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)

Chronicle 13. PROFESSIONALS OR AMATEURS?

Chronicle 13. PROFESSIONALS OR AMATEURS?

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 13. ΕΠΑΓΓΕΛΜΑΤΙΕΣ Ή ΕΡΑΣΙΤΕΧΝΕΣ;

● “Do Not Maltreat Our Music!” (Β) ● Autodidacts
or Literate? ● Asia Minor Catastrophe and Rebétiko
● Censorship on Music ● Controversy Over Rebétiko
● Entertainment and Edutainment (B)

Michales Loukovikas

“IF I CANNOT CHANGE A SITUATION, I ACCEPT IT,” B.B. King confessed, clarifying the reason why he changed his style of blues.⁽¹⁾ His statement raises openly the problem of accepting every situation or not, whether one can create obeying to the dictates of companies, or of the public – which is already a conditioned element. Certainly, the room for creation becomes more limited. Even those who can cope with adversities would produce an infinitely more important work if they had a free hand. Those who manage not to debase their art under such strict control are really few. That’s why the ethos of music is already a concept unknown to musicians – something so hard to get that we are under the illusion we can find it among amateurs…

• ⁽¹⁾ Thelonious Monk advises exactly the opposite: “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them 15, 20 years”…

Odysseus Overcome by Demodocus’ Song, by Francesco Hayez (1813-15)

Well, professionals or amateurs? We need to elaborate on this issue because, in the field of the arts, the former are burdened with all the sins of the world (the junk that’s for sale), while no one dares to call into question the noble intentions of those enveloped in the halo of an “art lover”; and this mentality has already imbued even professionals! We have arrived to the point where we… boast of our amateurism, considering professionalism to be hubris, in the land of the Homeric epics, i.e. the work of a professional rhapsode, where other, equally professional bards of the Odyssey era (sometime between 1250 and 1170 BCE) are also mentioned, namely Phemius and Demodocus. We are talking about a tradition we know for sure it’s been going on for at least three millennia – let alone that professional musicians existed well before the fall of Troy.

So, what is a professional? Generally speaking on any kind of work, because the situation around music is rather confusing, we can say that he/she is someone who: a) knows well how to do a job – has been specially trained, or skilled as an apprentice of an older artisan – and b) out of this job he/she can at least make a living.

Three Musicians, by Picasso

Anyone who does not meet the above requirements cannot be considered a professional and, moreover, if he/she doesn’t meet the first requirement, it’s (normally) impossible to get a job. Of course, the professionals may be good or bad depending on the degree they can meet such requirements. Thus a good professional is someone who cares for both the material he’s working on, and the material aspect of his profession – his earnings. Otherwise his craftsmanship would be degraded and could be easily replaced. Bertolt Brecht talked about this need in his time, but who listened to him then, and who remembers him now? “When you have something to say, to express,” said Pablo Picasso, “any submission becomes unbearable in the long run. One must have the courage of one’s vocation and the courage to make a living from one’s vocation… without compromise.”

The professional musicians’ denigration may be linked to the Europeanization epidemic that’s been sweeping the Hellenic state already since its establishment. The Ionian and Athenian serenades, operettas, various retros, and European light music in general, constituted the “scope of action par excellence” of the literate Europeanist super-professionals,⁽²⁾ while local traditional music was abandoned in the care of semi-professional, or even amateur, self-taught musicians, who were treated disparagingly by the music establishment. The result was that they felt inferior, as they could not even read music, among many other things.

• ⁽²⁾ It is striking that music which is described as… “lightweight” – superficially sentimental, and of a petty bourgeois character – is found only in the Occident, after the so-called “Commercial Revolution” that commercialized everything, even the arts. The one found in the Mediterranean is imitation! Traditional musicians in Hellas, when they’re playing such pieces, characterize them as “European”, even if they have Greek lyrics or composers… (See also Chronicle 11, Music and Nation).

Here’s the “root of evil”: at best, the state left local music to the mercy of fate; at worst, it was hostile against it. Several posts, public or not (teachers, directors, producers, interpreters of music), were surely occupied by these Europeanists. Under such circumstances, Hellenic music and its practitioners barely survived. They were obliged to do other jobs to survive – of course at the expense of their art that was degraded more and more, along with public taste. This profession “offered” so much insecurity that the locals (throughout the Balkans) handed it over to the “exclusive competence” of the Roma, the gypsies.

The dramatic improvement of the conditions of Hellenic
music came with a… tragedy: the Asia Minor Catastrophe.

Politakia, later Smyrnaic Estudiantina: the first one founded in Smyrna in 1898 by Basileios Sideres and Aristides Peristeres, the Constantinopolitans.

THE SITUATION IMPROVED when and where the Greeks achieved economic prosperity that allowed them to support “full time” musicians. But the dramatic improvement of the conditions of Hellenic music came with a… tragedy: the Asia Minor Catastrophe. History shows again and again how much she can appreciate irony! Those uprooted from their ancestral homes moved in thousands into Greece (around 1.3 million people) and, together with their scanty belongings, carried with them the Anatolian sound and lifestyle – which evolved into a struggle for survival: they brought their songs and feasts, just in case they could alleviate their plight…

The Anatolian musicians were truly professionals, with excellent knowledge of both the Mediterranean and European traditions. But they were also refugees – thus, on the margins. It would take some time until they occupied responsible positions in the newly founded phonographic companies. Until then – as long as their equally marginalized public was still there – they would keep on playing their familiar repertoire of Constantinople, Smyrna and Asia Minor at large, with songs and tunes that enjoyed widespread approval in Anatolia; not in Greece, where they were not universally embraced, had a rather limited scope, for their sound was quite “unfamiliar” – let alone they were so difficult to sing and play, especially when the composers engaged in the art of modulation. These tunes could become the “yeast” to “ferment” a kind of indigenous erudite music. But their fate was similar to that of their creators and they were in turn marginalized. Another historical irony was that the so-called Smyrnaic songs were replaced by those of the hitherto marginalized and far simpler Piraeotic rebétiko.

Censorship on Music (Not Only Lyrics)

Hence the reasons for this preference were commercial – as well as political: these elaborate, demanding songs, as artistic products of an advanced culture, were reminiscent of lost homelands. They ought to be removed from collective memory to – supposedly – “heal” the “trauma” of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Firm was the conviction that this music was inextricably linked with the Turkish language spoken by several refugees. “National interest” dictated some drastic measures to be taken…

Smyrnaic songs on the margins for commercial and political reasons,
as reminiscent of lost homelands… Censorship on music targeted
minor thirds, a feature of the ancient Hellenic chromatic genus…

Apollo (raising his cithara), Music and Poetry, by Aimé Millet (1860–1869), on Paris Opéra Palais Garnier

This task was later taken over by the Metaxás dictatorship, imposing censorship that was not limited to lyrics, but extended to music, too (see Chronicle 9). The musical censors’ main target was minor third intervals (three semitones), the so-called “bemolli”,⁽³⁾ that is, the distinctive feature of the age-old chromatic genus – one of the three Hellenic genera, together with the diatonic and enharmonic. Even though there are some questions around enharmony, no one has disputed the chromatic genus: we know e.g. it was never used in tragedies – apparently because it did not fit there. Yet, according to Aristides Quintilianus (3rd century CE), Plutarch said that “the cithara, several generations older than tragedy, since its very beginning, used… the sweetest and most plaintive… chroma” (chromatic genus). Besides, the ancient genera can also be found, noticeably remodeled, in the Byzantine music. Yet, the Westerners can appreciate only scales, especially the diatonic, while their chromatic scale has nothing to do with the chromatic genus: Bingo!

• ⁽³⁾ “In 1936, when censorship on the songs was initially imposed, they ‘corrected’ the popular songs’ melodies removing the ‘oriental’ elements in an effort to ‘cleanse’ popular music. They aimed at various external features of the melody, primarily minor thirds or ‘bemolli’,(*) according to the musicians’ popular parlance.” (Giorgos Papadakis, Folk Self-Taught Musicians).

(*) Bemolle, in Italian musical terminology, means flat, “lower in pitch” by one semitone, notated using the symbol ♭. The opposite term is sharp, #, which is a raising of pitch by one semitone.

As Basiles Tsitsanes confessed in an interview with Papadakis: “With censorship at that time… we were taking away the bemolli. [Markos] Bambakares, for instance, wrote: ‘Every evening I ^♭will wait ^♭for you, girl’. We would change that mark and turn it without bemolle so as not to sound oriental… We wrote beautiful serenades at that time…”(!)

Tsitsanes Ouzerí (Tavern), Thessalonica

“How come that no one informed Metaxás on this problem?”, some naïve person may wonder. Well, if someone did, he must have… disappeared imprisoned or exiled later for “anti-state activities”! Under these abnormal conditions rebétiko turned professional. Persecutions affected everyone – both the Anatolians and the locals – for their music styles were first-degree relatives. Due to its tolerant police authority, Thessalonica then turned into an oasis where many persecuted found refuge. Thus, during its early years, rebétiko influenced the city and was influenced by it. Many most beautiful songs were composed then in (and about) Salonica.

Anyway, Hellenism’s painful shrinkage had also its positive effects, concentrating and condensing in Greece sounds of music born in three peninsulas: the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Italy. No country in this region enjoys such a privilege: it is its geography that determines the sound of its music. This little miracle, however, with Hellenism’s three-dimensional face, collided with the mantra “We belong to the West” and was anything but welcome to the rulers who would do everything for the people to lose orientation – and if possible, they would be happy to sign a presidential decree imposing… “occidentation”!

Sounds from three peninsulas (Balkans, Anatolia, Italy) condensed in
Hellas… Rebétiko’s foes covered all political spectrum (Right to Left).

Phoebus Anogeianakis in the Macronesos camp infirmary, drawn by Manos Katrakis (April 1950)

Controversy Over Rebétiko

Nevertheless, rebétiko’s foes covered the entire political spectrum from Right to Left. In late ’46 and early ’47, according to Phoebus Anogeianakis, the musical unions asked the government to intervene and take “appropriate measures” in order to stem the spread of rebétiko:

“This initiative,” he wrote in Rizospastis (Radical), the Communist Party newspaper, on January 28, 1947, “was gradually embraced by our music critics and columnists who, in their discussions and articles, grappled with its ‘moral’ and artistic value, as well as with its effect especially on the younger generation.⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ Here’s another reincarnation of the Spartan ephori (see the previous Chronicle)!

“Anathemas ‘in the name’ of morality at risk, or an off-hand evaluation of popular rebétiko song as it is presented – mind you – in a cosmopolitan tavern, prevented a critical assessment of rebétiko creating fuss and confusion.

“Just the criteria of our Western music education are certainly not enough to approach and study rebétiko, when indeed they are accompanied by the ‘current’ perception of morality. Many of its aspects naturally seem strange to us. We’ve strayed away so far from its sources following our paths that sometimes we find ourselves with difficulty.

“The tradition of demotic [folk traditional] song and, to a somewhat lesser extent, of Byzantine music, even though some would be surprised, continues in these songs that constitute a genuine form of today’s popular music.”

