Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 14. ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ ΨΥΧῌ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΣΩΜΑΤΙ

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

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

Michales Loukovikas

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

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

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

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

Hunting scenes in a Lascaux cave painting

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

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

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

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

What is music? What’s its origin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles Darwin, by George Richmond

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music as the Mother of Speech

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is language? What’s its origin?

Sleeping antelope, Sahara, southern Algeria

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

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

Baby talk and the embryo’s audio stimuli

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music activates the brain’s centres of communication

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

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

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

Music Lesson (Herculaneum, early 1st century AD)

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

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

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

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

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

Iégor Reznikoff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catharsis: the mental and moral purification through Dionysian ecstasy.

Orpheus, by Marc Chagall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bacchic Dance of Maenads in a Wood,
by Gustave Doré

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Davul

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relief of a maenad holding a tympanum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

●

.

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

Let’s follow the… tin!

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

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

Some content on this page was disabled on 2024/03/08 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from Julian Jarosch. You can learn more about the DMCA here:

https://wordpress.com/support/copyright-and-the-dmca/

Chronicle 9. THE CELEBRATED TRÍCHORDON

Chronicle 9. THE CELEBRATED TRÍCHORDON

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 9. TΟ ΠΕΡΙΩΝΥΜΟΝ ΤΡΙΧΟΡΔΟΝ

Persian setar (seh-tar = tri-chord = 3-string): Indian sitar’s “relative”

● Flamenco and Rebetiko, Guitar and Bouzouki
● Modal and Tempered Music ● Ross Daly
● Tanburs ● Ashiks ● Foustalieris and Iován
Tsaoús ● Entertainment and Edutainment

Michales Loukovikas

FLAMENCO AND REBÉTIKO’s lead instruments have been the guitarra and bouzouki respectively: the sound of these two instruments has become an absolutely necessary condition – sine qua non, as they say – for the two genres in their interpretation. Yet, the guitar and bouzouki may be evaluated as rather unsuitable for such musical idioms.

Rebétiko and flamenco: modal music genres accompanied by tempered instruments.

In terms of melodic themes, rebétiko and flamenco come under the category of modal music: that is, each song is based not on a simple musical scale but rather on a mode (“harmony”, or “echos”), with its own character, mood, and ethos, and with a variety of intervals that greatly outnumber the tempered-equal intervals of Western European music. In the accompaniment, however, both genres are dominated by the Occidental concept of chords and melodic phrases played on tempered instruments: the bouzouki and guitar’s frets are positioned according to these equal intervals, allowing the performance of just the notes of the piano. This contradiction, undoubtedly, creates various problems, imposes restrictions – but at the same time imparts a raw beauty to music when it flourishes at the borderline of distinct cultural areas. Its interpreters act like rope-dancers while balancing themselves between two worlds.

Bouzouki

The development of the guitar in its final phase, from the Renaissance onwards (seen in Chronicle 7), ran parallel to the development of Occidental music, with polyphony, counterpoint, and all the rest. The relationship between instrument and music, therefore, has been harmonious. The bouzouki, on the contrary, as a newcomer, has suffered from split personality. Even if it cannot be played with the classical guitar techniques that have crept into flamenco, it has gradually moved willy-nilly on the westernizing way of rebétiko, while major and minor scales have been substituting the multitude of modes.

Radical changes in the orientation of a musical genre are clearly reflected on its instruments. Although Music never reveals her face, the transformations of an instrument are clearly visible to the naked eye. Thus, we’ve seen the bouzouki undergoing a mutation and turning from a three-string (tri-chordon) into a four-string and electric instrument, while at the same time its tuning has changed, adopting that of the guitar just to facilitate virtuosities. This four-double-string… “guitarized” bouzouki was introduced by the superstar Manoles Chiotes (who was originally a guitarist), although it was not his own invention. Note that these developments occurred while rebétiko was on its deathbed.

Bouzouki mutated before and after the rebétiko era:
it was at first “mandolinized”, and then “guitarized”,
turned into a four-string and electric instrument.

