In the process of collecting data on music ecology, locality and sociology, the tool of interviews was used. The interviewees were contacted before the interviews, and were presented with a loose concept of the triptych of locality ecology and sociology. The goal of not presenting to them the full concept of the study prevented the interviewer from directly forcing the conversation to what he needed to hear. On the contrary, these subjects arose, as if for the first time, during the interviews. Both interviews were conducted in a very informal environment, where we all sat around the same table, shared food and drinks and casually talked about the matters in question. The conversations were recorded with the permission of the interviewees. The audio files of the conversations then were transcribed and reflected upon. The parts relevant to music ecology, sociology and locality were separated from the text in such a way that the meaning of the passages would remain unaltered. For the sake of clarity and transparency, the full extent of the interviews is presented in the appendixes segment 10.0.
The interviews touched a series of matters, sometimes more tightly connected to ecology, sociology and locality, and at other times in a looser way, providing support and context for the interviewer to better understand the topics at hand. In this segment we will present those passages in the order that they appeared in the interviews and will be analysed according to locality, ecology, or sociology. It is useful to remember that these matters are not exclusive to each other but could be eventually categorised in more than one group.
The interviews in Epirus occurred in the house of the interviewees, in the presence of Singer1 and Singer 2, the clarinet player of their ensemble and the family of singer 1 (mother and two children).
We will refer to Singer 1 with the mark S1, to Singer 2 with the mark S2, to the clarinet player with the mark CL and to the interviewer with the mark INT.
Passage 1:
S1: Look, Pogoni does not have anything. They have only pentatony. Doric style.
Simple, no ornaments, Doric, nothing unnecessary. And polyphony and laments.
And the laments dominate cause the people were sad, and they were singing continuously.
The man would go away, the son would go away, there were only the women left. They would leave to go to work elsewhere. If you search and see, Epirus is not a fertile land. It is all mountains, stones, snow in the winter. You don’t reach easily. What do you cultivate up here? Nothing will grow. The livestock almost non existing at that point. So, they would go abroad (interesting point is that abroad is not specified as outside Greece but of out of Epirus). The women would stay back, and they would lament. Imagine the kids would have equal distances from each other. About two years. When the man would come back, they would have a child, then go away. Return, another and away.
That was the life, there was no other way, they could not live differently. They should make their brains work. They would be traders. Especially the ones from Zagori.
INT: So I suppose that through commerce happens all this mixing and contacts (east and west).
S2: Surely! Also, in Preveza. There is a mixed situation as well!
They were a harbour so they had more influences!
S1: You can hear pentatony. You also hear influences from byzantine time. These are the eastern influences.
In this passage, we get information about the style of music in the area of Pogoni, in Epirus. In terms of music ecology, according to S1 there is a direct line connecting the infertility of the land with the difficulties of living in these lands and the way they would use the music locally. Further on, there is the example of Preveza, a harbour city and the fact that because of its environment there is more social interaction, and the music is influenced differently than Pogoni, which is high in the mountains.
Referring to the style of music in Pogogoni, S1 describes it as simple and Doric, using it through laments and polyphony. He is now touching the social aspect of this music becoming a tool for describing the situation from the local communities. The music in either polyphony or the laments would mainly be used to describe the heavy feeling of males of the community having to emigrate to find work and provide for their families and females remaining behind dealing with the everyday life and living with the absence of the other half.
Let’s keep in mind that we are talking about times when gender roles were a lot stricter and would reflect different societal structures.
Passage 2:
INT: They were leaving from here to go where.
S2: Germany and America.
Before the Zagori people in Cairo, There Kapesovo song comes from.
Istanbul. But later mostly Germany. But everywhere around the Mediterranean Sea as well.
The same as in the ancient Greece.
CL: People from the city of Ioannina they did not have pentatonic songs here.