Piraeus (1933): Markos Bambakares (standing, left) with bouzouki, Giorgos Batis (centre) with guitar.

A week later, on February 4, Rizospastis published a reply letter to Anogeianakis, signed by his co-fighter in the ranks of the National Liberation Front (EAM), namely Alekos Xenos, also a musician. Noting that in the newspaper Ethnos (Nation), the composer Manoles Kalomoires adopted a similar position with Anogeianakis (this concurrence seemed rather… incriminating!), he outlined his diametrically opposite view:

“Rebétiko,” he wrote, “is one of the inherent contradictions of the bourgeoisie in decline. It appears in an embryonic form before the wars. It takes shape from melodic remnants of the Turkish conquerors and those melodies brought here by ship crews coming from Turkish ports. It is sung by the most lumpen strata created by the pauperizing economic tactics of capitalism.⁽⁵⁾ It carries the most reactionary traditions, in the degradation of a segment of the bourgeoisie.

• ⁽⁵⁾ Lumpen (rags in German): a ragamuffin and, by extension, every impoverished element. In Marxist theory, it is combined with the word proletariat to signify the most impoverished segments of the working class having no class consciousness. Proletarius in ancient Rome was someone totally destitute who could not give the state anything but his children (proles = child). Under capitalism, it is the one who cannot give the capitalist anything but his labour power.

“I think that we cannot find ourselves going back to rebetiko but to the few songs of our people’s latest Resistance and those that will be composed about it in the future.”

This fossilized thinking, which the party leadership – unfortunately – espoused, was disputed on the 23rd of the same month by Linos Polites with another letter to Rizospastis. After calling Xenos back to… Marxist order (“how come that the lumpen is a degraded segment of the bourgeoisie?”), he censured the domestic production of tangos, concluding as follows:

“I cannot believe that A. Xenos accepts there is popular tradition and style in the music of the Resistance songs since we know both their composers – he is one of them – and the clearly Western measures in the structures of their compositions.⁽⁶⁾ In addition, we know that during such a short time, individual creation can far easier give its fruits.

• ⁽⁶⁾ The Anthem (“With the golden armour of youth…”) of EPON (United Panhellenic Organization of Youth), on Sophia Mavroeides-Papadakis’ lyrics, was initially performed in the 1st Panthessalian Congress of EPON with music composed by Xenos, while in Athens it was sung with a melody composed by Anogeianakis – just to mention a characteristic example…

“Today, after the great lesson of the Resistance, the gap that separates us in matters of art from the people became more than obvious, and there is a clear need to find a point of contact. This point will be found in contemporary popular activities, if we examine them with less superficiality and more serious characterizations.”

Manos Hadjidakis

The controversy around rebétiko necessarily stopped, since another conflict had broken out – with live ammunition: it was the Civil War… Two years later, with the Left heading for defeat because of their own “mistakes” and betrayals (not because of the superior adversary firepower), another composer, also coming from the ranks of EAM, but disappointed and having turned around, undertook the urban folk song’s defense. It was the highly penetrating Manos Hadjidakis, who gave a lecture about rebétiko, describing also the prevailing atmosphere in the late 40s:

“Our times are hard and our popular song, which is not made by people of the fugue and counterpoint, so as to care for sanitation and makeshift hygienic make-ups, sings the truth and nothing but the truth.

“Our era is neither heroic nor epic and the end of the 2nd World War left almost all problems unresolved and up in the air…

“Furthermore, our homeland follows through with a war, almost uninterruptedly, with perseverance and faith in the final victory, but always – especially today – arduously and painfully. Consider now under these relentless conditions the virginal idiosyncrasy of our people; virginal because just one hundred years of free life could neither make it mature nor leave room for the latest European trends to take root. Imagine all this piled up vitality and beauty at the same time of a people like ours asking for an outlet, expression, contact with the outside world, and facing everything mentioned above as the main features of the era. Moreover, think of the extremely harsh realities in our country. Vitality is burned out, idiosyncrasy falls sick, beauty remains. This is rebétiko. And hence its thematology arises…

“Consider the virginal idiosyncrasy of our people. Imagine all this piled
up vitality and beauty of a people asking for an outlet, expression,
contact with the outside world… Vitality is burned out, idiosyncrasy
falls sick, beauty remains. This is rebétiko”. (Manos Hadjidakis)

The Era of Mélisande takes us to this period
that “is neither heroic nor epic”.

“Rebétiko manages to combine speech, music and motion in an admirable unity. From composition to interpretation, the conditions are instinctively created for this triple expressive coexistence that sometimes, when it reaches the limits of perfection, is morphologically reminiscent of ancient tragedy…

“Zeibekiko is the purest modern Greek rhythm; while hasapiko has assimilated a pure Hellenic peculiarity. Rebétiko is built on these rhythms; observing the melodic line of the song we can clearly discern the influence or, better, the extension of Byzantine chant. Not just examining the scales that are kept intact out of the folk musicians’ instinct, but also observing the cadences, intervals and mode of execution. Everything reveals the source, which is none other than the strict, austere ecclesiastical hymn…

“Who knows what new life the leisurely and pessimistic 9/8 hold for us in the future. But, in the meantime, we would have felt their strength for good. We will listen to them, very naturally and properly, raising their voice in our immediate surroundings and living in order to interpret our inner selves”…

Until the Civil War wounds healed up, many years had passed. The debate on rebétiko was rekindled in the dawn of the 60s because of Mikis Theodorakis’ Epitaph. But it was too late: the debate of the 60s seemed more like a… rebétiko epitaph – meaning it was post mortem – for its creative period, its breath, was already over…

Dinos Christianópoulos

“Persistent were the attacks on rebétiko, even after it was dead for many years,” said Dinos Christianópoulos. “Hostile was the attitude by nationalists and governments (especially by Metaxás, and more moderately by the Tsaldares government, that outlawed and persecuted it), considering it as a stigma of Graeco-Christian culture;⁽⁷⁾ religious organizations and the Church in general, that dealt with it as immoral; fanatic communists (among them even Várnales, although he frequented in taverns), who rejected it as an expression of bourgeois decay and decadence; a part of the bourgeois press, expressing the prejudice and respectability of high society; demotic song fans (mainly schoolteachers and provincial scholars); the conservatories’ people, who faced it with disgust and contempt; university folklorists, who considered it as an abortion of our popular culture; and a lot of little folks, who were emasculated by light songs.”

• ⁽⁷⁾ Unlike “Graeco-Roman world” or “Graeco-Roman culture”, the term “Graeco-Christian culture” or, even worse, “Graeco-Christian civilization”, is a… Hellenic (or, rather, a “Graeco-Christian”) exclusiveness, reminding us of that old… Graeco-fascist slogan “Hellas of Greek Christians”!

Noteworthy is an essay by Costas Takhtsēs on Zeybékiko – written with ypsilon because of a theory “that the etymology of the word comes from Zeus and bekos (bread in Phrygian)”. This incisive text of 1964, rather lengthy to quote it here, deserves to be read in whole, inter alia, for its important reflections, such as:

Costas Takhtsēs

“Contrary to classical Hellenic culture that modern Greeks aspired to resurrect after the War of Independence in mainland Hellas, the Byzantine world was clearly ‘oriental’. The Turks borrowed and imitated this ‘oriental’ civilization, giving to it, over time, a heavier, Turkish character, and exactly this secondary product was what generations of Greeks of servitude experienced, and brought with them when they came, as refugees, to old Hellas.”

“The ELAS (Greek People’s Liberation Army) guerrillas,” he also wrote referring to the years of Resistance, and dissolving the embellished picture Xenos tried to create, “along with some demotic songs, depending on the area, sang Hellenized versions of Russian, and – how tragicomic! – even of… German songs and paeans.”

It is useful and didactic to see in outline the distressing finale of the story about the rebétiko zeybékiko as narrated by Takhtsēs:

“The bourgeois resisted [the zeybékiko songs]; but they soon realized the futility of the effort. Thus, using the well-known method of rationalization or the equally well-known tactic of neutralization through containment, they embraced and adopted them. It’s always the best way to castrate a ‘revolution’ – cheap, safe, and bloodless. They started going on nightly treks to various taverns with bouzouki bands, the menu prices went up, the bouzouki players showed off, were flattered, saw that they had discovered a goldmine, buttoned up, even wore tuxedos, started varying their repertoire ever more with the softer, empty of any message or thought, but more tantalizing, tsifteteli, the prices went up again, the simple people got scared, withdrew to unknown taverns with still unknown bands, the eccentrics and the bourgeois discovered them, they occupied the tables there, as well, until the people, finding no place to sit, were compelled to gather on the outside, staring at the bands, the Americans and the bourgeois, in order to listen to the songs that were born out of them, but were far too expensive for their pockets. Thus a paranoid situation prevailed with the tourists and the bourgeois who went to see the people, and the people who went to see the tourists. Admiring products of economic misery that they were not willing to share except only aesthetically and from afar, the tourists flattered the people, for whom they became both a spectacle and objects of wonder.

“Well: with the collaboration of some well-meaning, and many dishonest or foolish people, an amazing robbery has taken place before our eyes: the people’s right to, at least, lament their fate. The zeybékiko songs have become the status quo, established themselves, lost their edge, their meaning, and have become, in turn, the occupational tangos of our time. More Greek, of course, than the tangos but, mind you, they no longer speak of social injustice, nor about the bitterness of life, they don’t protest, they consent. They speak about bourgeois pseudo-pleasures and pseudo-worries, and now and then about the bitterness of migration, which is absolutely crucial, since migration means not to face reality, but to flee from it – the only kind of flight that is still allowed, when it’s not imposed.

“Let me conclude: Those songs that managed for a while to become the means of expression of a people’s protest against their exploiters of all kinds, are now composed according to ‘plutocratic’ methods of mass production by the exploiters themselves, or they are just financed by them, for consumption by the people, and the people, who do not understand, or pretend not to understand, who have had some food to eat after the war, and, because of this little food, imagined they’ve become rich – sing them!

“I am somehow fit to judge the aesthetic result of all this unprecedented farce; and it’s lamentable”…

After such a text, silence is golden. Even Donn Pohren’s crucial conclusion that “once a minority’s authentic musical expression becomes fashionable, it fades”, pales into insignificance. The same applies to Anogeianakis’ characterization in 1961 that “certain current rebétiko song features correspond to commercial jazz (stylized super production, exaggerated performance through microphones and loudspeakers, showing off of silly virtuosity).”

“Once a minority’s authentic musical expression
becomes fashionable, it fades”. (Donn Pohren)

Medusa, by Caravaggio (1595)

Entertainment and Edutainment

HERE’S THEN WHERE WE HAVE ENDED UP: musicians “executing” every night, all the time, the same repertoire with no substantial changes, and bored as hell, just like their customers. When the musicians do not enjoy their art, when pathos or joys of life have been replaced by bathos or superficial revels, then “merriment” and “happiness” come by artificial means – drinking at best. When the musicians fail to engage creatively and freely in improvisations, having in mind just an outline, a sketch of the repertoire, leaving everything else on the spur of the moment, when they avoid – because they are afraid – to be carried away by their imagination, and prefer to be on sure ground, then at best they may provide entertainment – for the people to forget their troubles, to be fooled away – though they should provide (at least sometimes) edutainment, “soul therapy”.⁽⁸⁾ When the musicians act dictatorially, playing at full volume, and forgetting that music has pianissimo and fortissimo, and a plethora of modes and rhythms, the people go out to blow off some steam, get drunk and break loose, making more noise than the amplifiers and behaving like a horde of barbarians. Then – I’ll say it again – the musicians have lost their best allies: the aficionados, the music lovers.