Lavta with movable frets

That was the second mutation of the instrument. The first one happened before rebétiko moved into the spotlight, when the bouzouki, as a “prodigal son”, broke away from the tanbur family where it was raised, becoming a… Franco-Levantine: it lost both its tanbur-like appearance, and its movable frets enabling tunings according to the intervals of the mode to perform. They were replaced by the far fewer fixed metallic frets that permit the performance of just the tempered intervals. This metamorphosis was accompanied by other structural changes also modeled on the mandolin. In short, the instrument was at first… “mandolinized”. It continued “speaking” Greek, one might say, but with a foreign “accent”… ⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ Considering the fixed frets and their tempered intervals, the only way to approach the original sound of old rebétiko, i.e. the sound of modal music, is to use several tunings called düzenia,* depending on the mode. The only bouzouki player I’ve listened to using such tunings “live” (not in some special event or during a musicological program) has been another… guitarist, Demetris Mystakides. Thus while the rest of his program favoured vocal duets, the düzenia required ison (drone) – i.e. music had moved away from Occidental-style “harmony” towards Oriental echos and ethos.
  * Düzen: tuning, harmony (in Turkish).

Nevertheless, there is a type of bouzouki still in use that has remained true to its origins and is proud to be a brother of the tanbur. It is the Arabic bouzouki, the buzuq, or bozuq, played in the region of ancient Phoenicia: in Lebanon and the surrounding area. The country of the cedars is where the great modern virtuoso of the instrument has emerged: the gypsy-born Matar Muhammad,⁽²⁾ who might turn even “four-string” Chiotes… pale, even though he had allegedly earned Jimi Hendrix’s admiration for his playing!

• ⁽²⁾ Note that Matar’s repertoire featured the Greek spongers’ song Dirlada. The song was included in The Fool’s Garden album (1969) by Dionyses Sabbopoulos – who was taken to court in 1973 for its credits. Despite the rebétiko composer Iannes Papaiohannou’s testimony that he’d known the song for years as traditional, despite the fact that by 1970 it was already an international hit recorded by Dalida in French and Italian as Darla dirladada, the court ruled that next to the song title on The Fool’s Garden cover and disc, a phrase should be written (in parenthesis): “Adapted by Sabbopoulos; composed by P. Ghines or traditional”… You could take your pick! The song was also recorded in Serbian, Finnish, Hebrew, etc. Other interpreters in Hellenic included Domna Samiou, Nikos Xylouris, and Marinella.

Crusades and Lebensraum – Urban, Hitler and Zionists

It seems as a modern version of the age-old competition – but also emulation and exchange – between Phoenicians and Hellenes during the colonizing phase in the Mediterranean: the former on the southern coastline, the latter by the northern shores – without excluding reciprocal incursions. This very competition went on (and still goes on) with other protagonists: Punics and Romans, Arabs and Byzantines – until the Crusaders appeared on mare nostrum upsetting the status quo. You can see how old the idea on “spheres of influence” is, where the concept of Lebensraum (vital, living space) recently emerged as a fatal malignant tumour.

● Pope Urban II made probably the most influential speech of the Middle Ages on November 27, 1095, giving rise to the Crusades, by calling Christians to war against Muslims. The chronicler Robert the Monk put this into the mouth of the pope:

“… this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population… and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators… Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves… Dieu li volt [It is God’s will]!”

● How identical the papal words were to Adolf Hitler’s: “We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves from our own resources”, he shouted. Germany has “a tightly packed racial core”, and thus the Germans are entitled to “greater Lebensraum than in the case of other peoples.” As for Urban’s “wicked race”, the Nazis interpreted it as referring mainly to the Eastern European Slav population… There was, therefore, a long history of equivalent mentality between the “Holy See” and fascism; it wasn’t just a case of… love at first sight! (See also Chronicles 23–24).

● Adding to this historical irony, some of the Nazis’ victims, the Jews, under Zionist leadership, have embraced verbatim and wholeheartedly Urban’s call and Hitler’s Lebensraum theory and practice, encroaching on the lands of that old “wicked race”…

Tanbur, Pandura and Tríchordon

What is the origin of this instrument and of its various variants? It is apparently located in Assyria, as Pollux has already said about the pandura (see Chronicle 7, conclusion). How come that these various variants developed in Levante and Hellas, without influencing the rest of the Arabs, nor the Turks that found themselves in between in the meantime? We may just speculate on that; especially since the word “bouzouki”, according to Nicolas Andriotes’ Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek, is believed to have been Turkish in origin (büzük).⁽³⁾ We can see in this case, too, one of etymology’s so many oddities: an instrument’s godfather not to care much about it.

