Michales Loukovikas

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30. MICHALES LOUKOVIKAS – bio

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ 30. ΜΙΧΑΛΗΣ ΛΟΥΚΟΒΙΚΑΣ – βιογραφικό

BORN INTO A MUSICAL FAMILY of Thrace, I was taught music by my father, with whom I made my first steps as a professional musician (accordion, guitar and voice) at 15, taking later on an interest in various genres: varied world music, rock, music based on poetry, songwriting, theatre and film music, rebetiko, especially the school of Smyrna, and modal music.

Studying in Thessalonica, I directed student musical ensembles, and participated in rebetiko and popular musical groups. As a member of the Eurydice company, I co-wrote and co-produced plays for various genres (theatre, puppetry, shadow plays), where I also composed or selected musical themes. Besides, I contributed to the soundtrack of the film Stories of a Honeycomb, by Nikos Vergitsis (1981), as a composer (theme music), singer and musician.

I graduated in English Language and Literature from the Aristotle University of Salonica and worked as a teacher and translator of English, publisher (Research publishers), and journalist (Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Angeliophoros newspapers, and the ERT3 – Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation – radio stations).

Wishing to delve into the differences between Oriental and Occidental music, I focused on the modal tradition, folk or classical. Turning points in my research were my acquaintance with Ross Daly in 1987 and my participation the next year in the International Musicological Meeting on Mediterranean music at Delphi.

A series of articles on cultural exchange (Mediterranean Periplus, Thessaloniki newspaper) evolved into a homonymous radio program that went on for more than twelve years (1998-2010, 9.58 fm, ERT3). I teamed up with the writer and songwriter Thomás Korovinis, and also worked with Paris Paraschópoulos on the music of the play Alexandria–Athens, on the Parallel Lives of Constantine Cavafy and Kostēs Palamās, two outstanding Greek poets.

My research in modal music led me to The Gold in the Sky (2008), an Occident-to-Orient musical voyage on Ares Alexandrou’s poetry, featuring 35 musicians, where I composed, arranged, produced, played, recited and sang, as well.

My meeting with Amélia Muge in the “Internet Sea” led to a partnership, initially with the Portuguese version of The Gold in the Sky, in the bilingual book-disc O OURO DO CÉU / Ares Alexandrou por Michales Loukovikas (2011). Adapting ancient and traditional songs, as well as composing originals on line, Amélia and I embarked on a PERIPLUS / Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (2012) with the poetess Hélia Correia as a special guest. Our Periplus took us as far as Rio de Janeiro, at the University of Brazil, playing and talking about music and poetry. Later on, we worked on Amália Rodrigues’ verses, in the CD Amélia com versos de Amália (2014). Our latest project, ARCHiPELAGOS / Passages, was out late 2017, with many composers, singers, musicians, poets, sailing together in our archipelagos.

Periplus & Archipelagos covers

In Portugal, except Amélia Muge, and also her partner, José António Martins, I have worked with and/or composed for other musicians, such as José Mário Branco, Maria Monda, Carla Pires, Filipe Raposo, André Santos, Sofia Vitória. While in Greece, I’ve arranged a tribute to Panaiotes Tountas and his Art in Modulation: Portraits of Rebetiko Women.

Periplus goes on….

● For all those who wish to return to our starting point:

>> At Anchor. BEFORE SAILING OFF

<< 29. BIBLIO – DISCO – GRAPHY

ARCHiPELAGOS | Passagens (Crónica)

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/07/25

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Agora, Alexandria, Amélia Muge, Ana Dias, Andreas Karakotas, Antígona, Antístrofe, António José Martins, António Quintino, ARCHiPELAGOS, Ares Alexandrou, Argonautas, Armando Soares, Arquipélago, Atenas, Ítaca, Balcãs, Bouzouki, Bulería, Campos Elísios, Cantiga de amigo, Catarina Anacleto, Catarina Moura, Cesária Évora, Christos Megas, Corifeu, Coro, Cramol, Cristiana Serejo, Democracia, Diatónico e cromático, Dimitris Mystakidis, Eros, Escala diatônica, Esmirna, Estásimo, Estrabão, Estrofe, Euripides, Fernando Lopes-Graça, Fernando Pessoa, Filipe Raposo, Flamenco, Flauta doce, Friedrich Hölderlin, Gênero cromático, Giorgos Andreou, Giorgos Mitsakis, Harris Lambrakis, Hélia Correia, Heavy metal, Helena, Hesíodo, Hesperides, Hino Hurrita, Homero, Hurritas, Ilhas AfortunadasIlhas Afortunadas, Ilhas Egeias, J. M. Barrie, Jasão, Jónia, João de Deus, José Gomes Ferreira, José Manuel David, José Niza, José Salgueiro, José Saramago, Katolophyromai, Kosmas Papadopoulos, Kostas Hanis, Kyriakos Gouventas, Luís de Camões, Ludwig van Beethoven, Lusofonia, Macaronesia, Manos Achalinotopoulos, Manos Hadjidakis, Mar Egeu, Marcia funebre, Maria José Muge, Maria Monda, Mariana Abrunheiro, Martin Codax, Medeia, Meninos Perdidos, Michales Loukovikas, Mikis Theodorakis, Modulação, Ney, Nikkal, Niovi Benou, Odisseia, Odisseu, Orestes, Orquestra de Cordas Palhetadas, Paló, Panaiotis Tountas, Partenon, Pã, Pedro Casaes, Penelope, Pericles, Peter Pan, Pilares de Hércules, Pink Floyd, Polis, Povos do Mar, Prémio Camões, Queima de livros, Rebético, Ricardo Parreira, Rita Maria, Rosalía de Castro, Rui Vaz, Safo, Salonica, Segue-me à Capela, Sines, Sininho, Sofia Adriana Portugal, Sofia Vitória, Sopa de Pedra, Sotto voce, Susana Quaresma, Tânia Cardoso, Teresa Campos, Terra do Nunca, Thanassis Tsipinakis, Thomas More, Thomás Natsis, Trácia, Transilvânia, Ugarit, Ulisses, Utopia, Vasilis Tsitsanis, Violeta Parra, Zonaradiko. Leave a comment

ARCHiPELAGOS | Passagens (Crónica)

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ ΑΡΧΙΠΕΛΑΓΟΣ | Δίαυλοι (Χρονικό)
/ENGLISH/ ARCHiPELAGOS | Passages (Chronicle)

Sobre as ilhas do Egeu | – vem cá fora e vê! –
os anjos batem as asas | espalhando rosas…

Michales Loukovikas

I. REVISITANDO O ARQUIPÉLAGO
1. O arquipélago
(a. Está a Jónia em flor? / b. Onde está Atenas?)
2. Κατολοφύρομαι (Katolophýromae: É tão profunda a dor)

Hélia Correia está nos nossos corações; e no coração deste Archipelagos. A nossa sequência mais longa é quase toda baseada no seu extenso poema A Terceira Miséria, que começa com uma citação de Friedrich Hölderlin do seu poema Pão e Vinho: Para que servem os poetas em tempos de indigência? Seguindo os passos de Hélia, o nosso ponto de partida foi O arquipélago, também deste poeta. Durante uma viagem ao norte de Portugal, onde vivia sua mãe, Maria José, já com 96 anos, Amélia Muge convenceu-a a recitar com ela alguns excertos deste poema. José Martins lá estava para as gravar. Começámos bem… Agora que penso nisso, sinto que foi uma pena que a filha de Amélia, Cristiana, não tivesse participado também: teríamos três gerações a recitar em conjunto!

O arquipélago, como nos lembrou Hölderlin, era originalmente o Mar Egeu e as suas ilhas. Como introdução, acho que não podíamos encontrar melhor melodia para evocar a música do Egeu do que a desta bela canção tradicional, em versão instrumental, mas cuja primeira estância se pode ler acima. Faltava o “toque” português: ao lado do violino de Kyriakos Gouventas, convocámos a guitarra portuguesa de Ricardo Parreira. Excelente combinação!

Depois havia que resolver o problema do mar. Inicialmente, adicionei sons do mar (ondas, gaivotas, etc.), mas Amélia reagiu: Demasiado realista, disse. Então teve uma ideia fantástica: E se fossem vozes em vez de ondas? Eu e José respondemos em coro: Vamos a isso! Esse coral das ondas, concebido pelo José e cantado em coro por Maria Monda (Sofia, Susana, Tânia), Cramol e Teresa Campos, fez-me sentir que não são apenas ondas do mar, mas também esses anjos voando sobre o Egeu espalhando rosas…

Eurípides

Este foi o primeiro, brilhante, florido excerto do poema (Está a Jónia em flor?). Para o segundo, escuro e sombrio (Onde está Atenas?), fiz novo arranjo de uma antiga composição minha (no Ouro do Céu, para poesia de Ares Alexandrou), que abre caminho a Eurípides e à sua tragédia, Orestes. O stasimon Katolophýromae, introduzido por Harris Lambrakis no ney e flauta de bisel, é cantado em grego antigo por um coro composto por Amélia, Andreas Karakotas, Manos Achalinotópoulos, e eu próprio no papel de corifeu. (Escrevemos sobre Eurípides e Orestes na nossa Arquipédia, uma das secções do eBook que acompanha o CD, onde se pode encontrar muita informação complementar sobre o ARCHiPELAGOS. Muito desta informação é também apresentada aqui no nosso blog, se seguirem os links que estão nos títulos de cada sequência).

1. Friedrich Hölderlin (Der Archipelagus, 1800-1801, excertos, adaptação para português: Amélia Muge) | a. Tradicional do Egeu / b. Michales Loukovikas | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas, A. J. Martins
2. Eurípides (Orestes, 408 AEC, fragmentos: estrofe e antístrofe) | Adaptação-Arranjo: M. Loukovikas

II. CANTOS DA ARGILA
3. Embalar meninos, acordar adultos
11. Μάγισσα Θάλασσα (Νέοι Λαοί τής Θάλασσας) | Mar feiticeiro (Novos Povos do Mar)

Hino hurrita a Nikkal, Ugarit (séc. XIII AEC)

Num navio do tempo /espaço, viajámos um milénio para trás, de Atenas do séc. V AEC. até Ugarit, Síria, c. 1400, para ouvir um Hino hurrita. Na verdade, depois de Eurípides, não fiquei assim tão fascinado quando o ouvi; mas Amélia quedou-se espantada, pela semelhança com um outro hino, anti-fascista, Acordai!, de José Gomes Ferreira e Fernando Lopes-Graça, escrito por volta de 1946, uma década antes da publicação do hino hurrita. O meu coração oriental, por outro lado, foi sendo tocado por algumas versões do hino no género cromático. O problema era que as mesmas o afastavam de Acordai. Por isso, fizémos duas variações: uma, diatónica, próxima de Acordai (Canção de embalar meninos e acordar adultos), e outra, como lamento diatónico-cromático sobre a tragédia dos refugiados (Mar feiticeiro).

Cabeça de mulher chorando com lenço (1937, possivelmente um estudo para Guernica),
de Pablo Picasso

Foi para mim um choque tremendo ver, na orla de uma praia, a foto do corpo de uma criança que se afogou quando a família tentava passar da Turquia para a Grécia. Os meus versos começam com uma frase que ouvi a outro refugiado, em Marrocos, que não conseguiu atravessar o Estreito de Gibraltar para a Espanha: Quando miro o mar, os meus olhos ficam cheios d’água… Que tocante é a interpretação do meu amigo Andreas Karakotas, tele-dirigido por mim: eu em Lisboa, ele em Salónica! Ana Dias, na harpa, criou o pano de fundo apropriado tanto aqui como no tema Utopia (Ilhas Imaginárias).

3. Amélia Muge / José Gomes Ferreira (Acordai!, excerto) | Anónimo (Hino hurrita antigo, fragmento) / Fernando Lopes-Graça (Acordai!, excerto) | Adaptação: A. Muge. Αrranjo: A. J. Martins
11. Michales Loukovikas | Anónimo (Hino hurrita antigo, fragmento) | Adaptação-Αrranjo: M. Loukovikas

III. MACARONÉSIA (Macárōn Nẽsoe: Ilhas Afortunadas)
4. Ali no meio do mar
5. Dança do trigo
6. Um gingado lamento

Cesária Évora

A Macaronésia é composta por quatro arquipélagos no Atlântico norte: Açores e Madeira (Portugal), Canárias (Espanha) e Cabo Verde. O nome deriva do termo grego Μακάρων Νῆσοι (Macárōn Nẽsoe, Ilhas Afortunadas ou Ilhas dos bem aventurados), usado pelos geógrafos para as ilhas Elísias, ilhas a oeste dos Pilares de Hércules (Estreito de Gibraltar), um paraíso terrestre sem inverno. De acordo com Hesíodo, eram os Campos Elísios, habitados por heróis. Estrabão identificou-as com as ilhas das Hespérides.

Gingado Lamento, de Amélia, dedicado a Cesária Évora, tem este toque mágico. Encantou-me, desde a primeira vez que o ouvi. Assim, como o finale da saga da Macaronésia, que é ainda melhor! Nesta sequência são solistas Amélia e Rita Maria (que canta a Dança do Trigo em castelhano) sendo os coros feitos por Maria Monda e por mim.

4. Amélia Muge / Tradicional (Canárias, Açores) | Arranjo: A. J . Martins, A. Muge
5. Amélia Muge / Tradicional (Canárias) | Arranjo: A. J. Martins, A. Muge
6. Amélia Muge | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas, A. J. Martins

IV. PENAS DE AMOR O QUE SÃO?
7. A tentação
8. Δέδυκε ἀ σελάννα / Lua desceu, mergulhou
(a. A lua mergulhou / b. Sentidos divididos / c. Eros)

Safo de Ereso, cópia romana de
um original grego (séc. V AEC)

A Tentação, é, a meu ver, uma das melhores composições de Amélia, feita para este poema de Hélia. Disse-lhe muitas vezes ser uma pena não estar num dos seus álbuns. Pronto, aqui está ela! E em boa companhia: a de Safo.

Graças a Amélia, que teve a ideia de a incluir, pesquisei bastante, lendo a poesia Sáfica; para compor, acabei por combinar três fragmentos:(*) A Lua baixou, Sentidos divididos, e Eros. Além do mais convenci Amélia que conseguiria cantar em helénico antigo – experiência que descreveu depois como… um salto sobre o abismo! Neste “salto” é acompanhada por Rita Maria, Catarina Anacleto e Maria Monda.

(*) Embora a sua poesia fosse bem conhecida e grandemente admirada na antiguidade, quase toda chegou até nós em fragmentos, principalmente por a Igreja cristã desaprovar a sua moral e as autoridades eclesiásticas adorarem queimar as suas antologias…

7. Hélia Correia | Amélia Muge | Arranjo: F. Raposo
8. Safo (em grego antigo e português – adaptação: Amélia Muge) | Michales Loukovikas | Adaptação-Arranjo: M. Loukovikas

V. CANSAÇO DE SER
9. Sono de ser
10. The Hours (As horas)

Fernando Pessoa

Esta sequência é dedicada a Fernando Pessoa. Começa com Sono de ser, outro dos meus temas favoritos, que já tinha sido editado, com outro ambiente musical, no seu CD A Monte. Aqui, o canto de Amélia cria um daqueles raros momentos. É excelentemente acompanhada por Filipe Raposo.

