίρ κι εκείνων τού Σάδου, στο Σετούμπαλ, μεταμορφώθηκε θεαματικά, αφού ο Habis εισήγαγε τη γεωργία, με την σπορά των σιτηρών, και την εκτροφή των βοοειδών, κι έτσι βελτίωσε τη διατροφή των υπηκόων του. Οι απόγονοί του κυβέρνησαν την περιοχή για αιώνες. Σπουδαίο υπήρξε επίσης το νομοθετικό του έργο, με τους έμμετρους νόμους που θέσπισε, και οι οποίοι σταδιακά εμπλουτίστηκαν, αριθμώντας “ἕξ χιλιάδες ἔπη”,⁽⁶⁾ κατά την ακμή τής Ταρτησσού, σύμφωνα με τον Στράβωνα. Η παράδοση των έμμετρων νόμων φαίνεται πως ξεκίνησε σ’ εποχές αρχαϊκές, όταν η γραφή δεν ήταν διαδεδομένη, για ν’ απομνημονεύουν οι άνθρωποι και να τηρούν τους νόμους.⁽⁷⁾ Αυτοί οι έμμετροι νόμοι ήταν προφανώς γραμμένοι στην ταρτήσσια, ή νοτιοδυτική γραφή,⁽⁸⁾ την αρχαιότερη των παλαιοϊβηρικών (7ος – 5ος αιώνας ΠΚΧ). Εκτεινόταν ανάμεσα στις εκβολές τού Γουαδαλκιβίρ κι εκείνες του Σάδου, ή στο εσωτερικό τής Ιβηρίας, φτάνοντας προς ανατολάς ως το Alicante και τη Murcia, όπου καλλιεργήθηκε η ελληνοϊβηρική γραφή. Δεν υπάρχει σύμπνοια μεταξύ των μελετητών για την προέλευση αυτών των ιβηρικών γραφών. Κάποιοι υποστηρίζουν πως ήταν το φοινικικό abjad, άλλοι πως συνέβαλε και το ελληνικό αλφάβητο. Άρα, κανένας δεν φαίνεται να δίνει προτεραιότητα στην ελληνική γραφή. Φεῦ! Οι “Φοινικολάτρες” δεν μπόρεσαν να εντοπίσουν καμιά “φοινικοïβηρική” γραφή!

Οδυσσέας και Καλυψώ, του Max Beckmann

• ⁽⁵⁾ Σχολίασα τις αναλογίες με τον “Μωυσή μωρό” (βλέπε Χρονικό 5. Ιβήρου Οδύσσεια, υποσημείωση 4): ο Habis υπερτερεί κατά κράτος! Ως προς τον Περσέα, να υπενθυμίσω πως όταν ήταν μωρό, ο παππούς Ἀκρίσιος, φοβούμενος έναν χρησμό ότι θα τον σκοτώσει ο εγγονός του, τον πέταξε στην θάλασσα, μαζί με τη μάνα του, Δανάη, μέσα σε μια ξύλινη λάρνακα. Στις δοκιμασίες του, όταν μεγάλωσε (αποκεφάλισε τη Μέδουσα, κι έσωσε την Αιθιοπίδα πριγκίπισσα, Ἀνδρομέδα, από το Κῆτος), δεν θα έβγαινε νικητής, αν δεν ήταν γιος τού Δία – άρα, υπερτερεί όλων!

• ⁽⁶⁾ Ἔπος είναι, μεταξύ άλλων: λέξη, στίχος, στροφή, ποίημα, άσμα, νουθεσία, ρητό, χρησμός.

• ⁽⁷⁾ Περί αρχαιοελληνικών μουσικών νόμων, και την αρχαία παράδοση να άδονται οι νόμοι απ’ τον λαό για ν’ απομνημονεύονται και να τηρούνται, βλέπε Χρονικό 11, υποσημείωση 1, και Χρονικό 16, υποσημείωση 9.

• ⁽⁸⁾ Ή νοτιο-λουζιτανική γραφή, ή βαστουλο–τουρδητανική, ή κι escrita conia (γραφή Κυνητών).