• ⁽⁸⁾ “Edutainment” (edu-cation + enter-tainment) is so weak and pale compared to the Hellenic ψυχαγωγία (ἀγωγὴ ψυχῆς = soul leading or training, education of the soul) – but what can I do?

When we shoot the piano player without looking in the mirror,
chances are we’ll be finally left without a piano player!

But – you’re bound to ask – aren’t professionals like that? Why should I support them? Well, these are the bad professionals, I would answer – regardless if they make up the majority now. Willy-nilly, they’ve fallen into the trap where other professionals, such as journalists, have also been caught, thinking that they are… coffee men and, consequently, they make coffee according to the customers’ preferences!⁽⁹⁾ They do not seem to bother at all that the order for… “light-sweet” music or news is not given by some “clients” but by their bosses. On the other hand, let’s not forget that if there was no public well-disposed to junk “music” or “news”, the bosses would willy-nilly have second thoughts. Hence, when we… shoot the piano player without looking in the mirror, chances are we’ll be finally left without a piano player!

• ⁽⁹⁾ That was a publisher’s basic argument of defense in the trial of some journalists for violating a draconian Press Law… I wonder why that publisher, employing “coffee men”, has not yet entitled his newspaper as “Cafeteria”!

Music is no joking matter. It’s an art requiring years of study, either with sheet music and books or next to another musician – but always on the instrument. It takes persistent and consistent effort and study to master the technique of a single instrument and, moreover, to decipher the secrets of a single musical “language”. The same applies to a singer: not everything depends on a “divine charisma”. How is it possible to consider this verbiage of “cold” professionals and “sensitive” amateurs as well-grounded? How can a lyricist e.g. pose as a composer when he is musically “illiterate”? What would this rhymer say, indeed, if someone, who had never sat down to work on language and metrics, declared to be a “poet”? You’ll tell me that I forget a very important parameter: in Hellas, you are whatever you declare to be!

Popular songs, they say, are simple. Yes, but they are not simplistic! The great difficulty in their composition lies in this very simplicity. Especially if you have studied theory of music, it is rather easy to compose something complicated. If you attempt to simplify it later, if you leave just the basic melodic line, then the substance, the quality of your inspiration, reveals itself.

Let’s suppose that divine inspiration strikes a musically “illiterate”: he will not be able to elaborate on that because he lacks proper knowledge. If this elaboration is taken over by someone else: the end result will be different from what he had in mind. Even if he “hits it big” and becomes a “star”: he will have capitalized on the erudition of third persons, who will, unfortunately, in most cases, remain unknown. Additionally, if he wishes to sing his creation, as it has become trendy lately: he will fail, as well, because, even if he doesn’t sing out of tune (if…), he has not worked his vocal chords, ignores completely the vocal techniques, he doesn’t know the secrets of breathing, articulating and singing, and much more.

Of course, one may refer as an example to the Beatles, who composed brilliant music being musically “illiterate”. Apart from the fact that they, too, capitalized on the erudition of their outstanding producer, George Martin, I have to stress I don’t mean by any means those musicians who are theoretically “illiterate”: the Beatles were professional musicians, since the time they played – completely unknown – in Hamburg.

Liszt “trembled at the idea of some self-taught virtuoso studying music,
so as to keep the impulsive power of his musical instinct virginal.”

It’s obvious I don’t refer to autodidacts, i.e. to self-taught musicians, who do not have only disadvantages but also advantages against their theoretically erudite colleagues. Let alone that a conservatory may destroy a natural talent. Liszt e.g. admired so much an autodidact virtuoso that “he trembled at the idea of him studying music, so as to keep the impulsive power of his musical instinct virginal and unchanged”, as Sophia Spanoudes wrote in 1952 in her well-known column in favour of Tsitsanes. As to the strong advantages of autodidacts compared to erudite artists, Giorgos Papadakis explained why such musicians have been the salt of the earth:

“A self-taught instrumentalist is obviously required to solve many difficult technical problems alone. He is obliged to improvise solutions to problems already solved, since a teacher or a method would have significantly shortened the time required to do it… That’s why many times he needs to re-invent the wheel. The price can be high, but he may reap a reward that many musicians would envy: a quite personal style derived from personal improvised ways of addressing technical problems. This is evident in the way of playing of those musicians who have learned out of commitment and play with commitment.”

Basiles Tsitsanes on a stamp

The musically “illiterate”, however, are also sly: they declare they are “popular composers”, instead of “popular musicians”, because otherwise the trick would have been exposed at once. So let’s have a brief look at this category, as well:

“A popular composer”, wrote Phoebus Anogeianakis:

“a) is an uneducated person, endowed by nature with musical gifts, someone who has not studied music (whatever knowledge he has is due to his extensive experience as a professional, especially… because of his contact-collaboration with musicians of light music);

“b) ‘composes’ mainly songs or short instrumental pieces (of a dance or free rhythmical type) usually with the help of a popular instrument;

“c) ‘bases’ his work on Greek popular music tradition; but at the same time he is under certain influences (from foreign popular music or also… from local or foreign popular-like art light music).”

It’s obvious that a popular composer according to Anogeianakis also needs to combine the qualities of a self-taught musician according to Papadakis, if he is to acquire a quite personal style – and vice versa: an autodidact must be gifted by nature with musical talents and have extensive experience in order to re-invent the wheel…

When Pan purloined Apollo’s lyre, by David Henry Souter

One more thing: the term “art music”, prevailing in the 60s when Anogeianakis’ text was written, is, of course, completely inappropriate, because it implies that popular music is probably… “artless”! Clearly annoyed and in a sarcastic mood, as well, Tsitsanes once commented that the difference between popular and “art” composers is that between eyewitnesses to a crime and some others who… just heard about it!

And what about the… “illiterate”? Where can we group all those who surely have nothing in common with either Tsitsanes or the Beatles? No need to ask: they are the… perpetrators of the crime!

• >> Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL
• << Chronicle 12. “DO NOT MALTREAT OUR MUSIC!”

Next Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL ● Man: a Musical Being ● Music, Nature and Language ● Singing Neanderthals ● Baby Talk ● Talent ● Art of Soul vs. Art of Beauty ● Ecstasy and Catharsis ● Ritual Music and Dance ● Ethos in Music

Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 14. ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ ΨΥΧῌ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΣΩΜΑΤΙ

Venus of Brassempouy: mammoth ivory figurine, one of the oldest human face representations (23.000 BCE)

● Man: a Musical Being ● Nature, Music
and Language ● Singing Neanderthals ●
Baby Talk ● Talent ● Art of Soul vs. Art of
Beauty ● Ecstasy and Catharsis ● Ritual
Music and Dance ● Ethos of Music

Michales Loukovikas

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but
the one most responsive to change”.
(Charles Darwin)

MAN IS BY NATURE A MUSICAL BEING; meaning that song, i.e. music and lyrics combined, together with movement, or dance, has always been a fundamental human characteristic, serving his various needs. Besides, music, speech, and dance, a “Holy Trinity” according to the poet Kostēs Palamās, show how close the relationship between sound, body and soul is.

Music, speech, dance: a “Holy Trinity” (Kōstēs Palamās)

Quite strange is that the ancients, even the primitives, felt the impact of musical sound onto their bodies much more intensely than modern humans. Obviously, Christianism and Occidental mentality are largely responsible for the enormous degradation of our senses. Thus experts of many disciplines are now required to work together in order to fully comprehend this subject in depth.

Hunting scenes in a Lascaux cave painting

Natural sounds played a key role in the genesis of music: the sounds of Nature constituted the raw “materials” that gradually began to take shape. According to Darwin, a primary stimulus was animal cries, especially during breeding season, when an orgasm of sounds and movements prevailed, so rich and varied that man inevitably imitated, responding to that exquisite call of Nature’s Choir. Yet, man, as a species of the animal kingdom, had congenitally his own “repertoire”, which he gradually enriched – initially by imitation, and later by inspiration.

The emergence of art was directly linked to elementary manifestations of magic, even before the latter was systematized as a form of religion. Cave paintings, of a much later period compared to music, are examples of utilitarian art: men tried to exorcise all the animals they depicted so as to have plenty of game, or propitiate their spirits, if they were awe-inspiring beasts, and gain their powers. That is why the cave paintings are usually found not in the “living rooms” of the caves, but deep inside, in the “sanctuaries”, where, according to Iégor Reznikoff, the areas are most resonant: it seems they were their “icons”…

Spirit propitiation had broader applications, especially to natural phenomena that seemed supernatural, or during work time to coordinate movements, or even to master the “spirit” of the stone or wood that man wished to turn into a tool. Music played a key role in such cases though it was lost in the mist of time. Today, millennia later, we can comfortably admire the cavemen’s performances in visual arts. But who has ever listened to their songs?

The question above is rather rhetoric. Still, there’s another one that is crucial to be answered:

What is music? What’s its origin?

MUSIC IS FOUND EVERYWHERE, in every culture or civilization, even the most isolated tribes: it is a feature of the human species – perhaps of other species, as well. Moreover, music is influenced by all aspects of a culture or civilization, including socio-economic organization, lifestyle, climate, technology… Emotions and ideas expressed through music, the circumstances in which it is played, the attitudes toward musicians and composers – all these vary according to space and time.

Indian Ghost Dance in eastern California: the figures form a circle dance.

As we have said, music had probably its origin in Nature’s sounds and rhythms. Men most likely imitated these phenomena using similar patterns with repetition and tonality. There are musicians who deliberately imitate natural sounds: folk fiddlers trill like birds, while Beethoven’s “Pastoral” 6th Symphony recreates the soundscape of a thunderstorm. Onomatopoeia is at times related to shamanistic beliefs or practices.⁽¹⁾ It also serves entertainment and edutainment, or practical purposes (such as lure of animals in hunt).

• ⁽¹⁾ A shaman is a person regarded as having access to the “world of spirits”, entering into a trance state (very different from normal waking consciousness), and acting as a diviner or healer.

● Hugo Riemann, a theorist and composer, in his Catechism of Musical Aesthetics (How do we listen to music?, 1890), [Katechismus der Musik-Ästhetik (Wie hören wir Musik?)], thinks that the song of birds approaches true music and cannot be treated separately from human song, since both are the expressions of a single sensibility; while Louis Lucas, in his New Acoustics (Acoustique Nouvelle, 1840), discusses (what he calls) excellence of the enharmonic genus, and says: “It makes its first appearance naturally, as an imitation of bird song, of animal calls, and of the endless range of sounds made by material things.” Manuel de Falla was greatly influenced by Lucas and his Acoustics in his mature compositions.