The Hours, um dos Poemas Ingleses de Pessoa, destaca-se também. Compus o tema para Sofia Vitória (CD Echoes, dedicado aos poemas ingleses de Pessoa). Como acabou por não entrar no seu trabalho pude, felizmente, tê-lo aqui com o meu arranjo… heavy metal, reforçado pelo vibrafone de Kostas Hanís e o contrabaixo de António Quintino! Amélia e eu sincronizámos as nossas vozes e o coro (Maria Monda) sintonizou-se connosco.

O modo como compus esta canção foi, para Amélia, fascinante. Durante um dos meus passeios de fim da tarde pela vizinhança, com o The Hours sem me sair da cabeça, lembrei-me do Time dos Pink Floyd com os relógios a tocar logo que a música começa. Decidi então ter um clique de relógios marcando os segundos, os minutos, As horas… Fui acelerando o passo, murmurando as palavras de Fernando e, de repente, a linha do baixo apareceu! Continuei a repetir esta linha até chegar a casa, pois não tinha nada aonde apontar e iria esquecer. Ao chegar, Fernando também me ofertou a linha melódica básica! Trabalhei furiosamente durante… Horas; Só parei quando até o arranjo ficou pronto. Mandei-o imediatamente, felicíssimo, para Amélia…

9. Fernando Pessoa | Amélia Muge | Arranjo: F. Raposo
10. Fernando Pessoa | Michales Loukovikas | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas

VI. NA TAVERNA DO PORTO
12. Versos quaisquer (Pedidos com instância)
13. Ο Νικόλας ο ψαράς (Nicolas, o Pescador)

É a sequência do… fadobetiko (termo cunhado por Amélia). O seu tema, à la fado corrido, é baseado num poema satírico de João de Deus, um dos maiores poetas portugueses do séc. XIX. A introdução, feita por Kyriakos Gouventas, tem um sabor a norte dos Balcãs, em acordo com a referência poética à Transilvânia.

Giorgos Mitsakis (E) and Vasilis Tsitsanis (D)

O trágico Nicolas, o pescador, combina dois dos maiores compositores de rebético: Vasilis Tsitsanis, um dos fundadores do rebético moderno (abrindo o caminho a grandes compositores como Manos Hadjidakis e Mikis Theodorakis); e Giorgos Mitsakis, um hábil compositor e letrista, apelidado de o mestre como tocador de bouzouki.

Muito emocionado (desfiz-me em lágrimas ao cantá-la no estúdio; Amélia e o engenheiro de som, Christos Megas, pensavam que eu me estava a rir…), descrevo a trágica figura de uma mãe vestida de negro que durante meses, de pé, em frente ao mar, aguardava a chegada da pesca de seu filho, Nicolas, sem que ninguém tivesse coragem de dizer-lhe que se tinha afogado… Esta canção também comoveu os portugueses. Falaram-me de outras mulheres vestidas de negro que ainda permanecem de pé, à beira-mar, fixando o longe de olhos vazios…

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

VII. ILHAS IMAGINÁRIAS
14. Uma ilha, Utopia
15. Penélope de Ítaca
16. Meninos perdidos

Ulisses entre os Feácios, de Jean Broc. Odisseu mostra seu areté físico ao vencer o concurso de arremesso de disco depois de ser desafiado por um atleta Feácio. Muito antes de Platão, Homero
é o primeiro a descrever a Utopia, ou até a Atlântida, que ele chama Esquéria, a terra dos Feácios.

O nosso fascínio pelos lugares míticos e imaginários. Fico contente que acabe musicalmente na Trácia, onde nasci, com esta dança lendária, zonarádikos, onde se destacam Amélia e Maria Monda (vozes), Manos Achalinotópoulos (clarino/clarinete folk) e Harris Lambrakis (ney). Viajamos antes disso pela Utopia de Thomas More (onde Amélia evoca a Caixa vazia de Ares Alexandrou) e ainda por Ítaca de Penélope e Ulisses, para, finalmente, encalharmos na Terra do Nunca, de J. M. Barrie, encontrando não Peter Pan ou Sininho, mas uns muito especiais Meninos Perdidos.

VIII. EM TEMPO DE INDIGÊNCIA
17. Sem Deuses
18. Nós
19. Feitiço / Experimentos
20. As ilhas do Egeu
21. A ruína da Grécia
22. Falamos de sombras (Democracia)
23. Um início

Esta sequência tem por base excertos dos poemas de Hélia: Indignação (Nós e Feitiço) e A Terceira Miséria (restantes excertos). N’A Terceira Miséria, poema dedicado à Grécia,(*) começa por citar, como já foi dito no início, Hölderlin: Para quê, para que servem os poetas em tempo de indigência? O poeta alemão é referido várias outras vezes, especialmente quando ela fala de Atenas. Senti-me lisonjeado quando vi o Partenon na capa do livro. Ficou Amélia sem palavras, quando leu o poema. Por tudo isto, esta é a nossa sequência principal.

(*) Como expliquei ao falar de Periplus, nosso trabalho anterior, Hélia é uma entusiástica helenista e filelena, reinterpretando os mitos helénicos e dando destaque a heroínas como Antígona, Helena, e Medeia. Tanto no seu poema maior, A Terceira Miséria, como também na Indignação, ela refere-se aos Argonautas de Jasão, à antiga Ágora das poleis helénicas, à Odisseia de Homero, às Ilhas do Egeu e Ruína da Grécia, aos deuses antigos, Pã e Alexandria, a Péricles e à democracia. Quando foi galardoada com o Prémio Camões (2015), a mais prestigiada distinção do mundo Lusófono, dedicou-o à Grécia, de onde vem a poesia, sem a qual não seríamos nada, nem teríamos nada, como disse na cerimónia de entrega do prémio, exclamando no final: Viva a Grécia! Por tudo isto, é uma tristeza que ninguém tenha publicado A Terceira Miséria na Grécia. Enfim, é a quarta miséria da parte da Grécia moderna…

Friedrich Hölderlin, o poeta fileleno, por Johanna Ebertz (1979)

A citação de Hölderlin em Sem Deuses é repetida em Ilhas do Egeu, numa paisagem sonora completamente diferente. Aqui, depois de muitas experiências, usei como modelo a introdução a Eco, composição de Manos Achalinotópoulos, desenvolvendo-a mais no sentido uma improvisação livre. Como Manos está na nossa equipa, foi possível trabalhar com ele esta ideia, que também teve improvisos de Harris Lambrakis, Amélia e Kyriakos Gouventas. Que prazer, ter aqui Hélia recitando a sua própria poesia!

Nós e A Ruína da Grécia são duas canções gêmeas; os poemas da Hélia são aqui gémeos também! Lembro-me de ouvir dentro de mim a melodia da Ruína desde a primeira vez que li Nós, os ateus, nós, os monoteístas… Depois, mudando o compasso de cinco para seis tempos, rearranjei-a para os versos de Nós.

Para ser sincero, não conhecia quase nada sobre Hölderlin. Tentando saber mais, leio na ficha de informação básica da Wikipedia: “Nascimento – 20 de Março…” (Oh, pensei, no mesmo dia que eu!); “… 1770” (Ena! No mesmo ano de Ludwig!!) Imediatamente a seguir tive uma ideia completamente louca: Bem, e depois? Terceira miséria… Terceira sinfonia! Deixa-me ver… Na verdade, não tinha grandes expectativas. Comecei a entoar a Miséria com a melodia da Marcia funebre de Beethoven no Segundo movimento da Eroica. Principiei com a 25ª parte do poema, “Sim, falamos de sombras”… que me pareceu mais adequada. Fiquei espantado! Mas havia mais melodia. Então, agora vamos voltar atrás e tentar a 23ª parte, “A terceira miséria é esta”… Impressionante! Um pouco mais e terminamos a primeira parte da Marcia, pensei. Esse pouco mais foi encontrado na 32ª parte da Miséria: “Estão as praças como ágoras de outrora”… E o mais fantástico de tudo isto: a melodia de Ludwig acabava com a frase de Hélia: “fervilhante palavra própria da democracia” – Inacreditável!!! UM MILAGRE!..

Procurei a partitura de Beethoven. Tinha adaptado de memória a mesma melodia no meu trabalho O Ouro do Céu; mas desta vez queria ser rigoroso. Meticulosamente rearranjei a partitura, atribuindo as linhas melódicas a outros instrumentos, sem deixar nada de fora (espero). O confronto final veio quando apresentei a minha loucura à Amélia. Como não falo português, só então percebi que várias palavras ou frases estavam fora do lugar, não muito bem adaptadas à música. A ajuda dela neste aspecto foi crucial. Depois, foi a minha vez de a convencer de que não queria aqui uma voz operática – talvez até nem Ludwig a quisesse, ou então, porque teria ele acrescentado Sotto voce sob o título? Queria ter a voz dela habitual. Feito! E estou muito orgulhoso do resultado – mesmo que alguns puristas se possam vir a queixar…

Posso dizer aqui o que disse anteriormente a propósito de Eurípides: Se Ludwig nos pudesse ouvir, espero sinceramente que tivesse sorrido e aplaudido aprovadoramente, apesar das pedradas dos puristas! Participaram também, para lá de Maria Monda, Rui Vaz, José Manuel David e Pedro Casaes no coro, Filipe Raposo ao piano, bem como o meu amigo Kosmás Papadópoulos no clarinete.

O que é que alguém poderia compor depois de tal música? Acho que a Amélia nem sequer pensou nisso – e fez ela muito bem; apresentou uma melodia tão primorosa para Um início, que a coloco ao lado de Ludwig! Considero esta sua composição como a melhor do nosso Archipelagos.

17. Hélia Correia | Amélia Muge | Arranjo: A. Muge, A. J. Martins, M. Loukovikas
18. Hélia Correia | Michales Loukovikas | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas
19. Hélia Correia / A. Muge | Amélia Muge | Arranjo: A. J. Martins, F. Raposo
20. Hélia Correia | Manos Achalinotópoulos, Amélia Muge | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas
Improvisos: H. Lambrakis, M. Achalanitópoulos, A. Muge, K. Gouventas
21. Hélia Correia | Michales Loukovikas | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas
22. Hélia Correia | Ludwig van Beethoven (Terceira Sinfonia, Eroica, 1804, Segundo movimento, primeira parte: Marcia funebre, Adagio assai, Sotto voce) | Adaptação-Arranjo: M. Loukovikas
23. Hélia Correia | Amélia Muge | Arranjo: A. J. Martins, F. Raposo

IX. JÁ SE DÃO AS VOLTAS TODAS
24. Νοσταλγία: Το παράπονο του μετανάστη | Nostalgia: A queixa do emigrante
25. Nostalgia: Cantar de emigração
(a. Sodade / b. Run-Run se fue pa’l norte / c. Cantar de emigração / d. A queixa do emigrante)
26. Alegria

Rosalía de Castro (E) and Violeta Parra (D)

É a nossa sequência sobre migrações e regressos a casa (nostalgia e nostos). Abraçando várias ideias da Amélia, combinei um rebético de Vasilis Tsitsanis (também conhecido pelo título de Como um banido, à deriva), com Cantar de emigração de Rosalía de Castro e José Niza, Run-Run se fue pa´l norte de Violeta Parra e Sodade de Armando Soares. Amélia tinha-me escutado, tempos atrás, a cantar o referido rebético e enviou-me uma adaptação que me lembrou o fado, também aqui incluída como instrumental. Além disso, estou muito feliz por ter connosco representantes dos quatro coros femininos que Amélia convidou para o projeto De Viva Voz (emocionei-me tanto neste concerto!): Cramol, Maria Monda, Catarina Moura (Segue-me à Capela) e Teresa Campos (Sopa de Pedra). Ainda Rita, Rui, David, e Pedro, Paló e Mariana Abrunheiro, Amélia e eu próprio – começando esta aventura Como um banido, à deriva…

José Saramago, por Carlos Botelho

A sequência termina com outra adaptação de Amélia, onde combina a Alegria de José Saramago com uma excelente melodia do nosso amigo Giorgos Andreou, que aqui também dirige a Orquestra de Cordas Palhetadas de Patras.

24. Vasilis Tsitsanis | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas
25. a. Armando Soares (adaptação: M. Loukovikas) / b. Violeta Parra / c. Rosalía de Castro (adaptação para português: J. Niza) | José Niza / d. Vasilis Tsitsanis (adaptação: A. Muge) | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas, A. Muge
26. José Saramago | Giorgos Andreou | Adaptação: A. Muge, A.J. Martins. Arranjo: G. Andreou

X. O QUE AS ONDAS CONTAM
27. Κύματα μύρια τού πελάγου / Ondas do mar de Vigo
28. Contas do mar (Bulería de Sines)

Exuberância, de Penny Warden

A nossa última sequência começa com outra adaptação de Amélia, combinando uma Cantiga de amigo de Martín Codax, com um rebético de Esmirna de Panaiotis Tountas e que cantamos aqui nas duas línguas. Como na altura estava a trabalhar nas canções de Tountas, Retratos de Mulheres do Rebético, “pintados” com a sua excelente Arte de Modulação, costumava enviar cópias do meu trabalho para a Amélia; no dia dos meus anos, agradeceu-me desta forma, com esta excelente adaptação em forma de presente de aniversário.

O finale é uma peculiar Bulería que compus em Sines, em 2012, quando lá fomos preparar o nosso concerto de apresentação de Periplus, no Festival Músicas do Mundo. Nesse concerto, tocámos esta bulería na sua forma inicial. Daí para a frente mudámos a canção tradicional portuguesa interposta; a que temos agora é mais adaptada à bulería, com um certo sabor espanhol. Eu chamo-lhe pan-ibérica, daí ter combinado a guitarra portuguesa de Ricardo Parreira com a guitarra flamenca de Thomás Natsis. E que bem cantada por Catarina Moura e Teresa Campos, juntamente com Maria Monda, Amélia e, por fim, um coro de crianças. Como Maria Graciete Besse acertadamente comentou analisando o ARCHiPELAGOS:

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

Desfrutem!