The pentatonic songs are fertika (brought here from somebody). Because they would come away from the villages, from Pogoni and they would bring. It was an urban centre here. They had no connection with Ioannina before. These are also information from my friend and teacher, who was up here in Lakkomata, P.Z. He could give you more information form the city of Ioannina and the culture.
S1: So with the trade the eastern sound came as well.
Not so much, you would not hear it that much in the old days.
I hear it more in Zagori than elsewhere else.
Yes, there were a lot of Ksenitemenoi in zagori.
Ksenitemenoi where all.
CL: They also took the urban songs of the city of Ioannina. For example, Bazarkana is an urban song, or Archontopoulo. It says I was talking with Beides and the Pashas. Where were those officials?
In the city. Or Karaberia. Clearly a song from Ioannina.
In this passage we get primary information regarding the places of emigration of the people of Epirus. Even when traveling they kept their roots and their origin close to their heart and songs were sung for their emigration and their Nostos, their missing the motherland. Kapesovo, which is mentioned here, is a traditional 5/4 from the Zagori area that starts by saying in the lyrics that the singer got sick in Cairo and will only heal in Ioannina back in Epirus and, if not that, he can at least die in Kapesovo.
Subsequently, we get the information that even though Pentatonics exist strongly in Pogoni, some 50 kilometres from the region capital in the city of Ioannina, this tradition is practically non-existent. We immediately notice the role of locality in music tradition in addition to the reasons why the capital had different ones. Ioannina as an urban and commercial centre had influences from all the musicians that passed through from east and west, adopting mostly the eastern sounds and the makams for two reasons. Due to the difference of music ecology but also because of their history as an important city during the Ottoman times, they were strongly influenced by those traditions as well.
Finally, we see the influences of the locality in the lyrics of urban songs such as Karamperia and Archontopoulo, which talk about the connection of the main character with wealth and the local high-ranking lords of the Ottoman empire, signifying a clear location setting in the city of Ioannina.
Passage 3:
S2: pls note that according to the area they chose different rhythms.
We will also go to the rhythms.
S1: Here I think we should look at three different things:
1) the sounds. Personally, I think they do not have so much of an eastern sound.
They play the scales, but the feeling is not the same that you would hear from a band from Istanbul.
2) You should investigate the rhythms as per to the areas
Cause every area has different songs. For example, Zagori has own repertoire and rhythms, the syrta in other place, the pentationic in Pogoni, that they are very slow, almost non danceable f North Ipeiros, from this side Syrako and Tzoumerka they hear a lot of Tsamikos, in three.
You cannot go as a singer without having the right repertoire there. You will be humiliated.
CL: They are influenced as well from commerce and from Ksiromero. Cause loads of them left from Ksiromero down there and came up here, or the Vlachs were coming and going.
Here in Epirus we do not have many Syrtos as they have in Peloponnese.
Those typical paniguria (open celebrations with music in the honour of a place, a saint of the protector saint of a place) from Peloponnese that you will see in tv with the typical music that also resembles some island music and the syrta and the kalamatiana that you will find there, here they don’t exist. In some places they do exist, but they have the 3 of the seven in front.
S1: You mean like Metsovo that they hit them differently?
CL: Ok in Metsovo all the dances are the other way around.
I don’t know if I can dance those. They lift the feet somehow strange.
Only them. They do it upside down.
They jump as if they would step to crash the grapes.
S2: Yes yes!
And they dance separated. They dance facing each other (traditionally dances from the area are circular dances)
For example the have this karsilamas, the tourka as they say,
‘I cannot understand if you are Turkish or Greek’’ the know them in Anilio up there.
Genovefa they have. It is a simple little 4 but it is so juicy!!
Cl: For Metsovo you better find someone from there.
If you want, I have friends there to talk to you.
S1: Also, this is music that came to Greece through the Balkans.
It is not eastern not western. It is a thing on its own.
INT: Now the polyphonics where do they come from.
S2: Usually from Northern Epirus. So, I guess from there.
Imagine in the Ottoman empire this was one place only.