Magdalenian horse (15.000-10.000 BCE):
a game, long before it was tamed.

If the imitation of a bird song is considered music, then the bird song itself may also be regarded as music! Indeed, according to a study of zoomusicology,⁽²⁾ bird songs are based on musical principles: those of repetition and transformation. It’s not only birds: whales and dolphins have also exceptional vocal capabilities, while monkeys are unrivaled on drums and percussion as they beat hollow logs, most probably in order to demarcate their territories, creating rhythmic patterns in which some experts detect elements of “dialogue”, “call and response”.

• ⁽²⁾ Zoomusicology is the study of “music” made by non-human animals, or rather the musical aspects of sounds produced or received by them, as a means of their communication. It is described as the “aesthetic use of sound communication among animals.”

In any case, everything depends on our definition of music – that is, whether a “musician” has the intention to stir up the emotions through his sounds, which is probably linked to his ability to reflect about time (past and future). Men became “artists” 130 thousand years ago (though this timeframe is debatable) creating jewelry, other artifacts, and cave paintings, while they started burying their dead with rituals. It was a form of a “cultural revolution”. If we assume that all those new forms of behaviour suggested the emergence of consciousness, then music – as we know it – appeared in the same timeframe. Still, this is a rather narrow conception of music. As it usually happens in Africa until now, in prehistory too the concept of music was broader, including dance and worship. And not only: at that time it also served communication among the members of a group of people helping to coordinate action and strengthen their bonds. Thus its role was crucial to their survival.

Music evokes strong emotions and opens paths to other states of awareness. In general terms, strong emotions are associated with evolution (reproduction and survival). Darwin pointed out the importance of music to sexual selection.⁽³⁾ Both singing and dancing require large energy reserves. Thus a singer or dancer, like a peacock displaying its feathers, is more likely to attract a mate to date. There is a counterargument though: in most species using singing in the selection of mates, it is the female that chooses and the male that sings – as a rule alone. In the human species, nevertheless, music is mostly a team sport where everyone is involved. Man is the only mammal having mixed choirs (with men, women and children). Something similar is found only in certain species of Australian and African songbirds with males and females singing in chorus.

Charles Darwin, by George Richmond

• ⁽³⁾ “When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, – would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph, – and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions.” (Darwin, The Descent of Man)

The first musical “instrument” was obviously the voice of man who, even before he could master speech, had a vast range of expressive sounds: imitating natural sounds, plus singing, humming, whistling (a gamut of styles), shouting, crying, laughing, coughing, yawning, or producing various sounds through the mouth. (See Darwin’s The Origin of Species on music and speech). Add motion to all of these sounds: not only dance, but also grimaces, gestures and movements of individual body parts (head, arms and legs). In like manner, the first percussion “instruments” were hand claps, finger snaps, stones, wood and whatever could be used to accentuate rhythm. Man-made instruments would appear much later when humans started making tools.

By the way, let me make clear that talking about “humans”, I refer, in fact, to the Hominini. The oldest tools found in Tanzania were made 2.6 million years ago, i.e. before the emergence of the various human species (Homo). We suppose that the first tools were made by Australopithecus, who then transmitted this knowledge to Homo habilis. Our ancestors proceeded to the next phase of tool-making 1.7 million years ago with Homo erectus. (See the Chronicle 3, where this theory is disputed). I maintain, therefore, that sound preceded speech and that music, song, a capella (with no instrumental accompaniment), emerged together with voice as a characteristic of some Hominini, or even Hominids. Besides, we know for sure that music was not born with modern humans (Homo sapiens) – who, as they say, were musically not as talented as the Neanderthals!

The Singing Neanderthals, according to Steven Mithen.
In the beginning was the sound: music precedes speech.

The oldest musical instrument: the Divje Babe flute (Slovenia) possibly made by the Neanderthals

In his study The Singing Neanderthals / The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body, Steven Mithen, an archaeologist and professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England, expands mainly two ideas: a) the parallel development of what modern man calls music and language, and b) his original idea that the Neanderthals had a peculiar proto-music/language: it was holistic (not composed of segmented elements), manipulative (influencing emotions and hence behaviour of oneself and others), multimodal (using both sound and movement), musical (temporally controlled, rhythmic, and melodic), and mimetic (utilizing sound symbolism and gesture) – i.e. “a pre-linguistic musical mode of thought and action.” That is why, as Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca said, “many suppose that chanting is the earliest form of language”, or that song is older than speech. Prosody (“melos of speech”, according to Aristoxenus), was the “melody” produced during ancient Hellenic speech, which was musical, not dynamic as it is now (see Chronicle 6, footnote 6, and Chronicle 12, footnote 7).

Music as the Mother of Speech

● Music (singing) as the Mother of Speech (language) is an idea shared by Darwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Wilhelm von Humboldt.⁽⁴⁾ We get an idea when we examine the pronunciation in several languages. Closer to the original source are tonal languages, such as Chinese, where each syllable is uttered with a different note or pitch. Then it’s the pitch accent languages, such as ancient Hellenic, where only the stressed syllable is uttered at a higher note-pitch. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the interval between the accented and non-accented syllables reached to an anything but negligible fifth interval (e.g. E-B, see Chronicle 12). Additionally, there are dynamic languages such as modern Greek with the stress given through an increased volume of the voice, not a higher pitch. The difference with ancient Hellenic is obvious in poetry where the accents had no effect on the poetic metres, as they would if the stress were dynamic. The poetic rhythm was musical, prosodic (alternating long and short vowels), and not dynamic. Poetry was musical, having melos (the melody of pitch accent) and rhythm (with long and short movements).

• ⁽⁴⁾ Except Rousseau, Herder, Humboldt, Darwin, Falla and Lorca, many other authors have been led to suppose that word and song had once been the same thing – of course, after the word was germinated by the song.

An aggressive Neanderthal woman is rather misleading since, according to National Geographic, the genes linked to modern man’s aggressive behaviour were probably absent in the Neanderthal DNA. This may explain their disappearance…

In her review on this book, Ellen Dissanayake, of the University of Washington in Seattle, initially lists the vast ocean of knowledge such a study like Mithen’s requires: evolutionary theory; human evolution (social lifestyle, environment); palaeoarchaeology (linguistic and musical abilities and their development); anatomy (ear, vocal tract, brain and musical capacities); neurobiology (brain chemistry, musical cognition and emotion, neuroanatomy of music); origin and evolution of language (similarities and differences with music, semantics, syntax, prosody); music-like communication systems in some other animals (non-human primates, whales, birds, etc.) and their relevance to human communication; music psychology and linguistic behaviour in children; ethnomusicology; the art and practice of music; and the findings of music therapy and the psychology of musical emotion. I can also mention biomusicology or evolutionary musicology.

“Singing Neanderthals”, according to Mithen, had a vocal tract and respiratory control that could have enabled speech, but perhaps they lacked the neural network that was necessary for language. This means that in the beginning was the sound: music preceded speech. Moreover, pre-sapiens hominids, such as the Neanderthals, perhaps lacked metaphorical thought – the ability to have in mind at the same time information from several different cognitive domains. Symbolic artifacts have not yet been found in their dwelling sites, indicating absence of symbolic thought and hence symbolic utterance: spoken language. But the harsh realities and challenges faced in such a hostile environment during the Ice Age required complex emotional communication and cooperation. Therefore, they developed a “music-like communication system that was more complex and more sophisticated than that found in any of the previous species of Homo”. Mithen emphasizes the importance of “emotional intelligence” – the ability to express one’s feelings with face, voice, and body, and decode the emotional signals of others.

It’s impressive that singing was preferable to talking. Why were the symbols of spoken words less reliable than an emotional melody? What were the pros and cons of language?

What is language? What’s its origin?

Sleeping antelope, Sahara, southern Algeria

WE READ THE ABOVE QUESTIONS at the gate of a Congress Palace, the venue of a thought-provoking international symposium. Intrigued by this notice, we go inside and there we hear everyone disagreeing with everyone else! But still, there is a recurring theme of almost paramount consent – something that escaped even Darwin’s attention: a prerequisite, they say, for the emergence of language is that there must be trust within the tribe (what we now call “society”)! Meaning that some kind of social transformation generated unprecedented levels of public trust, liberating this way a potential for linguistic creativity, which was dormant until then. Under normal conditions, as the saying goes, “words are cheap”, “double-talk”, i.e. unreliable symbols on which the tribe could not count for survival; in other words, language was not trusted to become an evolutionarily stable strategy.

When a cat purrs, we mostly feel sure that the animal is content. We trust the signal because it just can’t fake that sound. Vocal calls of the primates may not be so trustworthy. Their social intelligence is characterized as “Machiavellian” – self-serving and without moral scruples. Monkeys and apes often attempt to deceive one another, while at the same time remaining constantly on guard against falling victim to deception themselves! Paradoxically, this very trait is theorized as blocking the evolution of a language-like communication among them! A verbal signal sounds like the cry “Wolves!” by a shepherd trying to fool the others in the well-known moralizing pedagogical story. Once proven false, nobody takes it for granted anymore or even cares. Therefore, socially reliable institutions are necessary, where every scoundrel, “monkey” or “shepherd”, is accountable. In a hunter-gatherer society, a basic mechanism inspiring trust is the collective ritual. (In our society, all the above adequately explain our crisis).

Baby talk and the embryo’s audio stimuli

No features on “Venus” of Willendorf (28.000-25.000 BCE), only reproductive: probably she was a Mother Goddess

Last but not least is what we call “baby talk” – not the talk of a baby still unable to speak, but the one used by adults (usually mothers) while addressing infants, touching and caressing them: a melodic and undulating language, combined with strong gestures, exaggerated facial expressions and rhythmical head and body movements. This is indeed a language because the baby understands the meaning of all these sounds and movements: that is, comprehends the mother’s intentions. In this sense, such a language is similar to music having two main functions: to strengthen the mother-child relationship, and help the infant to speak. In this way its chances of survival increase. Man’s ability to synchronize himself with an external pulse – which is probably unknown to other mammals, including primates – was derived from the primordial mother-infant interaction that in time transformed itself into a proto-music/language – à la Neanderthal!

“Baby talk” has a similar “lexicon” in all cultures. The way mothers and babies raise and lower their voices, change simultaneously expressions and move their hands, is equivalent everywhere, despite linguistic differences such as between musical and dynamic languages. The reasons may be genetic or environmental – in the sense that all embryos grow in a similar environment and can hear twenty weeks before birth, far longer than other animals, most of which cannot hear before birth. During these weeks, the human fetus can also perceive movement and orientation. In addition, it senses the emotional state of the mother via the internal sounds of her body (voice, heartbeat, footsteps, digestion, etc.) and in this way adjusts its postnatal demands (e.g. crying), improving the chances of its survival. The embryo’s capacity to learn and remember sound patterns seems to confirm the idea. In this case, the internal sounds of the human body, and their relationship with the emotional state, may be associated with the relationship between audio-rhythmic patterns in music and their strong emotional charge.