27. Martín Codax (adaptação em grego: Michales Loukovikas) | Panaiotis Tountas | Adaptação: A. Muge. Arranjo: M. Loukovikas (Cantiga de amigo de um dos melhores trovadores medievais combinada com a melodia do maior compositor do rebético de Esmirna)
28. Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas, Tradicional Português | Arranjo: M. Loukovikas, A. Muge

Outubro 2017

● Ver também: PERIPLUS | Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (Chronicle) | GIORGOS ANDREOU on ARCHiPELAGOS
| MARIA GRACIETE BESSE on ARCHiPELAGOS | MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on ARCHiPELAGOS

ARCHiPELAGOS | Passages (Chronicle)

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/07/04

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Aegean Islands, Aegean Sea, Agora, Alexandria, Amélia Muge, Ana Dias, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, Andreas Karakotas, António Quintino, Antigone, Antistrophe, Archipelago, ARCHiPELAGOS, Ares Alexandrou, Argonauts, Aristeion, Armando Soares, Athens, Aurora, Azores, Balkans, Book burning, Bulerías, Byzantine Empire, Camões Prize, Canaries, Cantiga de amigo, Cape Verde, Catarina Anacleto, Catarina Moura, Cesária Évora, Chorus, Christos Megas, Chromatic genus, Coryphaeus, Cramol, Cristiana Serejo, Democracy, Diatonic and chromatic, Diatonic scale, Dimitris Mystakidis, Elysium, Eros, Euripides, Fado, Fernando Lopes-Graça, Fernando Pessoa, Festival Músicas do Mundo, Filipe Raposo, Flamenco, Fortunate Isles, Friedrich Hölderlin, Funeral March, Genus, Giorgos Andreou, Giorgos Mitsakis, Harris Lambrakis, Hélia Correia, Heavy metal, Helen, Hellenistic period, Hesiod, Hesperides, Homer, Hurrian songs, Hurrians, Ionia, Ithaca, J. M. Barrie, Jason, João de Deus, José Gomes Ferreira, José Manuel David, José Martins, José Niza, José Salgueiro, José Saramago, Katolophyromai, Kosmas Papadopoulos, Kostas Hanis, Kyriakos Gouventas, Lanzarote, Lisbon, Lost Boys, Luís de Camões, Ludwig van Beethoven, Lusophone, Macaronesia, Madeira, Manos Achalinotοpoulos, Manos Hadjidakis, Maria Graciete Besse, Maria José Muge, Maria Monda, Mariana Abrunheiro, Martin Codax, Medea, Michales Loukovikas, Mikis Theodorakis, Modulation, Neverland, Ney, Nikkal, Niovi Benou, Nobel Prize in Literature, Odysseus, Orestes, Paló, Pan, Panaiotis Tountas, Parthenon, Pedro Casaes, Penelope, Pericles, Periplus, Peter Pan, Philhellenism, Pillars of Heracles, Pink Floyd, Plucked Strings Orchestra of Patras, Polis, Portuguese guitar, Rebetiko, Recorder, Rita Maria, Rosalía de Castro, Rui Vaz, Sappho, Sea peoples, Segue-me à Capela, Sines, Smyrna, Sodade, Sofia Adriana Portugal, Sofia Vitória, Sopa de Pedra, Sotto voce, Stasimon, Strabo, Strait of Gibraltar, Strophe, Susana Quaresma, Tânia Cardoso, Teresa Campos, Thanasis Thipinakis, Thessaloniki, Thomas More, Thomás Natsis, Thrace, Tinker Bell, Transylvania, Ugarit, Utopia, Vasilis Tsitsanis, Vigo, Violeta Parra, Zonaradiko. Leave a comment

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.

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

PERIPLUS | Deambulações luso-gregas (Crónica)

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/07/01

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Alea jacta est, Amélia Muge, Anatolia, André Maia, António Quintino, Antikristos, Ares Alexandrou, Ateneu, Athenaeus, Ásia Menor, Ítaca, Balcãs, Batalha das Termópilas, Bouzouki, Camerata Meiga, Carlos Paredes, Catarina Anacleto, Charlie Haden, Constantine Cavafy, Creta, Cristina Benedita, Dimitris Mystakidis, Eduardo Salgueiro, Eleni Tsaligopoulou, Epigrama, Epiro, Epitáfio de Sícilo, Era Comum, Erínias, Escala pentatônica, Escópelos, Esmirna, Esparta, Fado, Fernando Pessoa, Filipe Raposo, Flauta Mágica, Francisco e Sofia Van Epps, Giorgos Andreou, Grande Depressão, Grécia, Guimarães, Guitarra portuguesa, Harris Lambrakis, Hélade, Hélia Correia, Hinos délficos, Hubris, Iohannes Chalkiás, Irene Bakalopoulou: harpa, José Barros, José Manuel David, José Martins, José Salgueiro, Kostas Theodorou, Kyriakos Gouventas, Mangas, Manos Achalinotopoulos, Margarida Guerreiro, Mariana Abrunheiro, Mesomedes, Michales Loukovikas, Morna, Natália Correia, Nemesis, Ney, Ostinato, Oud, Outra Voz, Panaiotes Tountas, Panaiotis Tountas, Périplo, Pedro Pinhal, Periplus, Rebético, Ricardo Parreira, Ross Daly, Rui Vaz, Salonica, Seikilos, Simonides, Syrtos, Taqsim, Tekke, Teresa Muge, Violeta Parra, Zeibekiko, Ziad Rajab, Zoe Tiganouria. Leave a comment

PERIPLUS | Deambulações luso-gregas (Crónica)

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

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

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

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

Periplus, edição portuguesa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ares Alexandrou, Constantine Cavafy, Fernando Pessoa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Noite estrelada, de Vincent Van Gogh

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

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

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

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

Uma rosa em Mi sustenido, de Ernie Benton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O Fado, de José Malhoa (1910)

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

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

Panaiotes Tountas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Periplus, edição internacional

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

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

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

PERIPLUS | Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (Chronicle)

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/06/27

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Alea iacta est, Algarve, Amélia Muge, Anatolia, André Maia, António Quintino, Antikristos, Ares Alexandrou, Asia Minor, Athenaeus, Athens, Balkans, Battle of Thermopylae, Bouzouki, Camerata Meiga, Cape Verde, Carlos Paredes, Catarina Anacleto, Charlie Haden, Constantine Cavafy, Crete, Cristina Benedita, Delphic Hymns, Dimitris Mystakidis, Eleni Tsaligopoulou, Epigram, Epirus, Epitaph, Erinyes, Fado, Fernando Pessoa, Filipe Raposo, Francisco & Sofia Van Epps, Galicia, Giorgos Andreou, Great Depression, Guimarães, Harris Lambrakis, Hélia Correia, Hellas, Hubris, Iberia, In absentia, Iohannes Chalkiás, Irene Bakalopoulou, Ithaca, José Barros, José Manuel David, José Martins, José Salgueiro, Kostas Theodorou, Kyriakos Gouventas, Lisbon, Magic Flute, Mangas, Manos Acalinotopoulos, Margarida Guerreiro, Mariana Abrunheiro, Mesomedes, Michales Loukovikas, Morna, Natália Correia, Nemesis, Ney, Ostinato, Oud, Outra Voz, Panagiotis Toundas, Pedro Pinhal, Pentatonic scale, Periplus, Philhellenism, Portuguese guitar, Rebetiko, Ricardo Parreira, Ross Daly, Rui Vaz, Seikilos epitaph, Simonides, Skopelos, Smyrma, Sparta, Syrtos, Taqsim, Teresa Muge, Thessaloniki, Violeta Parra, Zeibekiko, Ziad Rajab. Eduardo Salgueiro, Zoe Tiganouria. Leave a comment

PERIPLUS | Luso-Hellenic Wanderings (Chronicle)

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

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

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

Michales Loukovikas

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

Periplus, the Portuguese edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ares Alexandrou, Constantine Cavafy, Fernando Pessoa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh

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

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

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

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

A Rose in E Sharp, by Ernie Benton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Panaiotes Tountas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Periplus, the international edition

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

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

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

MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA sobre “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/06/09

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Açores, Amélia Muge, Ana Dias, Andreas Karakotas, António José Martins, António Quintino, ARCHiPELAGOS, Ares Alexandrou, Armando Soares, Arquipélago, Bulería, Canções hurritas, Catarina Anacleto, Catarina Moura, Cramol, Deleuze & Guattari, Dimitris Mystakidis, Etnomusicologia, Euripides, Fernando Lopes-Graça, Fernando Pessoa, Filipe Raposo, Friedrich Hölderlin, Giorgos Andreou, Giorgos Mitsakis, Harris Lambrakis, Hélia Correia, J. M. Barrie, João de Deus, José Gomes Ferreira, José Manuel David, José Nisa, José Salgueiro, José Saramago, Kosmas Papadopoulos, Kostas Hanis, Kyriakos Gouventas, Ludwig van Beethoven, Macaronesia, Manos Achalinotopoulos, Maria do Rosário Pestana, Maria José Muge, Maria Monda, Mariana Abrunheiro, Martin Codax, Michales Loukovikas, Nikkal, Niovi Benou, Orquestra de Cordas Palhetadas, Paló, Panaiotis Tountas, Périplo, Pedro Casaes, Periplus, Rebético, Retórica musical, Ricardo Parreira, Rita Maria, Rosalía de Castro, Rui Vaz, Safo, Sofia Adriana Portugal, Susana Quaresma, Tânia Cardoso, Teresa Campos, Thanassis Tsipinakis, Thomas More, Thomás Natsis, Ugarit, Universidade de Aveiro, Utopia, Vasilis Tsitsanis, Vigo, Violeta Parra, Zeca Afonso. Leave a comment

MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA sobre “ARCHiPELAGOS”

/ENGLISH/ MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on ARCHiPELAGOS

Archipelagos – de Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas

Um projecto musical de relacionalidade e convivialidade

Maria do Rosário Pestana, Universidade de Aveiro

Instituto de Etnomusicologia – Centro de Estudos em Música e Dança

Cinco anos depois de PERIPLUS deambulações luso-gregas, Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas apresentam um novo projeto artístico intitulado ARCHiPELAGOS Passagens. Partem do território comum que ambos construíram em 2012 com Periplus, desde logo, ao proporem uma experiência musical assente na prática cognitiva da viagem, que desconstrói a referência ao mundo, ou seja, às visões unitárias da música local/nacional. Durante os quatro anos que medeiam os dois projetos artísticos, Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas desenvolveram uma extensa investigação na música, na canção, na poesia, percorrendo pontes de coexistência, de conexão entre pessoas, de alteridade, de pertencimento e de identificação pela música que os levaram a outras cartografias fora das fronteiras territoriais e étnicas que definem os espaços hegemónicos contemporâneos. Assim, nos termos da música e da poesia, Archipelagos compromete a nossa experiência com evocações de diferentes geografias, domínios linguísticos e subjetividades, num possível novo humanismo.

O sentido do termo Archipelagos é ambivalente: por um lado, remete-nos para a ideia de “mar primordial”, grande mar ou mar fundador, do étimo Arkhi-Pelagos, um espaço líquido (por isso descentrado), flutuante, de travessia e imersão; por outro lado, refere o conjunto de sequências temporais, musicais (as faixas sonoras do CD), entendidas pelos músicos tanto como “ilhas” na relação entre si, como também outros arquipélagos.

O processo criativo parte frequentemente de um conceito. Arquipélago é um desses conceitos nucleares, patente na escolha dos versos de A Terceira Miséria de Hélia Correia, de O Arquipélago de Johann Hölderlin e nas referências musicais às ilhas da Macaronésia; utopia é outro conceito central que os compositores exploram a partir de Thomas More, dialogando com A Caixa de Ares Alexandrou, com Os Meninos Perdidos de James Matthew Barrie ou com a Utopia de Zeca Afonso. O diálogo criativo estende-se às vivências e às memórias de um e de outro compositor, aos poetas e músicos que definem a sua humanidade. Essas vivências e memórias referem-se a pessoas, a vidas sociais, a outros indivíduos. Assim, trazem para este arquipélago The Hours de Fernando Pessoa, Ondas do mar de Vigo de Martín Códax, Cantar da emigração de Rosalía de Castro e José Niza, o Hino a Nikkal encontrado em Ugarit, na Síria, os poemas de Safo, ou géneros musicais como o rebético grego. Estas presenças múltiplas ligam o passado remoto ao presente, o longe ao perto, os músicos a cada um de nós ouvintes. E em cada nova sequência, ou faixa, os músicos percorrem novas ‘passagens’ através de diferentes recursos composicionais como a citação de Acordai de Fernando Lopes-Graça e José Gomes Ferreira, ou de Rema, rema lanchinha popular dos Açores, entre tantas outras, o recurso à retórica musical como acontece na mimetização das ondas do mar pelo coro composto pelo Cramol, Maria Monda e Teresa Campos, a recitação poética, a distensão do ritmo da bulería, etc. Musicalmente este espaço é construído por um manancial de referências a paisagens sonoras, canções, instrumentos musicais, sonoridades, que desafiam a perceção e o conhecimento de cada um dos ouvintes. Estas referências são feitas de “passagem” e são postas em conexão ao longo de um processo criativo em que os dois músicos participam. Parafraseando Deleuze e Guatarri em Mil Planaltos, este projecto artístico é conectável em todas as suas dimensões, desmontável, invertível, tem entradas múltiplas e pode ser percebido como uma obra de arte e como uma mediação, mas também como uma ação política, uma dimensão que irei explorar adiante.

PERIPLUS deambulações luso-gregas

Em Archipelagos, percebe-se a intenção de criar um espaço ambivalente (líquido e sólido), com múltiplos e mutantes centros, onde os músicos reagregam memórias. O arquipélago foi a metáfora escolhida pelos músicos para representar uma visão-de-mundo, o projeto (materializado no CD) e o processo de criação dos dois indivíduos músicos. Neste sentido, podemos dizer que é um conceito fundador e nuclear, como referi atrás, ao mesmo tempo que é uma metodologia de trabalho criativo que permitiu aos dois músicos construir um espaço de ação horizontal inter-individual, ou seja, inter-subjetivo.

Amélia Muge refere-se a esse processo de construção de um território de conexão que é simultaneamente de partilha e de definição da expressão individual:

Nós criámos um território comum, aquilo que era o desconhecimento do outro. No início fazíamos tudo juntos, eu ia buscar uma frase dele e juntava com ele, era tudo em conjunto. [Neste novo projeto começámos por questionar] o que é isto de continuar a fazer um trabalho com um Outro com o qual já temos um terreno comum? Curiosamente, levou a que cada um de nós percebesse que precisava de mais espaço para si. Espaço para compreender que nos tínhamos transformado com esta experiência, que tínhamos adquirido coisas. A reação, a sensibilidade que tínhamos em relação à cultura do outro também já era diferente. Eu neste vou cantar em grego antigo uma composição de Michales para fragmentos de poemas de Safo. E, curiosamente, ele diz: “A Amélia é melhor do que eu a cantar em grego antigo!”

Criado este território comum, os compositores convidaram músicos para dar som a Archipelagos. São músicos de diferentes partes do globo cujos percursos se cruzaram em projetos e vivências anteriores de Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas e que agora criam novas interdependências, compromissos, conexões. Devo referir que reunir os músicos e concretizar o projecto em estúdio de gravação implicou da parte de Amélia Muge um desdobramento a solicitar apoios e fundos parcelares a diferentes instituições públicas e privadas.

Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas com António Quintino contrabaixo, Catarina Anacleto violoncelo, José Salgueiro percussão, Manuel Maio violino e bandolim, Miguel Tapadas piano, Nikos Paraoulakis ney (flauta oriental) e flauta de bisel, apresentando Periplus no Festival Músicas do Mundo, Sines.

Atrás sustentei que este projeto pode ser percebido como uma ação política. Desde 2012, com Periplus que Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas definem um espaço crítico de produção artística, resistente às produções culturais de massa homogeneizantes, às geopolíticas do conhecimento e aos seus discursos dominantes. Na verdade, como referi noutro lugar, o acolhimento que Periplus teve por parte do público, tendo sido um assunto introduzido num congresso sobre a transposição das fronteiras do conhecimento, ilustra a possibilidade do poder criador e de participação dos indivíduos músicos na construção de um Outro conhecimento, um conhecimento sensível aberto ao diálogo, à partilha, assente no valor da alteridade, na ética do respeito pelo outro. Partindo de outro mapa conceptual, Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas criam agora, em Archipelagos, um espaço sónico multicêntrico de relacionalidade e convivialidade musical, social, entre indivíduos, aberto a múltiplas focalizações.

Outubro de 2017
Maria do Rosário Pestana
etnomusicóloga

● Ver também: MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA sobre “PERIPLUS”
● Assim como: MARIA GRACIETE BESSE sobre “ARCHiPELAGOS”

MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/06/09

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Amélia Muge, Ana Dias, Andreas Karakotas, António José Martins, António Quintino, Archipelago, ARCHiPELAGOS, Ares Alexandrou, Armando Soares, Azores, Bulerías, Catarina Anacleto, Catarina Moura, Cramol, Dimitris Mystakidis, Ethnomusicology, Euripides, Fernando Lopes-Graça, Fernando Pessoa, Filipe Raposo, Friedrich Hölderlin, Giorgos Andreou, Giorgos Mitsakis, Harris Lambrakis, Hélia Correia, Hurrian songs, J. M. Barrie, João de Deus, José Gomes Ferreira, José Manuel David, José Niza, José Salgueiro, José Saramago, Kosmas Papadopoulos, Kostas Hanis, Kyriakos Gouventas, Ludwig van Beethoven, Macaronesia, Manos Achalinotopoulos, Maria do Rosário Pestana, Maria José Muge, Maria Monda, Mariana Abrunheiro, Martin Codax, Michales Loukovikas, Musical rhetoric, Nikkal, Niovi Benou, Paló, Panaiotis Tountas, Pedro Casaes, Periplus, Plucked Strings Orchestra, Rebetiko, Ricardo Parreira, Rita Maria, Rosalía de Castro, Rui Vaz, Sappho, Sofia Adriana Portugal, Susana Quaresma, Tânia Cardoso, Teresa Campos, Thanasis Thipinakis, Thomas More, Thomás Natsis, Ugarit, University of Aveiro, Utopia, Vasilis Tsitsanis, Vigo, Violeta Parra, Zeca Afonso. Leave a comment

MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

/PORTUGUÊS/ MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA sobre ARCHiPELAGOS

Maria do Rosário Pestana: professor in the University of Aveiro, and researcher of the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Centre of Studies on Music and Dance. She developed ethnomusicological studies on musical associativism, processes of documentation of music of rural matrix and music of local expression. She coordinated the book SINGING IN ALENTEJO – the land, the past and the present (2017).

Archipelagos – by Amélia Muge & Michales Loukovikas

A musical project of relationality and conviviality

Maria do Rosário Pestana, University of Aveiro

Institute of Ethnomusicology – Centre of Studies on Music and Dance

Five years after PERIPLUS Luso-Hellenic Wanderings, Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas present a new artistic project entitled ARCHiPELAGOS Passages. They start off from the common territory that they both constructed in 2012 with Periplus, proposing right away a musical experience based on the cognitive practice of voyage, which deconstructs the reference to the world, that is, the unitary visions of local/national music. During the four years that separate the two artistic projects, Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas embarked on an extensive research in music, songs, poetry, crossing bridges of coexistence, of connection among people, of alterity, of belonging and identifying with the music that took them to other cartographies outside the territorial and ethnic boundaries which define contemporary hegemonic spaces. Thus, in terms of music and poetry, the CD Archipelagos commits our experience to evocations from different geographies, linguistic domains and subjectivity, in a possible new humanism.

The meaning of the term Archipelagos is ambivalent: on the one hand, it leads us to the idea of “primordial sea”, grand sea or founder sea, from the etymon Arkhi-Pelagos, a liquid space (therefore off-centre), floating, to cross and immerse; on the other hand, it refers to the set of temporal, musical sequences (the CD tracks), regarded by the musicians as both “islands” in the relationship among themselves, as well as other archipelagos.

The creative process often starts off from a concept. Archipelago is one of those nuclear concepts, evident in the choice of verses from Hélia Correia’s The Third Misery, Johann Hölderlin’s The Archipelago and in the musical references to the Macaronesian islands; utopia is another central concept that the composers explore with Thomas More as a starting point, engaging in a dialogue with Ares Alexandrou’s Mission Box, with James Matthew Barrie’s Lost Kids, or with Zeca Afonso’s Utopia. The creative dialogue extends to the experiences and memories of each one of the composers, to the poets and musicians that define their humanity. These experiences and memories refer to people, to social lives, to other individuals. Thus, they bring to this archipelago Fernando Pessoa’s The Hours, Martín Códax’s Waves of the Sea of Vigo, Rosalía de Castro and José Niza’s Singing of Emigration, the Hymn to Nikkal found in Ugarit, in Syria, Sappho’s poems, or musical genres such as the Greek rebetiko. These multiple presences connect the remote past with the present, the distant with the near, the musicians with each of us listeners. And in each new sequence, or track, the musicians cross new ‘passages’ through different compositional resources such as the quotation from Fernando Lopes-Graça and José Gomes Ferreira’s Acordai, or from the Azorian popular song Rema, rema lanchinha (Row in a row, rowing boat), among many others, the recourse to musical rhetoric as it occurs in the mimicry of sea waves by the choir constituted of Cramol, Maria Monda and Teresa Campos, the poetic recitation, the distension of the rhythm of the bulería, etc. Musically, this space is constructed by a wealth of references to soundscapes, songs, musical instruments, sonorities, which challenge the perception and knowledge of each one of the listeners. These references are made in “passing” and are posted in connection along a creative process in which the two musicians participate. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guatarri in A Thousand Plateaus, this artistic project is connectable in all its dimensions, demountable, invertible, has multiple entries and can be perceived as a work of art and as a mediation, but also as a political act, a dimension that I will shortly explore.

PERIPLUS Luso-Hellenic Wanderings

In Archipelagos, there is an intention to create an ambivalent space (liquid and solid), with multiple and mutating centres, where the musicians reassemble memories. The archipelago has been the metaphor chosen by the musicians to represent a worldview, the project (materialized on the CD) and the creation process of the two individual musicians. In this sense, we can say that it is a founding and nuclear concept, as I mentioned before, at the same time that it is a methodology of creative work that allowed the two musicians to construct a space of horizontal inter-individual action, that is, inter-subjective.

Amélia Muge refers to this process of constructing a connecting territory that is simultaneously of sharing and of defining individual expression:

We have created a common territory out of what was the ignorance of the other. In the beginning we did everything together. I would get a phrase of his and we would conclude it together, everything was done in common. [In this new project we started off asking] why should we continue working with an Other with whom we have already a common ground? Curiously, we both realized that we needed more space for each one of us. Space to understand that we had been transformed through this experience, that we had achieved something. The reaction, the sensitivity we had towards the other’s culture was also different. I am going to sing in ancient Greek a composition by Michales on fragments of Sappho’s poems. And, curiously, he says: “Amelia is better than me in singing in ancient Greek!”

Having created this common territory, the composers invited musicians to give sound to the Archipelagos. They are musicians from different parts of the globe whose paths have crossed in previous projects and performances of Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas and who are now creating new inter-dependencies, commitments, connections. I need to say that bringing together the musicians and carrying out the project in a recording studio implied on Amélia Muge’s part a parallel task of soliciting several public and private institutions for sponsorship contributing funds.

Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas with Catarina Anacleto cello, Manuel Maio violin and mandolin, Nikos Paraoulakis ney and recorder, António Quintino double bass, José Salgueiro percussion, Miguel Tapadas piano, presenting Periplus at the Festival Músicas do Mundo, Sines.

Previously, I maintained that this project can be seen as a political act. Since 2012, with Periplus, Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas have defined a critical space of artistic production, resistant to homogenizing productions of mass culture, the geopolitics of knowledge and its dominant discourses. In fact, as I mentioned elsewhere, the acceptance that Periplus enjoyed by the public, being a subject-matter introduced in a congress on broadening the frontiers of knowledge, illustrates the possibility of the creative power and participation of individual musicians in the construction of Another knowledge, a sensitive knowledge open to dialogue, to sharing, based on the value of alterity, on the ethics of respect for the other. Starting off from another conceptual map, Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas now, in Archipelagos, create a multicentric sonic space of relationality and musical, social conviviality, between individuals, open to multiple focalizations.

October of 2017
Maria do Rosário Pestana
ethnomusicologist

MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA sobre “PERIPLUS”

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/06/04

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Amélia Muge, André Maia, António Quintino, Ares Alexandrou, Bertrand Westphal, Bruno Nettl, Catarina Anacleto, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Cornelius Castoriadis, Creta, Cristiana Serejo, Cristina Benedita, Culturgest, Dimitris Mystakidis, Eduardo Salgueiro, Eleni Tsaligopoulou, Epiro, Epitáfio de Seikilos, Escala pentatônica, Etnomusicologia, Festival Músicas do Mundo, Filipe Raposo, Francisco e Sofia Van Epps, Geocrítica, Geopoética, Harris Lambrakis, Hélia Correia, ILCML, Irene Bakalopoulou, José Barros, José Manuel David, José Martins, José Salgueiro, Kostas Theodorou, Kyriakos Gouventas, Literatura Comparada, Manos Achalinotopoulos, Margarida Guerreiro, Maria do Rosário Pestana, Mariana Abrunheiro, Mediterrâneo, Michales Loukovikas, Nemesis, Neoliberalismo, Outra Voz, Périplo, Pedro Pinhal, Periplus, Ricardo Parreira, Rui Vaz, Syrtos, Teresa Muge, Universidade de Aveiro, Universidade do Porto, Zeca Afonso, Ziad Rajab, Zoe Tiganouria. Leave a comment

MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA sobre “PERIPLUS”

/ENGLISH/ MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on PERIPLUS

Maria do Rosário Pestana: Este texto foi lido no Colóquio Internacional “Espaços Literários e Territórios Críticos. Para
uma abordagem do espaço literário: geopoética e geocrítica
na transposição das fronteiras do conhecimento”, realizado
na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, entre 29
de junho e 1 de julho de 2017. Agradeço à Organização do Colóquio – Instituto de Literatura Comparada Margarida
Losa (ILCML) – o convite para participar no evento.

Música e interlocução

“Tão longe, tão perto:

PERIPLUS –

deambulações
luso-gregas”

de Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas

Maria do Rosário Pestana

Universidade de Aveiro

Instituto de Etnomusicologia

– Centro de Estudos
em Música e Dança

Periplus, edição portuguesa

O projeto musical Periplus / deambulações luso-gregas foi concebido por dois músicos do sul da Europa: Amélia Muge, cantora, compositora, instrumentista, e autora de inúmeras letras, uma referência da música portuguesa desde os anos 90 do século passado; e Michales Loukovikas músico, compositor, produtor de rádio e jornalista grego. Este trabalho artístico, materializado num belíssimo fonograma, foi apresentado ao público português em 2012, nos palcos da Culturgest, do Centro Cultural Vila Flor ou do Festival Músicas do Mundo.

Periplus é um projeto exemplar do papel das artes, e da música em particular, em 2012 e no século XXI: surge num contexto cultural pautado por “valores” neoliberais, valores esses que segundo Castoriadis orientam os seres humanos “dans un mode de socialisation où coopération et communauté ne sont considérées et n’existent que sous le point de vue instrumental et utilitaire” (Castoriadis 1979, 36);(*) e no ponto alto da crise económica e financeira que assolou e fraturou a Europa em norte e sul e relegou para a periferia dos assuntos a vida social e os indivíduos.

(*) Castoriadis, Cornelius (1979), Transformation sociale et création culturelle. Sociologie et sociétés. 111: 33–48.

Proposta para um novo dracma com Castoriadis no centro (e Sócrates no fundo à esquerda )
– só se os políticos gregos os tivessem no seu lugar e não fossem eunucos…

O acolhimento que teve por parte do público – sendo agora um conteúdo introduzido pelos organizadores deste congresso sobre geopoética e geocrítica na transposição das fronteiras do conhecimento – ilustra a possibilidade do poder criador e de participação dos indivíduos músicos na construção de um Outro conhecimento, um conhecimento sensível aberto ao diálogo, à partilha, assente no valor da alteridade, na ética do respeito pelo outro.

Periplus faz-nos imergir numa história de circum-navegação, num espaço recortado pelos mares do Mediterrâneo, do Índico, do Atlântico, atravessando territórios de memórias de viagem e também de dominação. No contexto social e político que referi, este périplo introduz um novo assunto a propósito de Portugal e da Grécia – a partilha ancestral de músicas e de conhecimentos – e propõe um novo lugar de enunciação, dando visibilidade a outra geografia relacional: o Mediterrâneo. Na verdade, a costa e o mar Mediterrâneo estão no centro da música – nos navios que o atravessaram, que dele partiram e a ele regressaram – um perímetro de comunicação e de vida social que rompe com as fronteiras territoriais e étnicas que definem os estados-nação, revelando uma outra cartografia da coexistência, da conexão entre pessoas, do pertencimento e da identificação pela música. Aliás, este projeto documenta a sustentação do etnomusicólogo Bruno Nettl de que a música expressa e interpreta relações entre pessoas, entre culturas e entre sociedades, independentemente das barreiras que as separam.

Pausa, de C. Guedez

Os músicos Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas começaram o projeto nas redes da Internet num processo de descoberta mútua, o qual passou pela revelação e partilha de canções e poesias de um e outro lado da Europa. A constatação da proximidade e o compromisso intersubjetivo deu-se imediatamente nos primeiros contactos. Michales Loukovikas diz que começaram a trocar e a pesquisar canções e poesias das tradições lusitana e helénica, portuguesa e grega, do passado e do presente. No documentário que podemos ver e ouvir neste site, Amélia Muge referiu: “o que me impressionou muito foi o trabalho [O Ouro do Céu] baseado na poesia do grego Ares Alexandrou: uma poesia imediatamente ligada ao espaço e ao lugar, feita uma parte durante o fim da 2ª guerra mundial, nos campos de concentração da Líbia e uma segunda parte nas ilhas do exílio”. O espaço, a viagem, mas também o tempo, começaram a desenhar a visão de mundo que une estes dois indivíduos músicos e que culminaria em Periplus.