• ⁽³⁾ In fact, when the Turks say büzük, they mean a kind of bağlama; and when they say bağlama, they mean a kind of saz… (Some Greeks ordered from Constantinople “some little baglamás”… You can imagine their astonishment when they finally saw what they had bought!) So, the Greek terms bouzouki and baglamás are loans from Turkish referring to different, although related, instruments of the tanbur family, extending as far as India with the drone instrument, tanpura. Note, in addition, that the term tambour also denotes some kinds of drums. In the percussion category we have more derivative terms such as tambourine, tambora, tabor…
  ● The term büzük-bouzouki probably originates from a large Persian lute, the tanbur e bozorg.

Ross Daly

Unfortunately, we do not know how exactly the tambourás was played in Greece in the 19th century. Its playing, however, should have been quite different from that of the bouzouki or (at least today’s) Anatolian saz, though there are people who try hard to convince us of the opposite, for they introduce themselves as “masters of the tambourás”, while the instrument they play is in fact the saz – an instrument of the tanbur family in the form it has acquired in Asia Minor. Ross Daly describes the efforts to resurrect the tambourás:

“In recent years there has been much talk in various music high schools, educational institutions, schools of music and so-called conservatories about an instrument that is mentioned in Greek history, called tambourás. The instrument has not survived to this day. There has been no ongoing tradition since ancient times that, as they say, the tambourás originates. We can find old Byzantine theoreticians’ descriptions, folkloric descriptions, or references in books, we know more or less how it was tuned, what its form was; but we have never listened to it live.”

● The tríchordon: a three-string instrument of the lute family, also known as pandura, pandurís or pánduros. It was probably the only instrument with a neck used by the Greeks. In the Hellenistic times the term pandura was used to refer to a whole family of similar instruments played with a plectrum. Sachs says: ”it had a long arm…, small body, frets, and three strings”. According to Pollux: ”tríchordon, which the Assyrians called pandura; for it was their own invention”. We are told by Pythagoras that ”the pandura was made by the Red Sea Troglodytae with white laurel that grows by the sea”. In his Manual, Nicomachus writes that the monochord was called phánduros. Hesychius uses the term pandurís for the instrument and pánduros for the performer; pandúrion[, he claims, is] a diminutive of the word pandura. But Photius says: ”pandúrion, i.e. a Lydian instrument played with the fingers without a plectrum”. In his Dictionary Zonaras notes: “pandúrion… a kind of cithara”. (Solon Michaelides, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Music).

Muse playing a tríchordon-pandurís

“There is an instrument played today in Turkey that is considered as closely related to the tambourás: it’s the saz. Some say it’s one and the same instrument. First of all, it is not – and anyone can see that by a simple comparison of the two instruments. Besides, the style, the music an instrument plays, its construction – everything – are all in one. You cannot separate one thing from the other.

“What we have now as a result is a whole army of young people who have learned how to play the saz in recent years not through some kind of training or tradition, but completely self-taught and off-hand. They present themselves as tambourás masters though it’s obvious they have not the slightest idea. The people here know nothing about the saz, tambur, ney, not even the oud, although the Greeks have participated in the development of Anatolian culture. There have been numerous excellent Greek oud players; the best example may have been Yorgo Bacanós [Badjanós], the leading oud player in Istanbul in the mid-20th century: every Turkish oud player now drinks water to him. But, unfortunately, this tradition did not take root in Greece, and there was no follow-up.

“After this tradition had died out for some decades, with the revival of rebétiko in the early 70s, and even more around the 80s, when the people became interested in the Smyrnaic style,⁽⁴⁾ every bouzouki player bought an oud, as well; and started tinkering with it as if playing a bouzouki. This is one thing; another thing is to be initiated in the living tradition of this instrument in Turkey or Arabia where the oud is played now.

• ⁽⁴⁾ Smyrnaic (from Smyrna) and Piraeotic (from Piraeus): the two main styles of rebétiko.

Oud

“I cannot consider all these bouzouki players that were suddenly interested in the oud as successors of the tradition carried over by Bacanós, Agapios Tomboules, Lambros [Leontarides], the lyra player, or Lambros [Sabbaides], the qanun player. All these musicians carried a living tradition but, unfortunately, while they were alive, no one was interested in it; that’s why they left no successors.