A maenad (bacchante) with a tympanum and a satyr with diaulos (double aulos)

“The human being is musical by man’s very nature”. (Iégor Reznikoff)

“MAN”, IÉGOR REZNIKOFF REMARKED,⁽⁵⁾ “is a speaking being. However, I am absolutely sure that he is also a musical, a singing being, like birds. We know that the various species of birds are also distinguished by the way they sing. The same happens with humans who are distinguished not only by their speech, but also by their singing.

• ⁽⁵⁾ Reznikoff’s remarks were recorded by Despoina Paisidou-Lazaridou in Delphi in 1986 for the radio program, Living and Learning (ERT3). It was the time I started “sailing” on the airwaves as a “chronicler”, presenter, and also music supervisor, during the first round of the program on the Chronicle of Music. Nevertheless, the making of a radio program was something that I learned watching the producer Katy Vlachou with her immense patience and also open mind: she let me present in a public mass medium what I was not allowed to do at the time in a… private one (the newspaper Thessaloniki).

The Education of Achilles by Chiron (fresco from Herculaneum,
a city more wealthy than neighbouring Pompeii)

“These features, I believe, are part of human nature. They are deeply connected with man’s organic nature – his ears and throat, that is, his vocal capacities. That’s how he is born and created since his conception. A child e.g. can hear even when it is in the womb of its mother as a fetus and remembers some elements of music and the voice of its mother or her song.⁽⁶⁾

• ⁽⁶⁾ “Voices and audio stimuli to which a fetus is exposed during pregnancy are not only perceived but also recorded in its memory”, a scientific team concluded in a study. “Thus, if as a fetus it listened to soft music of natural instruments, as an infant it immediately calms and quiets down under the same sounds, while another baby, who had no such experience when it was in the belly of its mother, keeps on screaming”…

Music activates the brain’s centres of communication

● Besides, except the “Singing Neanderthals”, there are also “Singing Embryos”! A research showed that fetuses react to sound stimuli and “sing”! Some researchers at Institut Marquès in Barcelona showed that a fetus can detect sounds and even react moving its mouth and tongue, proving that the ears of the embryo are fully developed by the 16th week of pregnancy. The leading researcher said that the fetuses responded to music moving their mouths as if they were trying to talk or to sing. Music activates the parts of the brain associated with communication, and when the embryos hear it, they react with movements similar to those of a cry, which is the first stage before speaking and singing.

“Music is deeply rooted in humans. Singing is a characteristic of the human species. It is not something recent in man’s social life. The mechanism of hearing and its relationship with speech is characterized by complexity and is located deep inside the brain. Thus it cannot be something recent. In short: the human being is a musical being by man’s very nature.”

Generally speaking, the different species are born as tabula rasa regarding those qualities to be acquired – i.e. that must be gained after birth, depending on the current conditions faced by each species for its survival. But they bear in their DNA all those inherited capacities and qualities that have emerged as acquired ones (upright position, articulation, etc.) and ensured the survival of the species during the millennia of its evolution. This is where all the wisdom of the past is stored – together, of course, with natural musical capacities.

Music Lesson (Herculaneum, early 1st century AD)

“Musical ear”: a characteristic of the majority or of a minority?

Despite all that, we know that talent, an innate musical inclination, or a “musical ear”, do not characterize all persons but rather a minority. How come that some of them can sing beautifully or at least correctly, while others, who equally love music, sing out of tune?

“There is innate musical disposition, musical talent, which is often hereditary: see the Bach family”, said professor Demetris Thémelis “But in general terms, everyone can learn music up to a point. Most people sing out of tune because they’ve had no proper musical education, except in some cases where they may have some physical problem e.g. hearing impairment. Or they may listen properly and have some feel for music, but face some problem in the larynx muscles. There are many cases of distinguished musicians, productive composers, who are ‘cacophonous’, i.e. they cannot sing well because of such problems.”

This may be so, but then how come that in the Third World and, moreover, in the countryside, anywhere far from metropolitan urban centres, i.e. wherever children are naturally brought up, almost everyone can sing and dance well? Here’s Ellen Dissanayake’s comment:

“It is not spoken language itself that overlays or stunts musical ability”, she said, “but the factors in modernized societies that have made music a specialty – individuality, competitiveness, compartmentalization, institutionalization – reinforced by the high degree of literate (not oral improvisatory) training required to read (and compose) musical scores as well as literary texts. In small-scale pre-modern societies (and in any large modern sub-Saharan African city, as well in children anywhere who are exposed customarily to frequent communal musical activity), everyone participates in music – regularly, spontaneously, and wholeheartedly – and benefits thereby from the many adaptive advantages” it offers.

Iégor Reznikoff

You can see, therefore, how crucial is the role of the mother, as well as that of the family, or social environment in general, for the development of a child’s innate musical inclination. This must be the explanation for the existence not only of musical families, but also of musical tribes among gypsies or blacks. Not everything is hereditary, in spite of the important role of heredity: the potential capacities must be cultivated; otherwise they remain dormant, inert, like some atrophic member.

“We can say that African Americans have this divine gift”, said Reznikoff, referring to the innate inclination, the special talent. “Africans have a long tradition in music and singing. Furthermore, they have kept some primitive ways of expression and emotion, and thus they are probably closer to antiquity. The ancient Greeks also loved singing and dancing very much, as the Arabs do now.”

“Since we are human beings, with the senses of audition and vision, it happens that we have constants in art. These constants in music have to do with the natural laws of resonance and consonance: when a chord vibrates, it follows the laws that govern the sound, producing sounds and harmonics that delight our ears; so, our bodies respond.

“It is striking that an instrument like the cithara is found in all cultures. The behaviour of a string and our bodies is the same everywhere. Something similar happens with the auloi. Note that these instruments have been used in several ways in all cultures. But with few exceptions, and apart from modern Western civilization, we see everywhere the same musical laws to apply. It is a global concept of consonance precisely because we are dealing with a natural law.

“This concept, nevertheless, was lost since the early 19th century when the piano was introduced into music changing the natural tuning of the instruments; for the piano is tuned differently, with the equal intervals of the tempered scale. This tuning is wrong if we consider it from the point of view of natural resonance. It is due to the enormous development of music – but a kind of cultivated, sentimental, conceptual music which has abandoned its natural foundation that is rooted in our body and soul.

“Something equivalent has happened in painting: we have ancient art, or iconography, and then we have the art of beauty, even if it depicts saints, or Theotokos: Raphael’s Madonna is really beautiful, her movements are beautiful, and art lies in this beauty, not in the power exerted deep inside your soul by an icon. We have lost these deep roots related to our biological bodies – because we must not forget we are material beings obeying to natural laws. Nowadays art is too conceptual as e.g. abstract art, or even electronic music with computers.

“In antiquity people had delicate, fine ears catching all nuances. The lyre was a ‘soft’ instrument, just like those old traditional ones. When one listened to music on those instruments, he used his spirit even more: let us remember the long texts of old songs. Now, of course, we have all these huge pieces of machinery with the many decibels! All instruments are amplified and modified for that purpose. The violin is already a ‘hard’ instrument like the piano.

“I, personally, believe in a natural approach of antiquity – without imitating or copying it. We must go back to the delicate acoustics of antiquity, because finally man remains the same body and soul. These natural laws – so rich that they have created all those cultures – are like oxygen for us. In the big cities, of course, we may live in air pollution but we are not made for this: it is better for us to breathe fresh air…

“Music’s purpose in antiquity was not just fun. It mainly had to do with the invisible world. This is also true for the Pythagoreans, and later for the Platonic school, or even previously for the Orphic tradition, which influenced the Christian Church. For the Orphic tradition, music actually serves as a link to the invisible: for the preparation of the journey of the soul after death to eternity”…

The “labyrinth” of Reznikoff’s thought, or the contraposition between “soft” and “hard” instruments, may confuse us. The key to grasp its essence lies in that apt example from the art of painting. Sweet melodies and gentle voices, e.g. in most lullabies, are the equivalent to Raphael’s Madonna. Quite the contrary was what Plato suggested about children that cannot go promptly to sleep: “mothers do not offer them peace, but movement instead, always rocking them in their arms, not silently but with some melody, and in this artless way they make the kids fall asleep”. If you experiment, they say, you will see that the… Platonic technique is highly effective!

Catharsis: the mental and moral purification through Dionysian ecstasy.

Orpheus, by Marc Chagall

A SIMILAR MISUNDERSTANDING seems to obsess psychotherapists who choose music with soft sounds, having waters trickling and birds singing as… garnish in the background. But what the ancients were after during their psychotherapeutic rituals was exactly the opposite with their deliberately intense and monotonously repetitive music.

Using suitable melodies and rhythms, they made the mentally disturbed person to flush to such a degree that a reaction would follow bringing him back to his previous normal condition. Such methods of “sorcery” survived even in the so-called “civilized” world until the 60s. Certainly, now that we have become so very “cultured”, musical sounds can hardly excite us…

“Fire cleanses, while water purifies”, said Plutarch. Catharsis was the mental and also moral purification through Dionysian ecstasy in ancient Hellas. This is the original meaning of the term; not the one used in periods of political corruption in modern Greece. According to Aristotle, it was what the audience in a tragedy was subjected to through feelings of pity and fear caused by the suffering and tragic end of the heroes.

“There was a close link between the swamps (as sources of infections and fever), the subsequent neuromental disorders and their cure with music in the therapeutic rituals of the Corybantes and the Bacchantes”,⁽⁷⁾ wrote Denise Jourdan-Hemmerdinger in the synopsis of her paper on Music in the Therapeutic Rituals of the Corybantes and the Bacchantes, at the Musicological Symposium at Delphi in 1988.⁽⁸⁾ “These data allow a better reading of ancient texts. We can reconstruct them not anymore in an entirely irrational context with widespread mysticism, but in a reality with tragic experiences in the time line.

Cybele and Attis, three Corybantes, Aeon, Helios, Selene, Phosphorus, Hesperus, Poseidon, Thetis and Gaea,
on the Parabiago plate (2nd-4th century AD).

• ⁽⁷⁾ Corybantes: Cybele–Rhea’s priests in Phrygia, connected with Dionysus-Bacchus, performing orgiastic dances accompanied by cymbals, rattles, auloi, tympana (tambourines) [> corybantism (catharsis)]. We have already seen Dionysus’ followers, the Bacchantes, Bacchae or Maenads (< mania), as Orpheus’ slayers (in Chronicle 12, footnote 3).

• ⁽⁸⁾ With this… Sibyllic synopsis, Jourdan-Hemmerdinger tried to give some idea to the audience about her paper. Unfortunately, she had a formidable opponent: relentless time. Within a very short time – granted to each speaker – she had to expand on her vast thesis that could be the subject of a separate symposium. The… machine gun tempo she chose to say “everything” in time eventually proved to be a boomerang for her extremely interesting topic.

“So the biological and pathological cause of hallucinations reappears as an archetype of the mythological and dreamlike world of fantasy. Although the monotheistic religions expelled the ancient gods, who played a therapeutic role, they did not eliminate malaria – a scourge as old as the world but always present. This Thraco-Phrygian and Orphico-Pythagorean music therapy survived more or less in some folk, religious, pagan traditions.