Periplus, edição internacional

Atrás referi que este projeto é exemplar. Defendo que é exemplar na medida em que proporciona uma experiência assente numa prática cognitiva de viagem, que abre uma possibilidade em rutura com o paradigma do mundo atual, desconstruindo criticamente tanto as visões unitárias da música local/nacional – a referência ao mundo – como as visões relativistas ‘pós-modernas’ que indiferenciam as produções musicais e culturais.

Periplus espelha bem a dimensão dialogante, interlocutória e transformadora da música. Por exemplo, em “Dos Caminhos”, percorrendo as rotas da escala pentatónica, os músicos seguem trilhos em África e desenham itinerários em Epiro, num discurso musical em constante transformação. Nessa cartografia as rotas dos caminheiros são densificadas pelo cruzamento com os caminhos do tempo: o longo passado de convivialidade entre grupos, de conexão entre pessoas, de partilha e tensão de conhecimentos e valores.

A cicládica “frigideira” usada
na capa do Periplus

A ideia de transformação autónoma e crítica aparece em inúmeras metáforas musicais e visuais ao longo deste projeto, desconstruindo as conceções unitárias da música e da cultura. Essa ideia é representada também visualmente no disco, com a imagem do fundo de uma frigideira de barro onde se fazia o pão (como metáfora de um neo-humanismo?), que faz parte de um acervo arqueológico. Os círculos concêntricos, trabalhados pela designer Cristiana Serejo transformam-se adquirindo outras formas, inclusive humanas.

Em “Palavra dada” os músicos encontraram na partilha de um mesmo ritmo um ponto de partida e também uma conexão entre duas línguas e diferentes conceitos de justiça e de usos da palavra seja para punir ou salvar, para fazer crescer ou honrar: pragas algarvias, a canção da rega, o hino a Némesis (deusa que personifica o destino e também a vingança divina), a dança cretense Syrtós. Os músicos entrelaçaram estas canções – tão divergentes nos conhecimentos de mundo que veiculam – de modo crítico e autónomo, realçando a conexão de um elemento comum: a palavra. Neste sentido, podemos dizer que a prática destes músicos – a música que fazem em Periplus – define uma geopoética, na acepção de Bertrand Westphal. Considero que este conceito é nuclear do projeto artístico Periplus e que se estende a outras dimensões, sempre críticas. No depoimento que ouvimos, Michales Loukovikas descreveu a surpresa que teve ao encontrar pontos de conexão, proximidades, entre uma canção cretense e uma canção portuguesa, tendo, a partir daí, construído uma história musical dessa canção da idade média aos nossos dias.

Epitáfio de Seikilos

A ideia de pontes, de conexão estende-se a domínios da música como o da chamada música culta – do primeiro documento escrito de música de que há memória, o epitáfio de Seikilos – da música folclórica, da música de intervenção com Zeca Afonso, etc. Esse princípio aplica-se ao tempo passado/presente: também o passado não é neste projeto musical uma determinação que priva estes indivíduos músicos da liberdade de construir o seu presente e pensar o seu futuro. As tradições, os documentos históricos que testemunham as viagens cantadas e tocadas neste disco, são assumidos de modo crítico e emancipado, enunciando passo a passo um Outro passado, aberto à partilha e conexão intersubjetiva, rompendo tanto com a atomização dos indivíduos nos seus egoísmos narcisistas, como com a sua redução a massas ou a coletivos estereotipados. O projeto musical Periplus oferece a cada um de nós essa visão crítica e comprometida através de uma experiência de conexão cultural e musical, nas relações históricas, na valorização da diferença, na horizontalidade das participações e aberta a quem se dispuser a ouvir e a deixar-se mobilizar.

● Ver também: GIORGOS ANDREOU sobre “PERIPLUS”

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

La Justice et la Vengeance divine poursuivant le Crime (A Justiça e a Vingança divina [Némesis] perseguindo o Crime, de Pierre Paul Prud’hon (1808)

MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on “PERIPLUS”

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/06/03

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Algarve, Amélia Muge, André Maia, António Quintino, Ares Alexandrou, Bertrand Westphal, Bruno Nettl, Catarina Anacleto, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Comparative literature, Cornelius Castoriadis, Crete, Cristiana Serejo, Cristina Benedita, Culturgest, Dimitris Mystakidis, Drachma, Eduardo Salgueiro, Eleni Tsaligopoulou, Epirus, Ethnomusicology, Festival Músicas do Mundo, Filipe Raposo, Francisco & Sofia Van Epps, Frying pans, Geocriticism, Guimarães, Harris Lambrakis, Hélia Correia, Hellas, ILCML, Irene Bakalopoulou, José Barros, José Manuel David, José Martins, José Salgueiro, Kostas Theodorou, Kyriakos Gouventas, Lisbon, Lusitanic, Manos Achalinotopoulos, Margarida Guerreiro, Maria do Rosário Pestana, Mariana Abrunheiro, Mediterranean, Michales Loukovikas, Nemesis, Neoliberalism, Outra Voz, Pedro Pinhal, Pentatonic scale, Periplus, Ricardo Parreira, Seikilos epitaph, Sines, Socrates, Syrtos, Teresa Muge, University of Aveiro, University of Porto, Zeca Afonso, Ziad Rajab, Zoe Tiganouria. Leave a comment

MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA on “PERIPLUS”

/PORTUGUÊS/ MARIA DO ROSÁRIO PESTANA sobre PERIPLUS

Music and Dialogue

“So Distant, so Near:

PERIPLUS

Luso-Hellenic Wanderings”

by Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas

Maria do Rosário Pestana

University of Aveiro

Institute of Ethnomusicology – Centre of Studies on Music and Dance

● Speech at the International Colloquium “Literary Spaces and Critical Territories. Towards an Approach to Literary Space: Geopoetics and Geocriticism on Broadening the Frontiers of Knowledge”, organized by the Institute of Comparative Literature Margarida Losa (ILCML) at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto (June 29 to July 1, 2017).

Periplus, the Portuguese edition

The musical project Periplus / Luso-Hellenic Wanderings was conceived by two musicians from southern Europe: Amélia Muge, singer, composer, instrumentalist and author of countless lyrics, a reference in Portuguese music since the 1990s; and Michales Loukovikas, musician, composer, radio producer and journalist in Greece. This artistic work, materialized in a most beautiful phonogram, was presented to the Portuguese public in 2012, on the stages of Culturgest (Lisbon), Centro Cultural Vila Flor (Guimarães), or Festival Músicas do Mundo (Sines).

Periplus is an exemplary project on the role of the arts, and music in particular, in 2012 and in the 21st century: it emerged in a cultural context ruled by neoliberal “values”, values that, according to Castoriadis, orient human beings “dans un mode de socialisation où coopération et communauté ne sont considérées et n’existent que sous le point de vue instrumental et utilitaire” (“in a mode of socialization where cooperation and community are considered and exist only from an instrumental and utilitarian point of view”; Castoriadis, 1979, 36);(*) and at the peak of the economic and financial crisis that devastated and fractured Europe into North and South and relegated social life and the individuals to the periphery of public affairs.

(*) Castoriadis, Cornelius (1979), Transformation sociale et création culturelle. Sociologie et sociétés. 111: 33–48.

New Drachma proposal with Castoriadis in the centre (and Socrates in the background left)
– if only Hellas had politicians with guts and not eunuchs…

The public’s reception of Periplus – being now a subject-matter introduced by the organizers of this congress on geopoetics and geocriticism on broadening the frontiers of knowledge – illustrates the possibility of the creative power and participation of individual musicians in the construction of Another knowledge, a sensitive knowledge open to dialogue, to sharing, based on the value of alterity, on the ethics of respect for the other.

Periplus makes us immerse in a history of circumnavigation, in a space delineated by the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, crossing territories of memories of voyages and also of domination. In the social and political context that I mentioned, this periplus introduces a new approach regarding Portugal and Greece – the ancestral sharing of music and knowledge – and proposes a new place of enunciation, giving visibility to another relational geography: the Mediterranean. In fact, the Mediterranean Coast and Sea are at the centre of music – on the ships that crossed her, departed and returned to her – a perimeter of communication and social life that breaks with the territorial and ethnic borders which define nation-states, revealing another cartography of coexistence, of connection among people, of belonging and identifying through music. Moreover, this project documents the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl’s argument that music expresses and interprets relationships among people, among cultures and among societies, regardless of the barriers that separate them.

An abstract musical painting by C. Guedez

The musicians Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas started the project on the Internet network in a process of mutual discovery, which involved the acquaintance and sharing of songs and poetry from both sides of Europe. The verification of proximity and the intersubjective commitment took place immediately in the first contacts. As Michales Loukovikas says, they started exchanging and exploring songs and poetry of the Lusitanic and Hellenic, the Portuguese and Greek traditions, past and present. In the documentary that we can watch and listen to in the web, Amélia Muge says: “what impressed me a lot was the work [The Gold in the Sky] based on the Greek poet Ares Alexandrou’s poetry: a poetry immediately linked to space and place, done in part at the end of World War II, in [British] concentration camps in Libya, and in another part on the [Greek] islands of exile”. Space, voyage, but also time, gradually shaped the worldview that these two musicians share, culminating in Periplus.

Periplus, the international edition

I already mentioned that this project is exemplary. I argue that it is exemplary in that it provides an experience based on a cognitive practice of voyage, which opens up a possibility in contrast with the paradigm of the current world, critically deconstructing both the unitary views of local/ national music – a reference to the world – as well as the ‘postmodern’ relativistic views that undifferentiate musical and cultural productions.

Periplus mirrors well the dialogical, interlocutory and transformative dimension of music. For example, in “On Routes”, wandering on the pentatonic scale routes, the musicians follow trails in Africa and plan itineraries in Epirus, in a musical discourse in constant transformation. In this cartography the wayfarers’ routes are densified crossing the routes of time: the long past of conviviality among groups, of connection among people, of sharing and tension of knowledge and values.

The Cycladic “frying pan” used for the Periplus cover

The idea of autonomous and critical transformation appears in countless musical and visual metaphors throughout this project, deconstructing the unitary conceptions of music and culture. This idea is also represented visually on the disc, with the image of the bottom of a clay frying pan where bread was made (as a metaphor for neo-humanism?), which is part of an archaeological collection. The concentric circles, worked by the designer Cristiana Serejo, are transformed acquiring other forms, including human ones.

In “Word of Honour”, sharing the same rhythm, the musicians found a starting point and also a connection between two languages and different concepts of justice and uses of the word, to either punish or save, to grow or honour: Algarvian Anathemas, the Watering Song, the Hymn to Nemesis (the goddess who personifies destiny and also divine revenge), the Cretan dance Syrtos. The musicians intertwined these songs – so divergent in the knowledge of the world they convey – in a critical and autonomous way, enhancing the connection of a common element: the word. In this sense, we can say that the practice of these musicians – the music they made in Periplus – defined a geopoetics, in Bertrand Westphal’s meaning. I believe that this concept is central in the artistic project Periplus and that it extends to other dimensions, always critical. In his testimony, Michales Loukovikas described his surprise when he found connection points, proximities, between a Cretan song and a Portuguese song, and thenceforth he constructed a musical history of that song from the Middle Ages to our days.

Seikilos Epitaph: engraved on a stele, it’s the oldest extant complete musical composition in the world.

The idea of bridges, of connection, extends to areas of music such as the so-called erudite music – of the first written document of music in memory, the Seikilos Epitaph – of folk music, of protest songs by Zeca Afonso, etc. This principle applies to the past/present time: the past in this musical project, as well, is not a determination that deprives these individual musicians of the freedom to construct their present and think about their future. Traditions, historical documents that testify to the voyages sung and played in this disc, are taken over in a critical and emancipated way, enunciating step by step Another past, open to sharing and intersubjective connection, breaking with both the atomization of individuals in their narcissistic egoisms, and with their reduction to masses or to stereotyped collectives. The musical project Periplus offers each one of us this critical and committed vision through an experience of cultural and musical connection, in historical relationships, in the appreciation of difference, in the horizontality of participations and open to anyone willing to listen and let oneself be mobilized.

● This text was read at the International Colloquium “Literary Spaces and Critical Territories. Towards an Approach to Literary Space: Geopoetics and Geocriticism on Broadening the Frontiers of Knowledge”, at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto between June 29 and July 1, 2017. I thank the Organization
of the Colloquium for the invitation to participate in the event.
(Maria do Rosário Pestana)

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

Justice and Divine Vengeance [Nemesis] Pursuing Crime, by Pierre Paul Prud’hon (1808)

INTRODUCTION to “ARCHiPELAGOS / Passages”

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/PORTUGUÊS/ INTRODUÇÃO a ARCHiPELAGOS / passagens
/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ ΕΙΣΑΓΩΓΗ στο ΑΡΧΙΠΕΛΑΓΟΣ / δίαυλοι

ARCHiPELAGOS / Passages: Amélia Muge & Michales Loukovikas, Periplus

Henrique Luís Gomes de Araújo, anthropologist and musician

● I feel obliged to thank the Galeria Porto Oriental Director, Dr Ana Maria Abrantes, who invited me to make this short introduction to “ARCHiPELAGOS / Passages” by Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas, presented as a continuation of another project, made seven years ago: “PERIPLUS / Luso-Hellenic Wanderings”.

● I would like to start expressing my congratulations to the two artists:

For selecting these two key concepts of the project that they defined very well;

And also for the quality of the choices and interpretation of the music and poems that so well give the artistic tone of the anthropological time, which triggered the project in 2016: Indigence, Nostalgia, Without Gods, Indignation, Lost Kids, Weariness of Being, etc.

● We can present it through António José Martins’ concise phrase as an “artistic endeavour of a possible historical voyage across the cultural heritage of the Mediterranean human being”.

● What do these words mean for me, as an anthropologist?

First of all. They challenge me to make the ethnography of the crisis that since 2008-2009 entailed the application of public economic-financial austerity policies to Greece and Portugal. I’m not going to talk about it now. All of us as European citizens know it, as well as its consequences. This crisis has already been the subject of texts I have published.

Secondly. I am intrigued by the virtual starting point of this project: the artists start by meeting on the Internet Sea to launch themselves onto “Mare Nostrum” they define as a “closed sea, but open to our common heritage, in dialogue with the cultures of the Black and Red Seas, of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans”, in their similarities and differences.

Thirdly. They reveal to me the processes by which this project was interwoven: from an “inner voyage” to “discover ourselves” in this “open sea voyage”, in the context of the Mediterranean. And how did this “inner voyage” took place in such a context? Through what “interactions”, what “channels of communication”, what “bridges”?

Fourthly. They lead me to an answer: with the “project’s compass” – made of Sappho’s, Hélia Correia’s and Hölderlin’s poetry, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s music, of Euripides’ chorus, of the 3500-years-old Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal, of Acordai!, by José Gomes Ferreira and Fernando Lopes-Graça, of the refugees’ tragedy – we arrive at the mythical islands of Ithaca, Utopia or Neverland and, across the Mediterranean, sailing through the Pillars of Heracles (Gibraltar), to the archipelagos of Macaronesia (Madeira and the Azores, the Canaries and Cape Verde).