“One could say, of course, the tambourás survived in Crete through Stelios Foustalieris’ bulgarí. However, Foustalieris changed completely his instrument, while he was deeply influenced mainly through his contact with rebétiko. His playing may be helpful; but this is not enough to revive an entire tradition. Let’s utilize whatever we have at our disposal; but without all that nationalist hot air specifically about this instrument that has become a symbol: ‘the tabourás of Makryiannes’!⁽⁵⁾ Some persons use it like a gun!”

• ⁽⁵⁾ General Iannes Makryiannes was a leader of the Greek struggle for independence (1820s).

Crete’s exchange with Constantinople and Smyrna, and also the wider area of Anatolia and the Balkans, was continuous until the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922. That’s how several tunes, and also the bulgarí, an instrument closely resembling the cura (tzurá), arrived there. But which cura? Here, too, the terms are confusing. The tzurás for the Greeks is the middle-sized instrument of the three that make up the bouzouki triad, while the smallest of the family is the Lilliputian baglamás, a typical prison instrument: due to its size it can be easily hidden. However, the smallest of the Anatolian tanburs is not the bağlama but the cura! Babel…

The pandura tradition in Asia Minor is autochthonous,
indigenous, at least since the Hittite and Assyrian times.

Different words, obviously, indicate differences not only in terms of dimensions, construction in general, but also in relation to the root of either the instruments or their users. Settling down in Anatolia, the Turks should have had instruments of the tanbur family, as we can presume based on the origin of these terms. But the peoples of Asia Minor had already been using similar instruments, such as the pandura, since time immemorial: at least since the time of the Hittites and the Assyrians. The tanburs, therefore, have been autochthonous there and their tradition has been Anatolian rather than Central Asian (Turkish).⁽⁶⁾

Âşık Veysel

• ⁽⁶⁾ I insist that the Ashik tradition has been Anatolian, not Turkish (Central Asian). During the international Musicological Symposium at Delphi in 1988 e.g., Reinhold Schlötterer analyzed the structure of Âşik Veysel’s song, Black Earth, pointing out that this melody corresponds to the ancient Hellenic musical system. Still, he hastened to add that we should not draw arbitrary conclusions claiming that the Anatolian music was actually dependent on ancient Greek culture. Besides, he concluded, Hellenic music had received antecedent idioms from Asia Minor. As we can see, Schlötterer compared ancient Greek and Anatolian cultures. He never intended to take into account in his analysis some Central Asian culture. Conclusion: Veysel’s source of inspiration, albeit in this song, was the ancient tradition of Greece and Asia Minor, not that of Central Asia. Therefore, the Ashik tradition is autochthonous, born and bred in Anatolia.

Ashiks, Alevis, Bektashis

We tend to forget this fact as we are under the false impression that the erudite Constantinopolitan tradition’s origin, on the one hand, has been Arabo-Persian (and Byzantine, of course, but we also forget) and, on the other hand, that the Anatolian folk music is “purely Turkish”… Would you expect anything else? It’s more than obvious that these advocates of “purity” – in sound and also race – are a global phenomenon. And if in this case the “purists” are Turks, OK (so to speak). But what if they are foreigners?

“At the court of the Ottoman sultans”, commented Alain Gheerbrant, who recorded and released songs of Âşık Veysel, “the official arts were so encumbered by flowery Arabo-Persian art poetry as to become less and less understandable to the common people. At the same time, the ashiks, often illiterate itinerant folk poets, maintained a tradition of poetry in song on Turkish soil. Since the 12th century, their poetry, worded in rigorous language and free of foreign influences, could be heard from the shores of the Mediterranean as far away as China.

“The Ottoman Empire disappeared; the popular tradition did not. Although there may no longer be any ashiks in Khorasan, they are still present in Anatolia. Âşık Veysel was not only the most brilliant of them all, he was also one of the greatest contemporary poets of the Turkish language. The tradition from which he drew his inspiration dates from the great semi-legendary figures of yesteryear, such as Yunus Emre (13th century) and Pir Sultan or Kaygusuz Abdal (16th century). His work shall remain, alongside that of his predecessors, in the collective memory of the rural peoples of Anatolia.