“What did these specific kinds of music consist of? What body and soul level did they act upon? How and why were they effective? The texts give us an idea. Can we get even further? Obviously, if we work on this rich and diverse file with a fortunate conjuncture of data of the geographical and ethnological hematology, and medical anthropology – sciences already containing a wealth of information – adding the results of ethnomusicological research, without forgetting ancient and medieval musicology, either Oriental or Occidental.”

Bacchic Dance of Maenads in a Wood,
by Gustave Doré

Ethnological, musicological and medical research was eventually carried out in Asia (India, Indochina, Siberia), Africa (Ethiopia, Senegal), America (Haiti, Native American Indians and Eskimos), and Europe. Such phenomena were observed in Magna Graecia, especially around Taranto, with the renowned tarantella dance that was a key element of the musical exorcism to counteract the poison of the tarantula spider.

Part of the same tradition is a – mostly – Thracian fire ritual, called anastenária (nestinarstvo in Bulgarian Thrace). The oldest written information about such barefoot dances on smoldering embers is found in Euripides’ The Bacchae. Later Strabo wrote about Artemis’ priestesses in Asia Minor and Italy performing such dances at will. In Byzantium the dancers were called “psychária” or “asthenária” (hence anastenária or nestinari), while around 1800 such rituals were prevalent not only in the Balkans but also throughout Anatolia.

Music and dance contribute to an emotional release
and thus have a therapeutic effect on the participants.

Anastenária’s most striking feature is probably the “incombustibility”, “immunity from fire” – the (seeming, at least) negation of a natural law. This element of the ritual stirs our imagination so much that almost everyone forgets to mention the key role of music and dance which, according to many experts, contribute to an emotional release and, in this way, have a therapeutic effect on the participants. In a sense, therefore, this ceremony is a psychotherapeutic ritual system.

Levi-Strauss believes that these systems provide the patient with a gateway to express inexpressible conditions. During this therapeutic process, the participant receives from outside a social myth that has no conflicts and, therefore, does not correspond to his previous personal condition. In such a context, reality is compelled to identify with this social myth. Without music and dance, however, methexis is not possible:

“Monotonous music”, the psychiatrist Constantinos Constantinides wrote in his Notes on Fire Walking of Anastenária and a Possible Explanation of Incombustibility, “is a prerequisite to a change of mental mood, creating an equivalent emotional state, and triggering the subcortical (motor and emotional) centres, so as everything is easily and automatically executed, eliminating the inhibitory effect of the cortex.

“Generally motivated also by music, dance is known as a largely automatic event and as such a new prerequisite to the creation of the whole mental ecstatic state – even more so if it is religious. That is why all primitive religions are ‘danced’, all happy events are ‘danced’. While dancing, there is a peculiar emotional state, there is more automation and unconscious function, and there is more or less self-absorption and a break of contact with the environment. One could say that dance is a certain step to ecstasy, opens the way to the phenomenon of ecstasy.”

“Dance is a certain step to ecstasy, opens the way to the
phenomenon of ecstasy.” (Constantinos Constantinides)

“Music particularly seems to coordinate a tendency to group unification”, commented another psychiatrist, Pantelés Kranidiotes, analyzing Anastenaria as a Psychosomatic Phenomenon. “Constantinos Romeos realized just that, commenting ‘music makes the human soul to feel such desolation that it desires to mingle with the other dancers seeking to let it go’. On the other hand, Polydoros Papachristodoulou underlines the impact of music on these people saying that music ‘exerts some particular influence on the nervous system of hysterical, naïve peasants’.

Davul

“But anyway, regardless of the quality of the receiver, everyone would perceive this fascinating power of music, if above all he experienced the crucially overwhelming davul in the ‘hangout’, where ‘all the spectators were agitated and rocked’ under its sounds.

“Emotional arousal is more secure when music is more familiar. This is obviously the purpose of conflating this religious ceremony with songs, which clearly translate the various deepest emotions of the people’s psyche and where above all is the dominion of heroic elements, which can only bring about an arousing, wild ecstasy.

“This combination seems much more effective to induce the required emotional orgy than the ecclesiastical chants and hymns, which are totally absent in this religious ceremony, as they produce a rather static ecstasy.

“The music of the fire dancers, familiar to them over the centuries, is a creation and property of their own emotional universe and that is why it can definitely stir it and indeed with an intensely arousing way.⁽⁹⁾ But here it seems that rhythm plays the main role in music and – as the musicologist Pantelés Kavakópoulos says – ‘what excites the fire dancers is the davul with its varying rhythms’.”

• ⁽⁹⁾ These psychiatrists, it’s obvious, look on the fire dancers “from on high”: they see “hysterical, naïve peasants” with “the people’s psyche”, immersed in “an arousing, wild ecstasy”, which is described as an “emotional orgy”, under the sounds of a music that is a “property of their own emotional universe”… They recognize, however, that the impact of this music and dance, in that particular environment, is equally catalytic “regardless of the quality of the receiver”, apparently having in mind that nowadays, among fire dancers, several “hysterical, naïve”… intellectuals and scientists are included!

First a fetus hears mother’s heartbeat. The pulse is recorded deep in
the brain; when excited, man’s inhibitions are neutralized, and he is
in ecstasy, acting not as an individual but as a member of a group.

Relief of a maenad holding a tympanum

RHYTHM, INEXTRICABLY connected to dance, is the first musical element man experiences. The initial sound a fetus hears is the mother’s rhythmic heartbeat, long before it enjoys her singing – if she has a sweet voice. But even if she doesn’t, this primary pulse is recorded deep in its mind, in the subcortical centres of the brain; when they are excited, man’s inhibitions are neutralized and, as a result, he is overwhelmed with ecstasy, acting as a member of a group and not as an individual.⁽¹⁰⁾ That’s why melody, the second element of music, is intentionally monotonous and persistently repetitious, while the lyrics, if it’s a song, are just as rudimentary: precisely to prevent the re-activation of the cortex and achieve the culmination of ecstasy.

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Music has been my first occupation, since I was 15, playing in the band of my father, Iannes Loukovikas. I remember that, also due to my music education, I wondered, and was annoyed, as well, whenever an audience glorified some drummer, or anyone playing percussion, in his solo, although his performance was not as difficult as the other musicians’ who, nevertheless, never received such an ovation. The answer to this childish question of mine is given here…

Such phenomena could not go unnoticed by ancient Greek philosophers, who have testified how crucial the role of rhythm is for the preservation, modification or loss of ethos in music. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and many others investigated the ethos in rhythm, melody, genera and harmonies or modes, not only because music was the foundation of education, but also because – quite rightly – they considered music as a form of language, capable of expressing almost as much as speech and exerting a catalytic effect on people, especially the youth.

Ethos of music (rhythm, melody, genera,
modes): exuberant, restrained, or serene.

Cybele with a tympanum, bronze statuette (2nd century CE)

“No act among people is performed without music”, Aristides Quintilianus used to say, while Plutarch stressed that “the formation and preparation [of young people] to be good [citizens is achieved] through music”, for the Orphean art is really beneficial “on everyone and every well-instructed act”, concluding: “Foul music and wicked songs lead to prodigal morals and unmanly lives, and men to indulgence and flabbiness and effeminacy”…

The ethos of music was generally distinguished as exuberant (the one causing agitation or excitement); restrained (the opposite); or serene (that calms down). Comprehensive philosophical studies were apparently based on observations on ancient folk rituals, such as musical therapeutic ceremonies. The philosophers found that every rhythmic or melodic movement resulted to certain emotional reactions, positive or negative – depending on the intended purpose. Thus they concluded that the sounds with the beneficial effects should be praised and the others to be condemned.

It was natural that the concept of ethos was also exploited for the condemnation of musical innovations by the conservatives, as we have already seen (Chronicle 12. “Do not maltreat our music!”). But in no way does this fact mean that musical ethos is worthless. Why else should the idea be adopted by Persians and Arabs and so many others?

“OK, if it’s not worthless, it is certainly completely unknown today”, the dissidents counter-argue. “Why should we care about the ethos of music (and not only) in an exceptionally unethical era in every respect? Isn’t it… an anachronism?”

Dear reader, my dearest fellow voyager, don’t you think that having come thus far, it means there is a deeper reason in earnest?

●

.

After the Mediterranean periplus, in search of Orpheus,
we set sail to Tartessos, in the Cassiterides archipelago…

Let’s follow the… tin!

• >> Chronicle 15. SAILING TO RIO DE JANEIRO!
• << Chronicle 13. PROFESSIONALS OR AMATEURS?

Next Chronicle 15. SAILING TO RIO DE JANEIRO! (Crossing the Atlantic / So Distant, So Near) ● Periplus – Luso-Hellenic Wanderings ● An Atlantic Odyssey

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Chronicle 12. “DO NOT MALTREAT OUR MUSIC!”

Chronicle 12. “DO NOT MALTREAT OUR MUSIC!”

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 12. “ΜΗ ΚΑΚΟΥΡΓΕΙ ΤΗΝ ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗΝ!”

Pericles

● “Golden Age” and “Decline” ● Modernists and Conservatives ● Script and Notation ● Musical Accent ● Odeon and Conservatory ● Folklore ● Collective and Individual Creation ● Democracy and Art

Michales Loukovikas

PERICLES’ “GOLDEN AGE”, THAT PERIOD of the greatest acme of ancient Hellenic civilization, coincided paradoxically with the years of “decline”, which seemed to fall upon Greece in the mid-5th century. This downward trend was a kind of omen foretelling, just like a Cassandra, the upcoming “civil” Peloponnesian War. The most dramatic reaction to “remedy the evil” was quite… anti-dramatic: the democratic polis of Athens decreed in 440 BCE the cessation of all theatrical and musical activities for four years!

“Do not maltreat our music!” (Ecprepes, a Spartan ephor)

Performing in Sparta those days with his modern nine-string cithara, Phrynis of Mytilene encountered the angry outcry of the ephori (ephors) who, shouting out “Do not maltreat our music!”, forcibly removed the two “extra” strings, and obliged him to play with the “classical” (in the 5th century) seven-string cithara.⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ “Ecprepes, an Ephor, cut out with an adze two of the nine strings of Phrynis the musician, saying, ‘Do not maltreat music’.” (Plutarch, Moralia).

● So, the musical ethos was “restored” with an adze! “O, Tempora! O, Mores!” (Cicero, Edgar Allan Poe)

Was it indeed a clear manifestation of the ephori’s extreme conservatism, or had Phrynis, a leader of the innovative school with an exceptionally melismatic and modulative style, perhaps gone too far and actually maltreated music? We shall never know: first of all, we did not… listen to him play. But even if we had heard him play, we would still be unable to make up our minds judging by our ears – by our own standards, if you like, i.e. by the current criteria on music.

A 12-string lyre: an unparalleled “hubris”!