Lastly. They make me ask the following questions:

Henrique Luís Gomes de Araújo

1. Is it possible for us to unite in fact with the Other or will there always be an “abyss” between us that makes “any relationship an emergency passage” (A. Muge)?

2. Faced with this beautiful and meticulous project that starts in Mare Internet in the direction of the artistic history of Mare Nostrum, where is the reality of the “Mediterranean human being”? Or, more broadly: What is reality, or: what is real?

Henrique Luís Gomes de Araújo
Galeria Porto Oriental / November 22, 2019

INTRODUÇÃO a “ARCHiPELAGOS / passagens”

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

/ENGLISH/ INTRODUCTION to ARCHiPELAGOS / Passages
/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ ΕΙΣΑΓΩΓΗ στο ΑΡΧΙΠΕΛΑΓΟΣ / δίαυλοι

ARCHiPELAGOS / Passagens: Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas, Periplus

Henrique Luís Gomes de Araújo, antropólogo e músico

● O meu agradecimento à Directora da Galeria Porto Oriental, Dra Ana Maria Abrantes, pelo convite a fazer esta pequena introdução a “ARCHiPELAGOS / passagens” de Amélia Muge e Michales Loukovikas que nos é apresentado como uma continuação de um outro projecto, realizado sete anos antes: o “PERIPLUS / deambulações luso-gregas”.

● Desejo começar por expressar as minhas felicitações a eles:

Pela escolha destes dois conceitos-chave do projecto, muito bem definidos no projecto;

E também pela qualidade da escolha e da interpretação das músicas e dos poemas que tão bem dão o tónus artístico do tempo antropológico que desencadeou o projecto a partir de 2016: a indigência, a nostalgia, sem deuses, a indignação, os meninos perdidos, o cansaço do ser, etc.

● Podíamos apresentá-lo, nas palavras sintéticas de António José Martins, como uma “tentativa artística de uma possível viagem histórica pela herança cultural do ser humano mediterrânico”.

● O que é que estas palavras significam para mim, como antropólogo?

Que, para mim:

Em primeiro lugar. Me desafiam a fazer a etnografia da crise que a partir de 2008-2009 implicou a aplicação de políticas públicas de austeridade económico-financeiras para a Grécia e para Portugal. Não vou aqui falar dela. Todos nós, como cidadãos europeus, a conhecemos e as suas consequências. Essa crise, foi já objecto de textos que publiquei.

Em segundo lugar. Me interpelam pelo ponto de partida virtual deste projecto: os seus autores começam por se encontrar no mare da internet para se lançarem no mare nostrum que definem como “mar fechado, mas aberto à nossa herança comum, em diálogo com as culturas dos mares Negro e Vermelho, dos oceanos Atlântico e Índico”, nas suas semelhanças e nas suas diferenças.

Em terceiro lugar. Me revelam os processos pelos quais foram entretecendo este projecto: os de uma “viagem interior” à “descoberta de si”, nesta “viagem em mar aberto” no contexto do mediterrâneo. E como foi acontecendo esta “viagem interior” em tal contexto? Através de que “interacções”, de que “canais de comunicação”, de que “pontes”?

Em quarto lugar: Me levam à resposta: com a “bussola do projecto” – feito da poesia de Safo, de Hélia Correia e de Hölderlin, da música de Ludwig van Beethoven, do coro de Eurípides, do Hino Hurrita a Nikkal com 3500 anos, do Acordai! de José Gomes Ferreira e Fernando Lopes-Graça, da tragédia dos refugiados – aporta-se às míticas ilhas de Ítaca, à Utopia ou Terra do Nunca e, do outro lado do mediterrâneo, atravessando os Pilares de Hércules (Gibraltar), aos arquipélagos da Macaronésia (Madeira e Açores, Canárias e Cabo Verde).

Em último lugar. Me suscitam as seguintes interrogações:

Henrique Luís Gomes de Araújo

1. É possível unirmo-nos na realidade ao Outro ou haverá sempre um “abismo” (A. Muge) entre nós que torna “qualquer relação com ele uma passagem de emergência” (A. Muge)?

2. Perante este belo e dorido projecto que começa no mare da internet em direcção à história artística do mare nostrum, onde fica a realidade do “ser humano mediterrânico”? Ou, dum modo mais abrangente: O que é a realidade, ou: o que é o real?

Henrique Luís Gomes de Araújo
Galeria Porto Oriental / 22 Novembro 2019

● Ver também: MARIA GRACIETE BESSE sobre “ARCHiPELAGOS”

MARIA GRACIETE BESSE sobre “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/05/21

Posted in: Reflections on our work. Tagged: Açores, Adriano Correia de Oliveira, Amélia Muge, Ana Dias, Ana Moura, Anatolia, Andreas Karakotas, António José Martins, António Quintino, ARCHiPELAGOS, Ares Alexandrou, Aristóteles, Armando Soares, Arquipélago, Auschwitz, Ásia Menor, Édouard Glissant, Ítaca, Cabo Verde, Camané, Canárias, Cantiga de amigo, Caribe, Catarina Anacleto, Catarina Moura, Cesária Évora, Constantinopla, Cramol, Crime contra a humanidade, Cristina Branco, Democracia, Dimitris Mystakidis, Esmirna, Euripides, Fado, Fausto Bordalo Dias, Fernando Lopes-Graça, Fernando Pessoa, Filipe Raposo, Friedrich Hölderlin, Giorgos Andreou, Giorgos Mitsakis, Harris Lambrakis, Hélia Correia, Hinos hurritas, Holocausto, Hurritas, Ilhas Egeias, Istambul, João Afonso, João de Deus, José Gomes Ferreira, José Manuel David, José Mário Branco, José Niza, José Salgueiro, José Saramago, Kosmas Papadopoulos, Kostas Hanis, Kyriakos Gouventas, Ludwig van Beethoven, Macaronesia, Manos Achalinotopoulos, Mar Egeu, Marcha Fúnebre, Maria Graciete Besse, Maria José Muge, Maria Monda, Mariana Abrunheiro, Martim Codax, Mísia, Mediterrâneo, Michales Loukovikas, Nikkal, Niovi Benou, Odisseia, Odisseu, Orestes, Orquestra de Cordas Palhetadas, Paló, Panaiotis Tountas, Partenon, Périplo, Pedro Casaes, Periplus, Platão, Rebético, Revolução Francesa, Ricardo Parreira, Rita Maria, Rosalía de Castro, Rui Vaz, Safo, Saint-John Perse, Sofia Adriana Portugal, Sorbonne, Susana Quaresma, Tânia Cardoso, Teresa Campos, Terror, Thanassis Tsipinakis, Theodor W. Adorno, Thomas More, Thomás Natsis, Trácia, Ugarit, Utopia, Vasilis Tsitsanis, Vigo, Violeta Parra, Walter Benjamin, Zeca Afonso. Leave a comment

MARIA GRACIETE BESSE sobre “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

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

Maria Graciete Besse: escritora e poetisa luso-francesa

Uma prática da Relação

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

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

mariagraciete7@aol.com

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

Édouard Glissant

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

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

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

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

Édouard Glissant, por Jennifer Dionisio

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

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

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

O Dia de Deus, de Paul Gauguin

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

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

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

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

Uma visão surrealista do artista haitiano Vanex Florestant

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

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

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

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

Cesária Évora, por Sersun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Promenade à Utopia, de Igor Bitman

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

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

MARIA GRACIETE BESSE on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/05/20

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MARIA GRACIETE BESSE on “ARCHiPELAGOS”

Amélia Muge | Michales Loukovikas

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

Maria Graciete Besse: a Portuguese-French writer and poet

Practice of Relation

ARCHiPELAGOS / Passages: Amélia Muge and Michales Loukovikas, Periplus

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

mariagraciete7@aol.com

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

Édouard Glissant

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

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

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

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

Édouard Glissant, by Jennifer Dionisio

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Day of the God, by Paul Gauguin

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

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

A surrealistic vision by Haitian artist Vanex Florestant

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cesária Évora, by Sersun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Promenade à Utopia, by Igor Bitman

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

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

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

29. BIBLIO – DISCO – GRAPHY

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/05/14

Posted in: MEDITERRANEAN periplus. Tagged: Adrien de La Fage, Aeschylus, Alain Daniélou, Alekos Xenos, Alexander Brailowsky, Amélia Muge, Ambracia, Anacreon, Andréia Pedroso, Anestis Delias, Anoushka Shankar, Antônio Jardim, Antonio Quintero, Antonio Vivaldi, Apollo, Apollonius of Rhodes, Aram Khachaturian, Argos, Aristides Quintilianus, Aristophanes, Aristoxenus, Artur Gouvêa, Athenaeus, Athens, Âşık Veysel, B. B. King, Béla Bartók, Beatles, Bernarda de Utrera, Bibliography, Boeotia, Camarón de la Isla, Ceos, Chalcis, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Cinaethon, Concha Buika, Crete, Curt Sachs, Cyrene, Dalida, Darius Milhaud, Demodocus, Dimitrie Cantemir, Dionisio Aguado, Dionysis Savvopoulos, Discography, Dmitri Shostakovich, Domna Samiou, Donn Pohren, El Lebrijano, El Turronero, Enrique de Melchor, Enrique Granados, Enrique Morente, Epigonus, Estrellita Castro, Eugammon, Eumolpus, Euripides, Federico García Lorca, Felip Pedrell, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Georg Friederich Händel, George Martin, Georges Bizet, Giannis Papaioannou, Giorgos Andreou, Hector Berlioz, Hermione, Herodotus, Hesiod, Homer, Hormoz Farhat, Hugo Riemann, Iannis Βernidakis, Iégor Reznikoff, Imperio Argentina, Ionia, Iovan Tsaous, Isaac Albéniz, Isabel Pantoja, Ithaca, Jimi Hendrix, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Juanito Valderrama, Kaygusuz Abdal, Kurt Weill, Lasus, Laurent de La Hyre, Lesbos, Limenius, Lola Flores, Lole y Manuel, Louis Lucas, Ludwig van Beethoven, Lycophron, Manolis Chiotis, Manolis Kalomiris, Manolo Escobar, Manos Hadjidakis, Manuel de Falla, Manuel Quiroga, Manuel Torre, Marchena, Marifé de Triana, Marinella, Markos Vamvakaris, Marsyas, Matar Muhammad, Maurice Ravel, Música Surda, Mediterranean, MEDITERRANEAN periplus, Melanippides, Melchor de Marchena, Melos, Melpomene, Mesomedes, Michales Loukovikas, Miguel Poveda, Mikis Theodorakis, Miletus, Modest Mussorgsky, Munir Bashir, Musaeus, Mytilene, Nicolò Paganini, Nikos Xylouris, Nina Simone, Orpheus, Paco de Lucía, Paco Peña, Panaiotes Tountas, Parisa, Pastora Pavón, Pastora Soler, Pericles Papapetrópoulos, Periplus, Phemius, Pherecrates, Phoebus Anogeianakis, Phrygia, Phrynis, Pindar, Pink Floyd, Pir Sultan Abdal, Plácido Domingo, Pythagoras, Raquel Meller, Ravi Shankar, Rhodes, Rocío Jurado, Rodolphe d'Erlanger, Roger Waters, Ross Daly, Sakadas, Salah El Mahdi, Samos, Sappho, Sara Montiel, Scheria, Seikilos, Sergei Prokofiev, Silverio Franconetti, Simon Karas, Simonides, Solon Michaelides, Sophocles, Sotiria Bellou, Sparta, Stelios Foustalieris, Stesichorus, Stratos Pagioumtzis, Taranto, Teos, Terpander, Thamyris, Thebes, Thelonius Monk, Thrace, Thucydides, Timotheus, Tralles, Triana, Utrera, Vangelis Papázoglou, Vassilis Tsitsanis, Vicente Espinel, Vissarion Shebalin, Wikipedia, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Yehudi Menuhin, Yiorgos Batis, Yorgo Bacanos, Yunus Emre, Zeus, Ziryab, Zoltán Kodály. Leave a comment

29. BIBLIO – DISCO – GRAPHY

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ 29. ΒΙΒΛΙΟ – ΔΙΣΚΟ – ΓΡΑΦΙΑ

Michales Loukovikas

I REMEMBER HOW METICULOUS (too meticulous, to tell the truth) I was in my first radio show: I had prepared two lists – on bibliography and discography – to read in the end, notifying the listeners of my sources of information, and also of the music I used during the show (I did not know then how to announce a piece of music without interrupting the narrative). I will never forget my total embarrassment while reading that screed: it was completely anti-radiophonic! “I will never do such a stupidity again!”, I said to myself. It’s the reason why there is no bibliography here, my fellow voyagers. If I rack my brain to recall what I’ve read or heard all these years and prepare a list, I guess, it would be unfair for all my other sources. What I already mention in the Chronicles, I think, is more than enough. As I stressed in Chronicle 14 (What is language? What’s its origin?), trust was a prerequisite of speech. Well, no one, I believe, will ever imagine that what I mention here are figments of my imagination! If something reassures me a bit is that… neither Herodotus nor Thucydides had bibliographies in their Histories!

● Nevertheless, I feel obliged to refer particularly to Wikipedia, to which I’m really so much obliged, though I often criticized or even made fun of it. In fact, the real target was never Wikipedia itself but certain writers. Anyone going there, I suppose, needs to have a) a critical mind, and b) certain knowledge of the subject. Be that as it may, Wikipedia is a fantastic treasure of information. Thank… Zeus, it’s there for all of us to consult!

Regarding discography, I never thought it would be necessary here. Besides, all the playlists with the music I used in each show were always on separate pieces of paper so as not to get mixed up with my other notes. The idea some friends had about a… proposed discography, with music that could be listened to while reading the book, is too exaggerated. Besides, I mention so many musicians and their masterpieces (mainly in the 1st part of our Periplus) that could be used as a proposed discography – although I’m afraid the readers (of the book) will soon turn into… listeners (of music)! Anyway, whatever we do, we shall never be able to revive that Mediterranean periplus on the radio. Its memory will be forever an exclusive privilege of the program’s listeners…

Musicians mentioned in the Mediterranean periplus

>> 30. MICHALES LOUKOVIKAS – bio

<< 28. THE MAKING OF THE MEDITERRANEAN PERIPLUS

Allegory of Music, by Laurent de La Hyre

iii) APPENDIX

28. THE MAKING OF THE MEDITERRANEAN PERIPLUS

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ 28. ΠΩΣ ΓΕΝΝΗΘΗΚΕ Ο ΜΕΣΟΓΕΙΟΥ ΠΑΡΑΠΛΟΥΣ

Michales Loukovikas

“… STARTING FROM INDIA with Ravi Shankar, he passes to the Arabs with their ouds, then to Andalusia and flamenco – and, why not?, to some Jimi Henrdix stuff, if he feels like it!”…

Pandit Ravi Shankar

That’s how a 9.58 fm executive responded, to the question of a new ERT3 radio manager, on what I played in the Mediterranean periplus, as he was impressed by the program’s ratings, having in hand the results of a related research: if this executive had included the… Persians, Bach and Beethoven, plus Latin America and jazz, he would have been closer to a succinct summary!