“His influence is also plain to see elsewhere, for the ‘Kemalist’ revolution has placed Turkey on the road to recovering its identity. A reconciliation was needed for that to take place: for the literate to abnegate their caste, set apart by jealousy, and recognize and hear the illiterate élites. Today’s Turkey has reached that understanding: one needs only to open a novel by Yaşar Kemal or view a few scenes from a Yilmaz Güney film to understand that Âşık Veysel, the aged, sightless bard, opened the eyes of all contemporary thinkers and artists, those who have carried the voice of their people beyond their nation’s borders eliminating the barrier of misunderstandings, preconceptions, and platitudes that impede all positive interaction between cultures.

Statue of Pir Sultan Abdal, who was
martyred and hanged for his beliefs

“Veysel, like all the ashiks, was of the Alevi–Bektashi faith, and therefore voluntarily alien to the rigid code of the Sunni Muslims. His philosophy, a fusion of the wisdom of the ancient Greeks of Asia Minor and the generous warmth of his Central Asian ancestors, was one of tolerance and freedom. He preached unity, understanding, and equality between all men and women, based on a religion that was turned inwards towards the earth, rather than outwards towards the sky”…

What a “flowery” garden… Had we not known Turkey, we would have thought it’s a heavenly land of the angels! Was the French researcher really serious, or did he tell one white lie after the other winking meaningfully at us? After all, why should he mention two prominent Kurds, such as Yaşar Kemal and Yilmaz Güney, who were jailed by the “‘Kemalist’ revolution”? And they were not the only ones. The most important persons of the arts and letters in Turkey have been treated collectively as subversive elements. Let alone how the Sunni state dealt with Alevis and Bektashis. What is, indeed, the use of such texts, except perhaps to serve public relations and personal gain?

● The Alevis, who live… persecuted in Turkey (indiscriminately and at all times: in the Ottoman, Kemalist or Islamist periods), should not be confused with the Alawites in Syria, who form a ruling minority. Alevis are grouped together with Shias (Shiites), though their religion, a syncretism of Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Shamanist beliefs, differs from both main branches of Islam. They usually gather for their ceremonies in houses rather than mosques, drinking wine, listening to music and dancing: an ashik plays bağlama singing their didactic “spirituals”, while both men and women dance whirling like Dervishes. Unlike Muslims, whose ceremonies are performed in Arabic, the Alevis use mainly Turkish, or Kurdish, if they are Kurds. At least half the Alevis think they are not Muslims. Sunnis accuse them of “heresy, heterodoxy, rebellion, betrayal, immorality”. Alevis, on the other hand, preaching love and respect for all, tolerance towards other religions and ethnic groups, equality between men and women, and respect for working people, consider Sunnis as “reactionary, bigoted, fanatic, anti-democratic”, opposing free and independent thinking. Alevis now see themselves as an offset to Sunni fundamentalism. Take into account that 1/4 to 1/3 of the inhabitants of Turkey are Alevis. Native Alevis in Greek Western Thrace are thought to number 3000 people.

Bektashi hymns

● Alevism is associated with Bektashism, as both groups honour Haji Bektash Veli (13th century). Bektashis had a strong presence not only in Asia Minor but also in the Balkans, especially in Albania, “North Macedonia” (Vardar Banovina, or ancient Paeonia), Bulgaria, and Greece, primarily in Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace and Crete. It seems only in Bosnia they failed to take root. Influenced by Sufi mysticism and also accused of pantheism, they share some ideas with Shias, and are not dogmatic. Sultan Mahmud II abolished various orders (Bektashi, Janissaries, etc.) in 1826. Mustafa Kemal banned Dervish Sufi orders and shut down their lodges a century later, in 1925. While Enver Hoxha acted accordingly, outlawing religious practice in Albania. Kemal and Hoxha acted on the basis of their ideas and interests. One would surely expect that the rest of the Balkan leaders, except, of course, those who are under Ankara’s aegis, would do the same taking advantage of the Sunni-Bektashi conflict, given that the great majority of the Balkan Muslims have been Bektashis. Yet, acting stupidly as bigots in power, they too turned against them, handing them over to the Turkish leaders. It’s what we describe as “politicians with foresight”!