Οι Gárgoris και Habis πρωταγωνιστούν σε διάφορες παραλλαγές τού ἐν λόγῳ θρύλου. Σε μια από αυτές, ο πρώτος παραλληλίζεται με τον Κρόνο που τρώει τα παιδιά του, ενώ, αντίθετα, ο δεύτερος παρουσιάζεται ως θύμα διώξεων, επειδή εισήγαγε τη γεωργία στη βουκολική Ταρτησσό. Μια άλλη εκδοχή, που παρεισέφρησε εντελώς απροσδόκητα σ’ ένα βιβλίο περί fado, είναι προφανώς μεταγενέστερη, αποσιωπώντας το στοιχείο τής αιμομιξίας, ώστε να καταστεί η ιστορία ηθικά μη επιλήψιμη. Συνδυάζει αυτόν τον θρύλο με τον μύθο τής ίδρυσης της Λισαβόνας, όπως και με την Ὀδύσσεια, διανθίζοντας έτσι την ιστορία με τους προσφιλείς μας ομηρικούς ήρωες. Σε αυτήν την εκδοχή, που αφηγείται ο Mascarenhas Barreto, στο βιβλίο του, Fado / Λυρικές πηγές και ποιητική έμπνευση, με τις πολυάριθμες παρενθετικές μυθολογικές ή ιστορικές του υποσημειώσεις, ο Gárgoris παρουσιάζεται ως ο Ίβηρας βασιλιάς Gregoris, ενώ η κόρη του δεν είναι άλλη από την Καλυψώ. Άρα, την πατρότητα του γιου της την “επωμίζεται” ο Ὀδυσσεύς, ενώ η Ὠγυγία δεν είναι νησί, αλλά οικισμός στις εκβολές τού Τάγου. Ο βασιλιάς τής Ἰθάκης, λέει αυτή η εκδοχή, περιτείχισε την πόλη, και την ονόμασε Ulissea (Οδύσσεια) – ἐξ οὗ Olisipo(na), δηλαδή Λισαβόνα – ενώ ο γιος που απέκτησε με την Καλυψώ, ο Abidis, αφού πέρασε τις δοκιμασίες που είδαμε παραπάνω, ίδρυσε την Scalabis (Santarém), και άλλες πόλεις (λ.χ. Astorga, Astigi, στην Ισπανία· βλέπε Χρονικό 5. Ιβήρου Οδύσσεια, Ο Οδυσσέας και η Καλυψώ στην Οδύσσεια Λισαβόνα).

Olisipo (Λισαβόνα), Sintra, Scalabis (Santarém),
και Salacia (Alcácer do Sal)

Πολλές εκδοχές υπάρχουν και για τον θρύλο τής ίδρυσης της Λισαβόνας. Σε μια από αυτές, ο Οδυσσέας είδε ένα αστροπελέκι ν’ αστράφτει στον ουρανό και να προκαλεί πυρκαγιά στο έδαφος, σε μιαν άγνωστη χώρα. Τότε ο Ζεύς, ο μέγας θεός των κεραυνών, του είπε να χτίσει μια πόλη σ’ εκείνο το σημείο. Σε αυτήν την χώρα, λέει μια άλλη εκδοχή, βασίλευε η γοητευτική Οφιούσα, που αντί για πόδια, είχε μια τεράστια φιδίσια ουρά. Η βασίλισσα ερωτεύτηκε τρελά τον Οδυσσέα και, για να τον έχει στο πλευρό της, του προσέφερε τον θρόνο τού βασιλείου της. Ο ήρωάς μας, ως πονηρός που ήταν, προσποιήθηκε πως δέχεται, γιατί φοβόταν για την ζωή του αν αρνιόταν. Μα ταυτόχρονα, γέμιζε κρυφά το πλοίο του με προμήθειες. Και μια νύχτα, ενώ η βασίλισσα κοιμόταν, ο Οδυσσέας και το πλήρωμά του χάθηκαν στο σκοτάδι. Εξοργισμένη το πρωί, η Οφιούσα χτυπούσε την τεράστια ουρά της τόσο δυνατά στο έδαφος, ώστε δημιούργησε τους επτά λόφους, όπου είναι χτισμένη η Λισαβόνα. Ὀφιοῦσα,, φυσικά, είναι η Χώρα τῶν Ὄφεων-Ἑρπετῶν, όπως έλεγαν οι αρχαίοι Έλληνες την ατλαντική Ιβηρία, τη σημερινή Πορτογαλία και Γαλικία, και ειδικότερα την περιοχή γύρω από τις εκβολές τού Τάγου.

Θηλυκὸν Οὐραῖον Ἑρπετόν, μια μορφή τής Ἴσιδος
(αδερφής πιθανόν, ή μητέρας τής Οφιούσας…!)