The Mediterranean periplus was born in 1998, when I was told that from then on my program would be daily (the previous years I had weekly shows: In Search of Orpheus, and Flamenco – Andalusia’s Rebetiko, when I translated Donn Pohren’s book, The Art of Flamenco, comparing the two genres). I was puzzled over what I would do in my new daily program, and decided to do something… extravagant, continuing in a way my Thessaloniki newspaper column, Mediterranean periplus, while playing music exclusively from my personal archive.

In short, I decided to present to the public the material I had been collecting for several years, not just buying discs (my resources were limited then: I would eat less to get “musical food”), but also copying from friends (in any house I visited, I would check the record collection, and then borrow some of them). I’m talking, nota bene, about the era B.I. (before Internet), when not only free downloading was non-existent, but also information about “world music” was, in fact, hard to find. In this way, I managed to gather a rather admirable archive.

I divided my archive into two categories (Orient / Occident), and numbered my discs and cassettes (Hellenic numbers for the Orient, Arabic for the Occident). I then figured out ways to get random numbers so as to eliminate the subjective element in music selection: these… lucky numbers corresponded to music from both categories (so that there was a balance between them); finally, I checked everything I played so as not to play it again – unless it was a listener’s request. (I don’t think there is any other “extravagant” person in the world who prepares shows in this way! Nor, of course, that if someone followed this recipe, he/she would be able to create a new Mediterranean periplus)…⁽¹⁾

⁽¹⁾ There was a girl who would come to the studio every evening to watch me while I was “on air” in an effort to “decipher” my way of making radio. I don’t know if she was an earnest fan of mine or a spy of the management – or if her intentions were more “down-to-earth”! In any case, after a month or so, she disappeared giving up her quest: I guess that she had probably decided I was undecipherable – or just… undesirable!

Nina Simone and Soteria Bellou

Anyone can understand that the pieces of music selected through this “lottery” were anything but corresponding to each other. That’s why a “rationalization” process followed to map out itineraries, build bridges, and find the information for each track, so that the journey would be unpredictable, and also meaningful, captivating and entertaining; you see, I loathed that “trendy style” to play a Nina Simone blues after a Soteria Bellou’s rebetiko! Add to this the digitization of all tracks that were not in CD format. As contributing in this field, I have to publicly thank Giorgos Andreou (who, after listening to some of my shows, turned to me and said, “You’re way ahead…” – with me looking dumbfounded, as I couldn’t understand then what he meant).⁽²⁾

⁽²⁾ It is impressive that my work as a radio producer has improved my work as a music producer! The experience I gained creating bridges between different cultures and genres of music in the radio program was used during the final revision of my work setting Ares Alexandrou’s poetry to music (The Gold in the Sky): this work, lasting 78 minutes, is essentially one piece, where each part leads to the next one – despite being a West-to-East voyage with many styles involved. In short, the radio made me a better musician! I am again indebted to Giorgos Andreou during this final revision phase of my work, as he helped me use the Finale program… When the time came later for my adventure in Portugal, in a partnership with Amélia Muge, I was equipped to employ all this knowledge in our own projects (Periplus and Archipelagos), sailing freely through modes, genres and cultures.

This spadework was necessary before any Mediterranean periplus. If you wonder what my anticipations were at the time, I expected – to tell you the truth – that the program would stop in two or three months, due to… lack of listeners! After all, the same thing had happened twice (102 fm radio, ERT3)… You can imagine my surprise when I learned that the program was a “smash hit”! I have to thank all the listeners for their longtime support and the great joy they have given me. As I realized from their phone calls, the Mediterranean periplus appealed to all ages (from high school students to retirees), to all social or educational backgrounds (from ordinary workers with basic education to intellectuals).⁽³⁾

⁽³⁾ Mediterranean periplus, nota bene, is dedicated to Homer, Herodotus, and the program’s listeners.

Ludwig van Beethoven

I have a lot to remember: university professors applauding my ability to simplify matters around music, or musicology students asking for my opinion on various musicological topics; Western classical music aficionados thanking me because I had opened the door for them to enter another immense musical universe, that of the Orient, or of the earthy, unsophisticated folk art; people who visited some Oriental countries telling those who met there: “You know, back at home we can listen to music from your country on the radio”; other people with psychological problems who found some solution listening to the Mediterranean periplus! But what I will never forget is the phone call of a simple, ordinary working man, who trusted me so much by then that he told me:

“Hey, buddy, I really go for you! For your sake, I even dig Beethoven!”…

>> 29. BIBLIO – DISCO – GRAPHY

<< Chronicle 27. AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’S WATERLOO

Chronicle 24. THE TRIUMPH OF CRETINISM

Posted by michales loukovikas on 2020/05/02

Posted in: CASSITERIDES archipelago. Tagged: 0, Abbasid, Abby Norman, Abdera, Academy of Gundishapur, Acropolis, Aegean, Agathias, Ala al-Din, Alamut, Albigensian Crusade, Alexander, Alexandria, Almanzor, Amun, Anastasius, Andalusia, Angelo Carletti, Antioch, Aragonese Crusade, Archipelago, Aristotle, Arnold, Artemis, Asia Minor, Athena, Athens, Augustine, Augustus, Aurelian, Avicenna, Aztec, Baghdad, Bakhtiyar Khalji, Baldwin, Battle of Mohács, Big Brother, Bihar, Blackshirts, Brent Shaw, Brescia, Bronze Age, Bronze Age collapse, Buda, Byzantine, Caelestis, Caesareum, Carl Sagan, Carthage, Catherine Nixey, Córdoba, Charles Kingsley, Christopher Columbus, Cilicia, Circumcellions, Cleopatra, Codex Justinianus, Colonialism, Colossians, Common Era, Commune of Rome, Constantine, Constantinople, Constantius, Cornish language, Cornwall, Corviniana, Crantock, Crusades, Ctesiphon, Cultural genocide, Cycladic culture, Cyril, Darkening Age, Decameron, Democritus, Deuteronomy, Diego de Landa, Donatism, East–West Schism, Edessa, Edward Gibbon, Edward VI, Egypt, Elgin, Ephesians, Ephesus, Etrusca Disciplina, Etruscan, Exodus, Fall of Constantinople, Ferdinand, First Crusade, Fourth Crusade, Franks, Freedom of religion, Gangra, Geneva, Genocide, George of Cappadocia, Ghazna, Giovanni Boccaccio, Girolamo Savonarola, Glasney, Gondishapur, Granada, Greece, Greek junta, Greeks, Harran, Heinrich Heine, Hellas, Hellenes, Hellenism, Henry VIII, Hernán Cortés, History of human rights, Holy Land, Holy See, Honorius, House of Wisdom, Hulagu, Human sacrifice, Hypatia, Iberia, Innocent, Inquisition, Isabella, Isfahan, Isis, Itzcoatl, Jerusalem, Jews, Jiménez de Cisneros, John Calvin, John Chrysostom, John Hawkins, John Malalas, John of Ephesus, John of Nikiû, John Pollini, John Toland, Jovian, Judeo-Christian, Julian, Julius Caesar, Justinian, Khosrow, Lateran, League of Nations, Leo, Levant, Library of Alexandria, Library of Antioch, Library of Constantinople, Libya, Lighthouse of Alexandria, London, Loukas Notaras, Madrasah, Mahmud, Marcellus, Mark Antony, Mark the Evangelist, Martin Luther, Martin of Tours, Mary, Mas’ud, Masudi, Matthew, Maya, Maya codices, Maya script, Málaga, Mediterranean, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Mexica, Michael Servetus, Michales Loukovikas, Minoan civilization, Mongols, Monotheism, Moors, Muhammad, Nalanda, Neoplatonism, Nestorianism, Nicholas, Nishapur, Northern Crusades, Novatianism, Nusaybin, Oghuz, Olmecs, Orestes, Ostracon, Ottomans, Ovid, Pahlavi, Pan, Papal bull, Parabalani, Parallel Lives, Paris, Parthenon, Parthenon Marbles, Paul, Pediments, Pelion, Periplus, Persia, Peter Abelard, Philae, Pink Floyd, Plato, Platonic Academy, Pogrom, Prince of Darkness, Ptolemy, Pulcheria, Quran, Racism, Ray, Reader, Reconquista, Rhineland, Robert Drews, Roger Waters, Rome, Rudolf Steiner, Rum, Saracen, Sassanids, School of Nisibis, Sea peoples, Serapeum, Siege of Constantinople, Simplicius, Slave trade, Slavery Convention, Socrates of Constantinople, Sturmabteilung, Sulla, Syriac, Tehran, Tenochtitlan, The Wall, Theodosius, Theon, Theophanes of Byzantium, Theophilus, Thessaloniki, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Lewis, Thrace, Tigris, Timothy, Titus, Toledo, Toltec, Tomás de Torquemada, Tripoli, Turkic, Urban, Venice, Voltaire, Xiang Yu, Xianyang, Yucatán, Zeno, Zeus. Leave a comment

Chronicle 24. THE TRIUMPH OF CRETINISM

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 24. ΘΡΙΑΜΒΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΚΡΕΤΙΝΙΣΜΟΥ

We don’t need no education…

We don’t need no thought control!

Roger Waters (Pink Floyd, The Wall)

Michales Loukovikas

● The Genocide of the Hellenes (Β) ● Hypatia’s Assassination ● Christianism
and Slavery ● Colonialism and Racism

“THIS WAS NO TIME FOR A PHILOSOPHER to be philosophical. ‘The tyrant’, as the philosophers put it, was in charge… Houses were entered and searched for books and objects deemed unacceptable. If any were found they would be… burned in triumphant bonfires in town squares… Anyone who made sacrifices to the old gods could, the law said, be executed. Across the empire, ancient… temples had been attacked, their roofs stripped, their treasures melted down, their statues smashed. To ensure that their rules were kept, the government started to employ spies… and informers to report back on what went on in the streets… and behind closed doors in private homes.

“The consequences of deviation from the rules could be severe and philosophy had become a dangerous pursuit. [A scholar] had been arrested and tortured to make him reveal the names of other philosophers… A fellow… had been flayed alive. Another had been beaten before a judge until the blood flowed down his back. The savage ‘tyrant’ was Christianity… the Christians were ‘the vultures’.”

Revealing, overwhelming evidence in Catherine Nixey’s breathtaking book, The Darkening Age / The Christian Destruction of the Classical World. It’s high time we “tear down the wall” of this Christian Iron Curtain:

“When modern histories describe this period… they tend to call it the ‘triumph of Christianity’.⁽¹⁾ It is worth remembering, however, the original Roman meaning of the word ‘triumph’. A true Roman triumph wasn’t merely about the victory of the winner. It was about the total and utter subjugation of the loser. In a true Roman triumph the losing side was paraded through the capital while the winning side looked on at an enemy whose soldiers had been slain, whose possessions had been despoiled and whose leaders had been humiliated. A triumph was not merely a ‘victory’. It was an annihilation.” And it wasn’t very far from a pillory, I should add.

⁽¹⁾ Χρίειν (ancient Hellenic: to anoint) > Χριστός–Christ (anointed) > Christianus (Latin) > crétin (French) > cretin. You see, Christianism and cretinism are (etymologically) identical!

A Roman Triumph, by Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1630)

That was exactly what the Christian leaders were after: “that all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims”, declared “Saint” Augustine to his congregation in Carthage – obviously, after he had a meeting with the… “Most Merciful” God himself!

“Christian observers would look on the tolerance of their non-Christian neighbours with astonishment. Augustine marveled at the fact that the pagans were able to worship many different gods without discord while the Christians, who worshipped just the one, splintered into countless warring factions… Despite that, he was not willing to extend such tolerance himself. It was, he concluded, the duty of a Christian to convert heretics – by force, if necessary… For those who wish to be intolerant, monotheism provides very powerful weapons. There was ample biblical justification for the persecution of non-believers. The Bible… is very clear on the matter of idolatry… And what precisely did God advise as a punishment for idolatry? Deuteronomy was clear: a person indulging in this should be stoned to death. And if an entire city fell into such sin? Again, the answer was clear: ‘destruction is decreed’.”(!)

ROMAN EMPERORS RULED ALEXANDRIA through a Roman Governor, or Prefect, with civil personnel which consisted mainly of Hellenes. This had worked well, until the moment that Constantine inaugurated a “Christian Monarchy”. Then a second hierarchy of officials appeared, in conflict with the old one. The “unorthodox” thought became a crime, and this second (continuously burgeoning) Church hierarchy, headed by a bishop, policed popular sentiments. This duopoly was an explosive mixture: the prefect derived his power from the emperor, of course; but the bishop considered he derived it from God – thus he was out of control. The conflict was sure to come if the bishop was an ambitious and fanatical person, such as Cyril, having opposite him an educated and urbane prefect, called Orestes. It was a clash between the tolerance of classic antiquity and the vulgar intolerance of the “New World Order” of Christianism. Moreover, it was unavoidable, as the atmosphere, mainly in Alexandria, had been explosive for some time.

The Lighthouse on Pharos islet (one of the 7 Wonders of Antiquity) and Alexandria in the background

● “The parabalani in Alexandria”, explains Nixey, “have been described as a ‘terrorist charity’ – a strange oxymoron… These men did, at times, good deeds but they also sowed fear. ‘Terror’ is the word used in Roman legal documents about them… The city had a new bishop, Cyril… the zealot Theophilus’s nephew. And, true to family form, he was a thug. Even Christians had reservations about this ambitious and brutal man: he was, as one council of bishops put it, ‘a monster’” – but “a monster” that could at any time deploy the parabalani, or his reserve army, several bands of fanatic, black-shirt monks. Soon, violence reigned.