Although most Balkan Muslims are Bektashis, the Balkan states did not take advantage of the Sunni-Bektashi conflict, and turned against them, as well…

A Hittite with a small pandura

LET’S GO BACK to the tríchordon-pandura and its long history in Asia Minor. There is ample evidence that instruments of the tanbur family have been played by Anatolians since age-old times. Christian Poché says:

“Asia Minor was from earliest antiquity the favoured land of the long-necked lute, as shown by the Hittite archaeological finds… Long before Arabic Spain, this geographical area served as a link between Orient and Occident, and as such transmitted through the ages these types of long-necked lutes that in classical Europe gave birth to the pandura, colascione, mandora…

“In Turkey, these lutes take on different names according to their dimensions, the populations who use them and the way they use them. The Turkmen term baglama or baglamaq, literally ‘tying’ (of strings around an instrument) is the one found most often, as opposed to the other widespread term, saz, a Persian word which designates the music, the act of playing it on any instrument, especially the long-necked lute. A third term, of probable Indo-Iranian origin, also serves in support of the musical vocabulary: tambura.⁽⁷⁾ Like the preceding ones, it designates a fretted instrument of six strings in pairs, whose terminology finds more favour among the Kurdish populations.”

• ⁽⁷⁾ Personally, I think that the term tambura probably originates from the Assyrian pandura or a similar Hittite word. If so, the term must be Mesopotamian-Anatolian and not Indo-Iranian.

A Greek islander with a tambourás (18th century)

Thus, with the exception of the Kurds, the term tanbur is avoided in Turkey in relation to this long-necked lute because a related but very different instrument, called tambur, is used in the erudite Arabo-Persian music of Constantinople. There are two variants of this instrument: plucked (the older version) or bowed (yayli tambur), depending on the way it is played – with a plectrum or a bow. In Greece, of course, the term baglama in relation to the same long-necked lute is also avoided for the same reason, so as not to be confused with the well-known homonymous small instrument, the bouzouki’s little brother.

The Bulgarí

Unfortunately, the etymology of the terms relating to the several variants of the tanbur does not explain what the origin of the word bulgarí may be. Excluding the possibility of a Bulgarian origin, there’s only one alternative: the word vulgar referring to the common people, the “lower” classes – anything “debased”. This possibility, together with the characterization of the Greek demotic as “vulgar”, shows how class, racist, or sexist language may sometimes become – well, not language itself but man, the one who uses it…

● Words are boats and their etymology is a map of their voyages together with the peoples using them. On second… searches for bulgarí’s genealogy, my first guess proves to be in a way correct: after all, there is a “Bulgar connection”! The instrument may not originate from Bulgaria but from Anatolia among the Turkomans or Oguzes around the Taurus; it may not be directly linked with similar Balkan lutes, such as the tambura, tamburica or bugarija; but its name derives from the Bulgars, the proto-Bulgarian tribes of the Volga Bulgaria region, with whom the Turkomans-Turkmens had contacts. These Bulgars, on the contrary, had no contacts with the (European, Slavic-speaking) Bulgarians for more than a millennium.

The bulgarí spread in the Mediterranean, especially to Crete and Egypt. Guillaume André Villoteau, a French musicologist, mentioned in 1807 a tanbour boulghari or guitare de Bulgarie among other instruments of the tanbur family he saw in Cairo: bağlama, sharki, and bozuq (replaced later on by the buzuq). The bulgarí was either brought to Crete by Anatolian refugees in the 1920s or, most probably, was already in use at least since the 19th century among both Christian and Muslim populations. Stelios Foustalieris e.g. bought his first bulgarí in 1924, having seen the instrument being played by older musicians. It is still in use mainly as a lead instrument and not for accompaniment, a role that was gradually taken over by the laouto.

The bulgarí has 16-22 movable frets, but some musicians, e.g. Foustalieris replaced them with fixed frets. It’s the main instrument of the tabachaniotika, a style close to rebétiko, supposedly developed by “Turco-Cretans”. The tabachaniótika are urban folk songs influenced by Anatolian, Syrian, or Andalusian–Maghrebian music. Ross Daly and Pericles Papapetrópoulos are now bulgarí’s most accomplished performers.