● Η Οφιούσα των Ελλήνων ήταν για τους Ρωμαίους η Oestriminis (η Άκρα, ή Άπω Δύση, στα λατινικά), κάτι σαν το finis terrae, “τέλος τού κόσμου” (με την οπτική ενός Μεσόγειου). Ο Αβιηνός, Ρωμαίος ποιητής τού 4ου αιώνα ΚΧ, στο έργο του, Ora maritima (Θαλάσσιες ακτές), ανέπλασε τον Μασσαλιώτη περίπλου, του 6ου αιώνα ΠΚΧ, ένα ημερολόγιο καταστρώματος άγνωστου Έλληνα θαλασσοπόρου, κι έγραψε πως οι Oestrimni, που ζούσαν στην περιοχή ἐπὶ μακρόν, υποχρεώθηκαν να εγκαταλείψουν τα σπίτια τους λόγω εισβολής ερπετών. Στην πραγματικότητα, τα ερπετά δεν ήταν φίδια, αλλά άνθρωποι, πιθανότατα οι Saephes, ή Ophis (“λαός των ερπετών”), και Dragani (“λαός των δράκων”), που ήρθαν να εγκατασταθούν σε αυτήν την γη. Οι Saephes ζούσαν σε ορεινή περιοχή, δίπλα στις εκβολές τού Τάγου, όπου υπήρχε ένα νησί, που ο Αβιηνός ονόμασε Ποιητάνιον. Συμμαχώντας με μιαν άλλη φυλή, τους Cempsi, κατάφεραν να πάρουν αυτά τα εδάφη διὰ τῆς βίας από τους Oestrimni. Οι νεοφερμένοι ήταν, προφανώς, είτε πρωτο-Κέλτες, ή Κελτίβηρες, ενώ οι Oestrimni οι παλαιολιθικοί κάτοικοι της ατλαντικής Ιβηρίας.

Οι Όφεις, που λάτρευαν τα ερπετά, ζούσαν στα βουνά τής βόρειας Πορτογαλίας και Γαλικίας, ή στις εκβολές των ποταμών Δούρου, Κάβαδου, Τάγου, και Σάδου. Οι Σαίφες, μαζί με τους Κέμψους, ζούσαν στην γη των Κυνητών (το Algarve και Κάτω Alentejo, όπου βασίλεψε ο Gárgoris). Οι Κέμψοι, ίσως με σημαντικές γερμανικές και λίγυες προσμίξεις, έφτασαν στην Ιβηρία γύρω στο 650 ΠΚΧ, κι εγκαταστάθηκαν στην κοιλάδα τού Τάγου, ή και στην χερσόνησο του Σετούμπαλ, όπου ο Αβιηνός προσδιόρισε το σημερινό Ακρωτήρι Espichel ως lugum cempsicum. Οι Δρακάνοι, τέλος, κατάγονταν μάλλον από τη Λιγυρία, περιοχή τής ΒΔ Ιταλίας, κι έφτασαν στη ΒΔ Ιβηρία (Κανταβρία, Αστούριες, Γαλικία, και Μπέιρα) με κέλτικες προσμίξεις, ήταν Κελτολίγυρες. Τ’ όνομά τους δείχνει πως έφεραν τους δράκους στην Ιβηρία, όπου οι ντόπιοι πρέπει να είχαν ήδη στη λατρεία τους τούς δικούς τους γρύπες.

Ένα άλλο υπερφυσικό ον, στους θρύλους τής Πορτογαλίας και της Γαλικίας, είναι η Moura encantada (μαγεμένη). Ένας θρύλος αναφέρει ότι στο θερινό ηλιοστάσιο, ένα νεαρό θηλυκό ερπετό, μια χθόνια θεά, αποκάλυπτε κρυμμένους θησαυρούς σε όσους τριγυρνούσαν στα δάση. Η παρθένα, έλεγαν, ζούσε στην περιοχή τού Πόρτο. Κατά το ηλιοστάσιο, οργάνωναν γιορτές προς τιμήν της. Στο υπόλοιπο της χρονιάς, γινόταν φίδι και ζούσε κάτω από βράχια. Ως προσφορά, οι βοσκοί τής άφηναν λίγο γάλα από τα κοπάδια τους.

Καλυψώ και Οδυσσέας, του William Russell Flint

Ως προς την Καλυψώ, κατά την ελληνική μυθολογία, δεν ήταν πριγκίπισσα, αλλά νύμφη, στη νήσο τής Ωγυγίας, κόρη τού Άτλαντα, γι’ αυτό ονομαζόταν και Ατλαντίδα (Όμηρος), ή και Ωκεανίδα, ήταν δηλαδή μια από τις κόρες τού