However, Pherecrates, a contemporary comic poet and musician, was strongly in favour of the ephori, if we consider that in his comedy, Chiron, he had presented Music as complaining to Justice for abuses committed by innovators, such as Timotheus of Miletus, Melanippides of Melos and Phrynis – whom, however, the comedian forgave because when he grew older, he came… to his senses! On the contrary, Pherecrates threw several “brickbats” at Timotheus and Melanippides, who remained impenitent until the end, playing their even more… “evil” twelve-string instruments!

Comic playwrights, however, with their innate conservatism, permit me to say, are not the most reliable sources, judging by the way Aristophanes has “taken care” of another great innovator, Euripides. The tragedian believed in the talent of Timotheus, while Aristotle, together with other philosophers, also praised the work of modernists:

“Without Timotheus”, the thinker of Stageira wrote in his Metaphysics, “we would not have so many melodic compositions, and without [his teacher, and also formidable rival] Phrynis, we would not have Timotheus either.”

“Laconism (brevity) is the soul of wit”, the ancients declared. But the Laconian ephori set out to… disprove them, hurriedly expelling Timotheus from their polis with a lengthy decree, which the Roman philosopher Boethius preserved:

“For Timotheus of Miletus came to our polis and dishonoured our ancient music by despising the seven-string lyre, and also corrupted the ears of the young people by introducing a greater variety of sounds, and gave music a feminine and sophisticated character by increasing the number of strings;

“For he depraved the melody’s simplicity and soberness, which it had thus far, instead of preserving it;

“We, the king and the ephori, declare we criticize Timotheus, and additionally compel him to remove from the nine strings those that are not necessary leaving only seven; and we banish him from our polis setting him as an example for all those who would like to introduce to Sparta some improper practice in the future”…

A 13-string barbitos

● Timotheus was fool enough to go to Laconia despite Phrynis’ reception there. We just hope he was spared the… adze! In our previous Chronicle we referred to the four basic modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian). There were also three genera (diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic). Each one of these modes and genera, but also the rhythms, had its own ethos. It seems that people like the Spartan ephori, or even Athenian elitists such as Plato, preferred the Dorian mode and the diatonic genus, and disliked all the rest. This might’ve been the reason for the… “ephoral” rage rather than the multi-string instruments themselves, which simply enabled the musicians to modulate through modes and genera. We have seen the same circles condemning the multi-string instruments as unmanly and effeminate. It’s not by chance that this attitude was shared by later conservatives such as the Catholic leaders. In the 11th century, they rejected the chromatic and enharmonic genera and retained only the “harder and more natural” diatonic genus, “for the diatonic is very firm and virile, the chromatic very soft and feminine, the enharmonic dissonant and moreover useless”!⁽²⁾ That’s why the musicians in the Occident were left with just the diatonic scale!

• ⁽²⁾ Quoted in Adrien de La Fage, Essais de diphthérographie musicale (Paris, 1864), emanating from a manuscript at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence: “… quia diatonum firmissimum et virilem, chromaticum mollissimum et feminilem, enharmoniumque dissonum insuper et inutilem.”

Orpheus depicted on an old Greek stamp

The ephori’s “puritanism” was not just a phenomenon of the years of “decline”. This mentality of “supervising everything” characterized them also in the past, bringing them into conflict – among others – with another Lesbian musician, the famous Terpander, legendary heir to Orpheus’ lyre,⁽³⁾ who lived from the late 8th to the mid-7th century, i.e. in the so-called “creative” times. In fact, he spent most of his life in Sparta, where he was called in during a period of political crisis to… pour oil on troubled waters. Indeed, he was able to restore peace and tranquility in the city with his music composed specially for the occasion! But the ephori, instead of thanking him, demanded… an apology because he played – alas! – a seven-string cithara and not a “traditional” – at the time – four-string instrument! They could not even suspect that this specific peace-restoring music could not be played on a four-string lyre…

The ephori could not even suspect that Terpander’s
music could not be played on a four-string lyre…

• ⁽³⁾ Legend says that when the Thracian Maenads killed Orpheus – apparently because he failed to honour Dionysus, or even because he spurned their advances – they cut him to pieces and threw him and his lyre into the sea. The waves carried his head and the instrument to Lesbos, where some fishermen found and delivered them to Terpander. He kept the lyre and looked after the burial of his great colleague.

Apollo in front of the Academy of Athens

But there was a sacred intervention – as “deus ex machina” – by Apollo himself, whose cithara, by… “divine coincidence”, was also seven-string! It was confirmed by a rumour that craftily circulated those days. Later, sanctioned with the seal of the Delphic Oracle, “the Spartans honoured the Lesbian songwriter”, according to Heraclides Ponticus (from Pontic Heraclea, 4th century BCE), adding: “for god commanded them through prophesies to listen to him”. As they were accustomed to always overdo (let alone it was an Olympian command to obey to Terpander), the Spartans in the future placed everyone else “after the Lesbian songwriter”, as Aristotle wrote.

The prevalence of the art of this unparalleled (in his time) citharoedus, at the expense of the ephori’s scholasticism, benefited in many ways the Spartans, who secured not only a peacemaker in times of political turmoil, but also the founder of their musical life. Among other things, Terpander was the first to invent a kind of musical notation for the proper performance of the Homeric epics.

Unfortunately, the opposite happened millennia later with the notorious report On Literature, Music and Philosophy by the ephori’s descendant, Zhdanov, whom Stalin considered an expert also on issues of music because he could… “play the piano a little bit”!⁽⁴⁾ The “father of socialist realism”, who in 1934 had nationalized even… culture, so as to turn it into a political tool, in his report of June 24, 1947, demanded from the great composers Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Shebalin to repent publicly, denouncing themselves! What a pity there was no Pythia anymore…

• ⁽⁴⁾ See Ares Alexandrou, the exile, by Demetris Rautópoulos.

It was the nadir of a cultural policy aimed at creating… yes-men in literature and the arts – a policy that undermined the highest interests not only of culture, but also of the revolution. Note that it was not restricted within the Soviet Union: it was also imposed on all “sister” parties. The Zhdanov report was discussed by Greek party intellectuals even on the barren islands of exile: it was unanimously approved! There was only one “dissonant” voice: that of Ares Alexandrou…⁽⁴⁾

Well, starting from historical paradoxes, we have ended up to historical parallels that are often detrimental to historical truth. Spontaneously we are in solidarity with the musicians and confront the… “Zhdanovist” ephori with disgust. In fact, we cannot be absolutely sure – especially in such times of “decline” – which side was finally right: Phrynis and Timotheus or the ephori? Let alone that the above slogan of the “villains” fits perfectly well into the current situation concerning our music and, I believe, we should all cry out loud rhythmically and in chorus: DO NOT MAL–TREAT OUR MU–SIC!

A blind Egyptian harpist

Professional Musicians and Notation

OUR ONLY CERTAINTY is probably that these historical episodes refer to professional musicians, heirs of a long tradition starting since very old times – since prehistory. Once the humans began producing more than what was absolutely necessary, resulting in surplus product which some of them gradually appropriated, and thus constituted themselves as a ruling class, since that moment musicians emerged as a separate profession.

First-rate musicians in the Orient were closely connected with the royal courts or the clergy – if they were not courtiers or priests themselves. This situation later changed in ancient Hellas due to climatic conditions that were mild and did not necessitate strong central power. These conditions nurtured a similar attitude among the Greeks and a relaxed relationship with the gods. The development of democratic ideas took place in the same context, as I have tried to explain (see Chronicles 2 and 4).

The Hellenes have had open and inquiring minds exactly because they’ve been open to the outside world, as a result of the same conditions. Just a look at a map of Greece explains why. Thus, the oriental influence has been catalytic. The ancients, however, unlike us, did not like to… “copy and paste”. So, they adapted every recipe to their tastes by adding or removing ingredients. Having borrowed their script from the Cretans already in the 15th century BCE, with the necessary changes to meet the requirements of their language (Minoan and Mycenaean Linear A and B scripts), they received (probably from the Phoenicians around the 9th century BCE) the symbols with which they created their own alphabet – a real alphabet with letters for consonants and vowels alike, in contrast to the Semitic consonantal abjads. Then, using the same symbols (what would be more logical?), they arrived to the point to also invent musical writing (notation) as early as the 7th-6th century BCE.⁽⁵⁾

Seikilos Epitaph
While you live, shine | have no grief at all
| life exists only for a short while
| and Time demands his due.

• ⁽⁵⁾ The Delphic Hymns to Apollo (138-128 BCE) are the world’s earliest extant substantial musical fragments. The second hymn was composed by Limenius, while the first one most probably by Athenaeus. The oldest extant complete musical composition in the world is Seikilos Epitaph (1st century BCE or CE), engraved on a stele: its main part, the song (excluding the prologue and epilogue), bears symbols denoting the melody.

“The Hellenes had musical notation well before the 6th century BC”, Iégor Reznikoff said at the 2nd Musicological Symposium of Delphi in 1986. “They were very good in keeping records; that’s the reason why we know so much about ancient Greek tradition and return to it, as many other traditions had no musical writing and thus we know nothing about them.”

“Many ancient notations were invented by priests for priests and cantors, and some were even kept secret”, Curt Sachs remarked.

A culture with a script was not necessarily a culture with a musical script; and if the notation existed, it might have been… top secret! Music, with its catalytic effect on humans and magical powers, was a deadly enemy of all religions, but also a mighty weapon in the hands of priests, who made sure that knowledge around this art was a well-kept secret within the very select circle of initiates.

Music, with its catalytic effect on humans, was a deadly enemy of
all religions, but also a mighty weapon in the hands of priests, who
made sure that knowledge around this art was a well-kept secret…

Music lesson (lyre class)

This means that the Hellenes have not been the inventors of musical notation, but it was them who first used it not for religious-authoritarian reasons, but for didactic purposes, given that music was at the heart of education provided to children since they were six. This shows some differences between the cultures of the Greeks and “barbarians” – i.e. those speaking tongues incomprehensible to Hellenes. Greek culture was not theocratic (there was no reason to be), which is why knowledge was a public good and right. The initiation into the mysteries was part of the devotional process, but the role of religion was totally different, as it was anything but rigidly dogmatic – a basic feature of monotheism.

The Hellenes used the archaic alphabet for instrumentation, and Ionic letters for the song.⁽⁶⁾ This may indicate that instrumental notation preceded the vocal one. Obviously the latter became necessary because of music’s further development, thereby varying the melodic lines of voices and instruments.

• ⁽⁶⁾ The idea was later adopted by Byzantines and West Europeans alike (except the Italian school) designating the musical notes with the initial letters of the alphabet: πΑ, Βου, Γα, Δι, κΕ, Ζω, νΗ, and Α, Β, C, D, E, F, G, instead of the Italian terms Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si – a terminology also used in Modern Greece, as if local musical theory never existed…

1st Delphic Hymn to Apollo, in vocal notation, cretic foot (quintuple), and Phrygian or Hyperphrygian modes with variations.

Thus we are able to play even now the extant ancient Hellenic music “remnants” – of course, approximately. That’s how – based on various indications – we also approach ancient Grecian phonology, speech, pronunciation, which was musical and not dynamic as it is now.⁽⁷⁾ The difference is enormous. This implies that the divergence between ancient and modern music has become even greater.