Iován Tsaoús and Foustalieris

At any rate, Foustalieris’ vulgar or Bulgar bulgarí, together with the instruments performed by Iannes Eidjirides (or Etseirides), the famous Iován Tsaoús, were the only kinds of tambourás that Grecian discography actually recorded. But what a pity! These instruments seem to have little in common with those played by the fighters of the Greek War of Independence: the bulgarí is a Cretan peculiarity, while Iován Tsaoús’ instruments are Anatolian – hence unsuitable for restoring the Hellenic tambourás and its sound.

Iován Tsaoús

Iován Tsaoús, i.e. Sergeant John, was born in Pontus and worked with famous musicians and singers, playing even in the sultan’s Court, as they say. On the contrary, when he fled to Greece after the catastrophe of ’22, “he never played on stage because he seemed to disagree with the way the musicians functioned: he remained an ‘edutainer’ of his friends.”⁽⁸⁾ This is what Panaiotes Kounades says at least; which means that he did not like the role of an entertainer, as he was used to a different situation in Asia Minor and Constantinople, where musicians functioned otherwise:

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

“Arabo-Perso-Turkish music,” the qanun player Nikos Stephanides commented, “in earlier times was performed by musicians playing saz, bouzouki and tambourines in folk songs; while serious music was performed by an ensemble called ince saz (fine instruments) consisting of the following: tambur (pandura), psalterium [psaltery] – qanun in Greek, Arabic and Turkish – violin, oud, ney (reed flute). The ensembles had singers called hanendes. They had beautiful voices and played tabors – tambourines – keeping the various rhythms of the melodies being performed.

“When the ensemble played and the hanende sang, everyone was silent in the venue. Even the waiters did not move from their positions. Only during the breaks, when the ensemble stopped playing, the public discussed or ordered the waiters whatever they wished for. If they wanted the ensemble to play a song, they put a card with the order and a corresponding tip inside an envelope, and the waiter carried it to the artists so as to perform the piece he wanted. Such was the order inside the venues, which in those old times were equipped neither with loudspeakers nor with amplifiers and, although the musicians played with a natural sound, the audience were able to listen even in the large venues, where they oftentimes numbered more than 500-1000 persons, because they were completely silent”…

Panaiotes Tountas

When you are accustomed likewise – playing high-standards music with such partners and in front of such audience – how is it possible to restrict yourself to the role of an entertainer? Iován Tsaoús, therefore, chose to open a… tailor’s shop, which he later turned into an ouzo tavern, playing for his pleasure and not for the entertainment of the patrons of an establishment. Fortunately, he met Panaiotes Tountas, the greatest composer of the Smyrnaic style, and also artistic director of phonographic companies; so he recorded a number of his own songs and some other compositions, mainly by Tountas. These few recordings (about twenty in all) took place in just two years (1935-36), because when the Metaxas dictatorship imposed censorship on lyrics and music (and music!), Iován Tsaoús abandoned the idea to continue, as some others did, as well, such as Vangelis Papázoglou, Giorgos Batis, and Anestos (Artemes) Deliás (see Chronicle 13).

But anyway, less is more: these moments in the studio – however few – reflect the virtuosity of the musician who became a kind of “master” of the Piraeotic rebétiko protagonists: Batis, Deliás, Markos Bambakares, Stratos Paioumtzēs – that is, the “Famous Quartet of Piraeus”. They learned from him the names and techniques of the musical “routes” (modes), the art of improvisation (taqsim), and also the several tunings, the düzenia. All the above, combined with his unusual personal style and “eccentric” instruments that the bouzouki players of rebétiko did not dare to touch, let alone play, created a myth around the name of Iován Tsaoús, or… “Sgt. Iován”.⁽⁹⁾

• ⁽⁹⁾ Sgt. Pepper, who “offered” the Beatles their masterpiece, was an imaginary person. But on the contrary, Sgt. Iován, in Greece, was real. Unfortunately, no one has ever had the idea to form a… Sgt. Iován’s Lonely Hearts Club Band!

Canción Malagueña, by George Apperley (1931)

In our “modern” world, unfortunately, the musicians have no way out from the stranglehold of the entertainment circuit (clubs, festivals, etc.). That is, there has been no parallel “edutainment” circuit on a professional basis. In Andalusia, on the contrary, at least until the 60s, there was such a circuit for flamenco artists. Up to the latest development of the genre into concert and theatrical flamenco,⁽¹⁰⁾ these artists were divided into two major categories: the commercial entertainers worked primarily in tablaos, while the authentic “edutainers” were employed in juergas, the feasts organized by flamenco aficionados.