The circumcellions were another extreme North African terrorist gang, based mainly in Carthage. Initially concerned with remedying social wrongs, they became linked with the Donatists, condemned property and slavery, advocated free love, canceling debt, and freeing slaves. But gradually, says Nixey, they “became notorious not only for their suicides but for their vicious attacks on those who didn’t share their particular Christian beliefs. [Their] ‘holy’ violence alarmed even the Church”, for they targeted not only the festivals of the old gods (a favourite target), but also priests, who were tortured and horribly killed as “traitors”. “Augustine called [their methods] ‘a new and unspeakable kind of violence’… and others might have been shocked by such acts – but the Church was reaping what had been sown. A few decades earlier, as… Brent D. Shaw has pointed out, Christian preachers had been glad of the circumcellions’ violence and cultivated it: in the attacks against the temples such freelance destroyers had been eminently useful and were drafted in to do the strong-arm work of pulling these buildings down… ‘Where there is terror, there is salvation… Oh, merciful savagery!’, said Augustine” – in tempore non suspecto. It was inconceivable that such gloating oxymora could turn into boomerangs! Such was the era’s “atmosphere”…

Hypatia, by Raphael (detail
from The School of Athens)

Great Terror: Hypatia’s Assassination

● 415. The Great Terror in Alexandria culminated with the brutal murder of the astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher, Hypatia, “a most beautiful, most vertuous, most learned, and every way accomplish’d Lady; who was torn to pieces by the Clergy of Alexandria, to gratify the pride, emulation, and cruelty of their Archbishop, commonly, but undeservedly, stiled St. Cyril”, as the philosopher John Toland said. The astronomer Carl Sagan linked Hypatia’s death with the demise of the Alexandrian Library. The assassination, symbolizing the end of Alexandria as a centre of wisdom and scholarship, was instigated by Theophilus’ nephew and successor, Cyril, the so-called “Pillar of Faith”, proclaimed as a “Doctor of the Church”, and canonized as… “Saint” – of all Christian denominations! Who are, indeed, the ones that err deplorably? All the Christian Churches in the world, or those who described him as a “thug”, “monster”, or as a “proud Pharaoh”, as the emperor Theodosius II called him?

Cyril began his reign the way he meant to go on: by persecuting his opponents. He eyed enviously the wealth of the Novatians, an established Christian sect of puritans. Edward Gibbon described them as “the most innocent and harmless of sectaries.” But they weren’t going to support him, and they had already joined his opponents. So, one of Cyril’s first acts was to close their churches and seize their sacred vessels and ornaments. He next, says Nixey, targeted the Jews:⁽²⁾

⁽²⁾ John “Chrysostom”: “’the synagogue is not only a brothel… it is also a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts… a dwelling of demons… a place of idolatry’. St Chrysostom’s writings would later be reprinted with enthusiasm in Nazi Germany.” (C. Nixey)

“A Christian attempt to regulate the dancing and theatrical displays – apparently much enjoyed by the city’s Jewish population – started a complicated chain of reprisals that climaxed in a Jewish attack on some Christians. Some were killed – and Cyril was provided with the pretext he needed. Mustering together a mob of the parabalani, as well as some of the merely brutal and enthusiastic, he ‘marched… to the synagogues, took possession of them, purified them and converted them into churches’. ‘Purified’ in such texts is often a euphemism for stole, self-righteously. The Christians then completed their work by purifying the Jewish ‘assassins’ of their possessions: stripping them of all they owned… they turned them out of the city into the desert.”

“Without any legal sentence, without any royal mandate, the patriarch, at the dawn of day, led a seditious multitude to the attack of the synagogues. Unarmed, unprepared, the Jews were incapable of resistance; their houses of prayer were levelled with the ground, and the episcopal warrior, after rewarding his troops with the plunder of their goods, expelled from the city the remnant of the unbelieving nation,” noted Gibbon.

Alexandria: the Canopic Way (now Ṭarīq al-Ḥurriyyah), the principal thoroughfare, intersected by the Sōma, where Alexander’s tomb was located – the two main arteries with the Agora in the centre.

“Orestes,” recounts Nixey, “looked on in horror… Ostensibly the most powerful man in the city, he was nonetheless unable to stop the uprising: a mere governor’s retinue was no match for 800 marauding, muscular parabalani. And the numbers of Cyril’s militia swelled. Around 500 monks descended from their sacks and caves in the nearby hills, determined to fight for their bishop. Unwashed, uneducated, unbending in their faith, they were, as even the Christian writer Socrates [of Constantinople, or Scholasticus] admits, men of ‘a very fiery disposition’. One day, they surrounded Orestes and began to insult him, accusing him of being a ‘pagan idolater’… One of the monks threw a rock and struck Orestes on his head. The wound started pouring with blood. Most of his guards… scattered… Orestes was left almost entirely alone.”

Orestes escaped. The order was probably “Terrify him!”, not “Kill him!” Some passers-by also intervened. The governor appealed to Theodosius II, the child emperor, and his guardian sister, Pulcheria – a pietistic “Christian virgin”, who was waging her own campaign for Christ, by turning the imperial palace into a monastery. Later on she was also “sanctified”! The appeal was in vain. The monk, named Ammonius, was executed for the attack, Cyril immediately hailed him as a “martyr”, but the Alexandrian Christians were in turn appalled: the execution took place for the attempted murder of the prefect, not for the culprit’s faith. Several people intervened, and Cyril, a master in manoeuvres and behind-the- scenes schemes, was obliged to bring the matter to a close – for the time being. But now a blood sacrifice was required to appease the henchman of Christ…

Hypatia, by Charles William Mitchell, brutally murdered by “Saint” Cyril’s thugs inside the Caesareum, his headquarters

Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the astronomer, rose to become the supreme figure of the Alexandrian School of Philosophy, which was second only to the Athenian School. Her fame attracted students (including Christian theologians) from across the Mediterranean. She was also very much respected by Orestes, who quite often consulted her. Cyril was incensed that Hypatia’s reputation and talents were giving the cause of Hellenism a “dangerous prestige”, and thereby preventing the “progress of the Faith”. The bishop had no scruples to liken the relationship of Hypatia and Orestes to that of Cleopatra and Mark Antony. “If she could,” he ventured, “she would set up an Egyptian Empire”! As he inveighed against the “harlot” from his pulpit, more fanatics swarmed in from the desert in response to his call.

● One day in March 415, Cyril agitated a “Sturmabteilung” of Black-shirts, a mob of 500 fanatical monks, possessed

“by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader [a minor cleric] named Peter”, testified Socrates Scholasticus. They “waylaid [Hypatia] returning home and, dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with ostraca [potsherds]. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them”…⁽³⁾ “No one in Alexandria was punished for her murder. There was a cover up”, adds Catherine Nixey.

⁽³⁾ It seems that the burning of dead bodies (or of any opponents, while they were still alive) was “typically” the final stage of the “etiquette” of bigoted brutalities. Traditionally, Alexandrians, and others in those years, carried the remains of “the most abominable criminals” usually outside the urban (and also… urbane) limits to incinerate them, cleansing symbolically the city. They burned the body, as well, to prevent the cult of a martyr or a hero. As we have seen, this was the fate of George, Marcellus, Mark – and now of Hypatia. So, there’s a chance that “Mark” the… “Venetian” (whom we met at the end of the previous Chronicle) is in fact Alexander the Great!

● Hypatia’s brutal murder sent shockwaves throughout the empire. Cyril, whom everyone saw as the culprit, had done something unprecedented, even with the standards of the era, targeting a prominent intellectual woman, and was now in great danger. Alarmed at Cyril’s conduct, the council of bishops of Alexandria sent an embassy to Constantinople, and an investigation was soon launched to determine his role in the murder. In the autumn of 416, emperors Theodosius and Honorius issued an edict, removing the parabalani from the bishop’s power and placing them instead under Orestes’ authority. Cyril probably only managed to escape some heavy punishment by bribing imperial advisers. The restrictions on the parabalani (limiting their numbers, and forbidding them to attend “public spectacles”, or enter “the municipal council or a courtroom”) show that they were found equally guilty. However, Cyril proved he was a master of intrigues: in two years, the parabalani were again placed under his control, and after a while, he had come to dominate the Alexandrian council. There was nothing to block his way anymore while heading for… “sainthood”!⁽⁴⁾

⁽⁴⁾ That’s what one version of the story says. Because, though it’s been 1,600 years since then, we still don’t know exactly what has happened. According to another version, Orestes ordered the execution of the monk Hierax (the provocateur in the expulsion of the Jews) for complicity in the murder of Hypatia. In a few days, says this version, Orestes was also murdered. Cyril, absolutely triumphant, declared that “Hypatia has gone to Athens”, while Orestes resigned and left. There had been no mob rule (ochlocracy), nor any tragedy. And then, Cyril himself nominated the new governor, the duopoly ceased, and religious tyranny enthroned itself in the erstwhile capital of wisdom. It’s amazing that, if you search for Orestes’ fate in the Internet, you read Cyril’s version: the prefect resigned and left… How then the parabalani were placed under his authority 1.5 years later?

Cleopatra at the entrance of
the Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Sometimes history is not written by the winners. Cyril’s propaganda may have worked for centuries. The rumours for Hypatia’s defamation (“she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her Satanic wiles”) echo in the writings of the 7th-century Coptic bishop, John of Nikiû. In the Middle Ages, Hypatia was co-opted as a symbol of Christian virtue, or her death was equated with that of Christian martyrs. The last advocate to speak out “in Defence of Saint Cyril and the Alexandrian Clergy” was perhaps Thomas Lewis in 1721. Since then, more and more books and works of art turn against Cyril and extol Hypatia. In 1853, Charles Kingsley romanticized her in his novel, Hypatia, as “the last of the Hellenes”. She was honoured as an astronomer, as well, in 1884, when a main belt asteroid and a lunar crater were named after her. “Unfortunately for Cyril et al”, said Abby Norman, “by killing Hypatia, they immortalized her. Indeed, had they left Hypatia alone, her work and name would likely have been lost to history. In death, she is as she was in life: unwilling to be silenced, ever-tenacious in her curiosity and wonder.”

● Regarding the Caesareum, where the hideous assassination took place, it was not an ordinary church, but “Saint” Cyril’s headquarters! And, needless to say, it was not a church, but an ancient temple that was “sanctified” at the turn of the 4th century, when Christians set about appropriating the property of all other religions to wipe out all their traces throughout the world. The Caesareum was conceived by Cleopatra as a dedication to Marc Antony. It was finished by the man that “finished” them, Octavian-Augustus, who, after wiping out all traces of Marc Antony in the temple and Alexandria, dedicated it to… himself!

● 420s. There was soon more trouble in Carthage, says Nixey, taking us to the other North African “hot spot”. “The one-mile-long temple of the Roman goddess Caelestis and all nearby sanctuaries were leveled… Fights could ensue during destruction and, in the process, Christians were sometimes killed [as well] – not necessarily a bad thing to some Christian minds”…

Parthenon in ruins and an Ottoman mosque (built after 1715), by Pierre Peytier (early 1830s)

● 429. A widespread persecution of Hellenes, who were considered as demon followers, was accompanied by the plunder of the Parthenon. Athena’s temple survived for nearly one thousand years, until Theodosius II decreed in 435 that all ancient temples throughout the empire be closed. In the last decade of the 6th century, it was converted into a church of Virgin Mary. Thus the Parthenon, disguised as “Parthenos” (“Virgin”), became the fourth most important Christian pilgrimage destination in the Byzantine Empire after Constantinople, Ephesus, and Thessalonica.

● “Even the Acropolis had not escaped”, remarks Nixey: “The colossal statue of Athena, one of the most famous works of art in the empire, was torn down from where she had stood guard for almost a thousand years, and shipped off to Constantinople… Many of the Parthenon sculptures were attacked. Faces were mutilated, hands and limbs were hacked off and gods were decapitated.”

East Pediment: Parthenon’s Marbles, or Elgin’s (for the British), or Mutilated (by the Christians)

“Go to Room 18 in the British Museum”, she challenges. “You will find yourself in front of the Parthenon Marbles,⁽⁵⁾ taken from Greece by Lord Elgin in the 19th century. The astonishingly lifelike statues are, today, in a sorry state: many are mutilated or missing limbs. This, it is often assumed, was the fault of Elgin’s clumsy workmen or fighting during the Ottoman occupation… But much was the work of zealous Christians who set about the temple with blunt instruments, attacking ‘demonic’ gods, mutilating some of the finest statuary Greece had ever produced… The East Pediment fared particularly badly. The vast majority of the gods have been decapitated… They were pushed off… and smashed on the ground below, their fragmented remains ground down and used for mortar for a Christian church.”

⁽⁵⁾ If you search for the “Parthenon Marbles” in Wikipedia, you’re redirected to the “Elgin Marbles”! Not only for the British authorities, but for Wikipedia, as well, the marbles (still) belong to the looter…

“Today, histories of this period, if they mention such destruction at all, hesitate to condemn it outright. The 1965 edition of The Penguin Dictionary of Saints records with little more than amused indulgence that Martin of Tours ‘was not averse to the forcible destruction of heathen shrines’. In modern histories those carrying out and encouraging the attacks are rarely described as violent, or vicious, or thuggish: they are merely ‘zealous’, or ‘pious’, or ‘enthusiastic’ or, at worst, ‘over-zealous’. As… John Pollini puts it: ‘modern scholarship, influenced by a Judeo-Christian cultural bias’, has frequently overlooked or downplayed such attacks and even at times ‘sought to present Christian desecration in a positive light’.”

The Rape of the Parthenon begins on July 31, 1801: Elgin removing the Marbles (reconstruction)

● In 457, politics bowed to religion, when Leo I became the first emperor to be crowned by the patriarch of Constantinople. In 491, the empire’s submission to Christianism became complete, when Anastasius I was obliged to sign a written declaration of orthodoxy before his coronation.

● Etrusca Disciplina, the Etruscan books of cult and divination, untouched by all ancient cultures, were collected and burned by the Christians in the 5th century, almost a millennium after the Etruscans had ceased to exist as a people…

Justinian: Genocide Act IΙI – Codex Justinianus

Goddess (Leto) carries a child (Apollo); roof ridge of the Etruscan Portonaccio Temple at Veii (510–500 BCE)

● 529. This year, which is often cited as the end of Antiquity, Justinian decided to shut down the Platonic Academy that had been revived in 410 as a centre for Neoplatonism and mysticism. The old Academy was probably destroyed by the Roman dictator, Sulla, in 86 BCE. The faculty members, wrote the Hellene poet and historian Agathias, looked for protection under the Sassanid king Khosrow (Khosrau) I (531-579), known to Hellenes and Romans as Chosroes, in his capital at Ctesiphon, carrying with them precious scrolls of literature, philosophy, and science. While exiled, Simplicius of Cilicia (perhaps others, too) might have gone to Harran (Carrhae or Hellenopolis), near Edessa, in Upper Mesopotamia, founding an Academy-in-exile. This school should have survived until the 9th century, facilitating a revival of the Neoplatonic tradition in Baghdad, with the foundation of the House of Wisdom in 832. Two of the major centres of learning in the intervening period (from 5th to 8th centuries) were the School of Nisibis (Nusaybin, close to Harran) in Asia Minor, under Persian rule at the time, and the Academy of Gundishapur, founded by Khosrau. The Austrian philosopher and educator Rudolf Steiner commented that the culture of Gondishapur (also home of a Library and a Medical school-hospital) was a premature efflorescence which was undermined and destroyed by the Islamic troops in the 7th century (Parallel Lives of monotheistic religions).

The “barbarians” were being Hellenized,
while the Hellenes were being barbarized

All this eastward “brain drain” started in 489, when emperor Zeno decreed the closure of the Nestorian Christian theological and scientific centre in Edessa. Its scholars were then transferred and absorbed into the School of Nisibis. There, in collaboration wi

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