• ⁽⁷⁾ Contrary to modern Greek, ancient Hellenic had a musical accent, meaning that the accented syllable was not uttered with a stronger voice but at a higher pitch than the rest. Dionysius of Halicarnassus said that this interval was not just one or two tones, as we would imagine, but in a way similar to that of a fifth in music (e.g. D–A)! Nota bene, the acute, circumflex, and grave accents also implied different pronunciation in ancient Hellenic (see also Chronicle 14, Music as the Mother of Speech).

Europeanization of Hellenic Music

THE ARGUABLE CONTINUITY of Greek civilization, through the succession of classical antiquity with the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods – and the necessary adjustments at each stage due to changing conditions – seems to have been interrupted with the Ottomans’ arrival. Thus, we tend to identify the emergence of any divergence during this period. However, such phenomena have been much older, as the rapid linguistic changes taking place already in the Hellenistic period show. As far as music is concerned, colossal differentiations emerged much later, not because of the Turkish yoke, but – how ironic! – as soon as this yoke was thrown off and the modern Greek state was established, supported on foreign “crutches”.

A rule that was then undermined from above concerned the link between folk and erudite music. The fact that Constantinople, Thessalonica and Smyrna – the great centres of Byzantine and Ottoman eras – were outside the borders of the new state made things easier for the erudite musicians (all of them educated in Europe) to impose the music they could play and compose, regardless if it had nothing to do with local tradition.

Moreover, due to the fact that the former conqueror shared this tradition, a new kind of servitude appeared since then, leading also to attempts to “harmonize” Grecian music (based on the Western conception of harmony; see Chronicle 11) – the demotic song and ecclesiastical Byzantine chant: that was the only erudite music left in Greece, as secular Byzantine music was thoughtlessly ceded to Turkey, without Hellas claiming its share of this age-old cultural heritage.

Haven’t those in power realized that the people risked turning into tabula rasa? Haven’t they wondered if among the ages thrown into the dustbin, the Golden Age of Pericles was also included? No problem! They bathed in the spotlight just the Parthenons (i.e. the dead meaning of the Golden Age), then set up “new Parthenons” on barren islands of exile,⁽⁸⁾ and finally set out to strangle whatever little had survived from this legacy with the asphyxiating embrace of concrete. The architectural chaos they’ve created may have knocked architecture down the podium of the fine arts, but that’s what “business with pleasure” is all about – and this combination is better achieved through… defects: that’s how wallets become thick!

• ⁽⁸⁾ “New Parthenon”: description of the open torture chamber of Macronesos made by Panaiotes Kanellopoulos, government minister during the civil war and future prime minister.

The wonderful ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus,
on a slope of the Acropolis of Athens

The Europeanization of Greek music has been going on apace all along, as long as the tutelage provided in conservatories,⁽⁹⁾ aka foreign music language schools, is based on European standards. The absence of “national” music education at its place of birth, while “third world” countries in the Orient boast of their higher music institutes, might be unthinkable in any country other than modern Hellas. Everything perhaps can be explained by amateurism or the absence of a cultural policy – without excluding the possibility of a conscious act. After all, isn’t this absence of policy also… a policy?

• ⁽⁹⁾ A conservatoire is called odeon in Greek. However, the ancient Hellenic Odeon was not meant for music lessons but for musical shows, singing exercises, music and poetry competitions, and the like. The odeons were similar to ancient Greek theatres, but were far smaller and provided with a roof for acoustic purposes. One of the best examples of such a building is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus (Herodeion) in Athens. As regards the term conservatory, it is surely unmusical as it also refers to conservatism, greenhouses, and preservatives!

It is quite serious, indeed. Any child inclined to music, regardless of stimuli, will be obliged to attend a conservatory having no choice: he/she will necessarily be taught a foreign musical language – the erudite European. It’s another case of brainwashing – not only of this child but also of his/her future listeners, since it is impossible to “shepherd” the public to listen to occidental music, if you don’t “produce” musicians specifically trained for the role, blocking the emergence of new traditional musicians, and marginalizing those who are already active. It’s been another scheme of the ruling circles in order to eradicate local traditional music and thus mutate the collective consciousness of the people.

The ruling circles tried to eradicate local tradition and mutate the
people’s collective consciousness. But some conservatives resisted.

Taking into account all these attempts, the continuous attacks against all local musical genres since the Hellenic state has been established, it is a miracle that this tradition has survived!⁽¹⁰⁾ It prevailed, of course, because it’s deep-rooted – but also because of a certain peculiarity: there was resistance against these attacks – mainly from conservative opponents of cosmopolitanism (such as Simon Karás, though sponsored by the Ford Foundation), and not from progressive Greeks, as it would be “proper” and “normal”. The fact that it was conservatives who mostly contributed in safeguarding Hellenic traditional music, created more confusion, obscuring the real problems.⁽¹¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Miracle upon a miracle: In my first articles about Mediterranean periplus for the newspaper Thessaloniki, concerning the need to establish a Mediterranean Conservatoire in the city, I had written that we would be obliged to bring teachers from countries where modal music tradition is still alive to transmit their knowledge. Eventually, life itself triumphantly disproved me (and I rejoiced!): In no time at all, a new generation emerged replete with great musicians who are also theoretically skilled – and that was the Achilles’ heel of the old generation… This, my dear fellow travelers, is the magic of DNA!

• ⁽¹¹⁾ I remember when I started the Mediterranean periplus program: I was obliged every day, for months – perhaps the entire first year – to prove with my comments I’m progressive. It was as if I said: “It happens that I deal with traditional music, but I’m not some conservative nut!” I felt so strong this need then. You can understand the prevailing atmosphere at the time…

Carols, by Nikephoros Lytras (1872)

Living Tradition or Folklore?

The conservatives, for sure, care about the conservation of music the way it has passed down to us. They are mainly interested in the conservation of the type (sum of typical features or clichés) of tradition, which is not seen in connection with the rest of the Mediterranean cultures, where it belongs. It is the typical attitude of the folklorists who miss the whole point. Thus they concentrate their attention on collecting songs and tunes in the form they’ve been polished to perfection by countless generations of musicians, disregarding personal creative interventions by current folk artists, ignoring that such innovations – if adopted by public taste – refined and perfected folk songs. They also reject any further similar effort as an attempt to adulterate their purity, arguing that, in the era of individualism, the practice of collective development of music is long gone.

Folk songs were created and perfected not by the people, but by
musicians as exponents of society or some strata… Only a thorough
understanding of traditional music will enable its development…

This may be true; but disregards the fact that the songs we so admire have been created and perfected not by the people in general, but by their musicians, as exponents of society at large, or some social strata. The composers and lyricists have been some talented persons, not society in general. In addition, we have no right to throw the inflow of new elements into traditional music in the purgatory condemning it to a standstill – which is equivalent to death; as Heraclitus said: τὰ πάντα ῥεῖ (everything flows); therefore, whatever does not flow, dies out. It goes without saying that I do not argue in favour of an uncritical acceptance of all new elements. I’m just pointing out the consequences of blind negativism: by cutting the thread of continuity, we offer the worst service to tradition. Are our folklorists under the naïve impression that barricading themselves behind the wall they are erecting, they would be supposedly safe? In the Internet era they behave like ostriches!

Trio of musicians playing diaulos, cymbala and tympanum (mosaic from Pompeii).

No objection that after the invention of the phonograph, especially since the record companies have also undertaken the promotion of their “merchandise”, the role of the people has shrank into that of a passive “receiver”-listener. So much for the famous public taste! Hence, in the era of individual creation, only a thorough understanding of traditional music will enable its further development under the new conditions – which is the hoped-for result – instead of serving as couleur locale. This development, of course, cannot come up with revivals such as the “neo-demotic”, or “neo-rebétiko”, that discredit the whole verbiage about “roots”, precisely because of the adherence of their protagonists to the past – if not to money…

Democracy and Art

● THE CULTIVATION of art, of culture as a whole, I’m afraid, is incompatible with the vulgar version of “representative democracy” – which is dominant today. Under pure, direct democracy, the citizens, who actually held power, were obliged to take all the critical decisions by themselves, either in the Heliaea, or in the Ecclesia of Demos, gaining de facto a political criterion and responsibility that today’s “subjects” do not possess. In addition, the polis obliged the wealthy to fund dramatic performances, while the citizens, instead of paying, were paid to see them (from the theorica fund). Suppose you were an ancient Athenian and, during the Dionysia festival, you were exposed to the dramatic art of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with their high-level poetry and music in their plays. If so, your culture, your cultivation, would be far more refined than what you have today. (See Chronicle 4. On Democracy, where our “representative democracy” is defined as oligarchy).

Bronze mask depicting Dionysus bearded
and horned (200 BCE – 100 CE)

Unfortunately, direct democracy has been a historical parenthesis. What’s happened before or after? The arts were then cultivated under the auspices of the ruling class. The kings or princes in their Courts, as well as several Maecenas – all of whom were cultivated, unlike their subjects or today’s rude plutocrats in power – really cared for the arts and the artists, if they were not artists themselves. Unfortunately, except the ancient Hellenic miracle, born out of pure democracy, all other classical forms of art were due not only to the celebrated artists of the era, but also to those exploiters and oppressors who supported them… Now, the rude ruling plutocrats do everything to ensure that their subjects are (or will become) equally rude. It is the only way their plutocracy will not be questioned. And those plutocrats who decide to play the role of politicians, as a result, are voted in by the crowd.

According to the commercialism of the era, demand determines everything: from detergents to works of art! And if the “rude crowd” does not buy works of art? So much the worse for the artists – who once again depend on the prosperous: either those few, with artistic sensibilities, or the many, who want to satisfy their vanity, or simply to show off! What would the general public choose today? Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven? Ravi Shankar, Parisā, Munir Bashir? Or the trash passed off as music? The good thing in the time we live is that the economic base is not fully reflected on the superstructure. Meaning that, in addition to the majority of trash buyers, there is also a sufficient minority with artistic, ecological, social, political, economic and also other sensibilities. The bad thing is that the ebb and tide in our socio-political balance is the determining factor. Hence, for sure, the people are not without responsibilities in the present circumstances, because it depends on them where this balance is tilted each time. Until one day the tide becomes permanent…⁽¹²⁾

• ⁽¹²⁾ I’m talking as daydreamer about a “permanent tide” in the time of the Internet, where “free downloading” is the thing. At a time when the vast majority of young people think that music is (to be offered) “free”, Music, as an art, has worn her burial shroud… So, let me be self-critical, as well: in the Internet era, I also behave like an ostrich!

• >> Chronicle 13. PROFESSIONALS OR AMATEURS?
• << Chronicle 11. “MUSIC IS THRACIAN AND ASIAN”

Next Chronicle 13. PROFESSIONALS OR AMATEURS? ● “Do Not Maltreat Our Music!” (Β) ● Autodidacts or Literate? ● Asia Minor Catastrophe and Rebétiko ● Censorship on Music ● Controversy Over Rebétiko ● Entertainment and Edutainment (B)

Dedication to Bacchus (Dionysus), by Lawrence Alma Tadema

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)