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Concert and theatrical flamenco: having as protagonists the guitarists and dancers respectively: yesteryear’s leading artists, according to flamenco’s traditional hierarchy, the singers, have been sidelined – together with cante jondo and duende that avoid concert halls or theatres…

There’s been no way out from the stranglehold of the entertainment
circuit for the musicians: there’s been no parallel edutainment circuit.

Stelios Foustalieris

The other tambourás master, Stelios Foustalieris or Foustalierakis, together with his partner, the excellent singer Iannis Bernidakis or Baxevanis, belonged to the large batch of musicians and singers, who appeared in Rethymnon during the interwar period. The instruments accompanying the lyra at that time were the bulgarí and mandolin, according to Lambros Liavas. They were later replaced by the laouto. But Foustalieris managed to turn bulgarí into a solo instrument and worked with two Anatolian musicians playing the oud and santur. They were among those who sought refuge in the island after the catastrophe of 1922. So they should have imparted to him musical elements from the original cradle of his instrument. Unfortunately, there are no recordings from this collaboration.

Later he came into direct contact with the sound of the Piraeotic rebétiko. It was in the period of 1933-37, when he lived in Piraeus and also met Batis, Markos, Stratos and many other musicians of rebétiko, as well as Tountas, with whom, of course, he collaborated in discography. But here, too, the output was meagre: just 24 discs.

We wonder if the two tambourás masters, Iován Tsaoús and Foustalieris, finally met; if there was some exchange of knowledge and expertise. Having so many acquaintances in common, one would expect that this meeting did happen. But there is no available information.

Iován Tsaoús died 49 years old, in 1942, during the German occupation of Hellas that “wiped out” the vast majority of the élite of Greek musicians and singers: the Anatolian refugees. Apparently they failed to go through one more calvary so soon. On the contrary, Foustalieris passed away 50 years later, in 1992, when he was 81. Being… “the last of the Mohicans” among the select few traditional masters of tambourás, we suppose he attracted the attention of the authorities. This would have happened in almost any country; but not in Balkan Greece…

While Foustalieris was still alive, in 1987, I had a discussion on the radio with Sakis Papademetriou and Ross Daly – who concluded as follows:

“Crete, compared perhaps with other parts of Greece, somehow maintains its tradition in a better shape, in the sense that it’s been renewed. But because there have been neither significant studies on music nor recordings, each passing decade brings terrible losses. In the few years that I’m there, I’ve met old musicians who in the meantime have died and with them many archives have been lost. There are very few now left.

Stelios Foustalieris, Giorges Gogas, Kostas Mountakis and Ross Daly.

“Foustalieris, the last bulgarí player, is still alive. He’s around 75, but no one has gone there with a tape recorder to tell him: ‘Play – and when you get tired, stop!’ However, no private individual can do such a thing because Foustalieris will be afraid he’ll be exploited. In such cases, an official state agency can easily surpass any problems and Foustalieris, as a man with an old mentality, will warmly respond. At least something like that, now that there is still time”…

● Time’s passed, Foustalieris has died, the rest of the masters follow, but there have been no recordings – an undertaking of minimal expense. “Hellas, the eternal”…

● On second dispassionate thought, I wonder whether – as a daydreamer – I ask “too much” from a country that has not given a damn about the essence of Makryiannes’ Memoirs. Why then should they care about the way he used to play his tambourás? Let alone about Foustalieris and his own bulgarí…

● So, our only hope is to see the fulfillment of a verse, albeit paraphrased, of a most beautiful old song, Staphidianós, played superbly by Foustalieris on his bulgarí, having beside him an amazing Baxevanis:

“The good old Foustalieris song will never fade away”…

• >> Chronicle 10. THE… “SUN LANGUAGE”
• << Chronicle 8. A HYBRID’S HYBRIS…

Next Chronicle 10. THE… “SUN LANGUAGE” ● Linguistics à la Turca ● İsmail Beşikçi and the Kurds ● Egyptian, Graeco-Byzantine, Arabo-Persian, Turkish Music ● Assimilation Through Religion and Language ● Arabic Music Schools

Ross Daly playing tarhu