Even today it is not a barbwire between them or a wall. It is the mountain line.
CL: My father goes hunting and the dogs have million times ended up on the other side.
Polyphony was also used to fill the lack of instruments. They did not have a lot and sometimes not at all.
Here we start by witnessing the plurality of rhythms, but also the special sound of Epirus.
Even though the makams were used in some of the music of Epirus, the sound significantly differs from that of the music in Istanbul. In terms of music locality and sociology this makes complete sense, as the metropolitan setting of Istanbul is nothing like the environment in the city of Ioannina and even less like the villages of Zagori. It was mentioned that even if the scales are the same, the feeling is completely different. We clearly see once again that when the same music travels and relocates it is bound to bend and adapt to its new environment and way of life of the musicians.
Then, the different rhythms and repertoire between different areas were mentioned. In the example of Pogoni and Zagori and north Epirus, three areas that coexist in a radius of no more than 80 kilometres from each other, the music is so different that you cannot perform if you do not know the local repertoire. It was considered unacceptable and embarrassing. The locality, the ecology and the sociology again play their role in these differences.
Further than that, despite the local differences, there is an even greater and more chaotic distance between the sound and aesthetics of the whole of Epirus with Peloponnese, in the southern part of Mainland Greece. The differences come in the rhythms and aesthetics, again due to locality, ecology and sociology.
Even when rhythms find their way to a place in Epirus, the spirit of the same music changes completely and is foreign to the rest of Epirus.
In the example of the rhythms and dances from Metsovo, CL mentions that they look strange to the eyes of other Epirotans, because the rhythm is upside down and they look as if they are jumping on grapes. This is a beautiful image that once again borrows its thematic from the nature and the way of life in the mountainous side of Epirus.
In the latter part of this passage, there is a clear appearance of locality, when describing dances and rhythms, which function completely differently outside Epirus compared to the local ones. The difference of Balkan music and rhythms that reached Epirus was also acknowledged, while clarifying that during the Ottoman years there were no actual borders between those areas, but the natural differences signified different areas. That explains in a second degree the often lack of respect of the locals to borders as something dysfunctional.
Passage 4:
S2: Let us also give the point that the singers, sing as they would imitate, streams, birds and more. Also, the clarinet. Babis many times is telling me ‘’this one must be sung like this’’, I was asking how.
He would play it with the clarinet, he would give me the line, not the basics. He would give me the melisma, that is imitating a bird or something else.
In this passage we can see S2 sharing the experience of having to go to the natural environment to get the correct way of singing in the local aesthetics, showing the direct connection to it.
Passage 5:
S1: NO. you must have the pictures and the experiences to sing. Also, for someone writing the lyrics.
You have different experiences. He is in his own world. You must have felt pain. You cannot be happy and write.
Also here comes in the environment. If you live in an environment like this, you will get this felling (talking about Epirus). The space plays a major role.
Also in the idiosyncrasy of the people, also in the local dialect and the local language and in the songs. You have lived in Giannina and you know.
CL: Even the drink you will have. Other feelings come out with tsipouro, and other with Whiskey.
Another with Ouzo.
Here if you don’t complain the song does not bounce to the people. You cannot say it in a European way. It does not exist. If you don’t come here and live here, you can’t feel it.
I have heard Chatzopoulos one of the biggest violin players. He said one cannot play a song from an island and not know where the island is. Damn his eyes.
Also, geography plays its role.
You cannot want to play something from Pogoni, ‘’Sto vasiliko ela’’, and not know where is Vasilikos!
Another one, kato stin agia marina. Agia Marina is in Pogoni is in Igoumenitsa. You cannot not know it!
If you have not been in Kapesovo, you will not understand why he goes there to heal.
During this interview I find that in this part the interviewees went deeper and deeper to music ecology and started more consciously giving examples of it from their everyday reality.
Both in lyrics and images it is considered crucial to have the personal experience of a place and be emerged in it to play the local music. There is a strong point about how local environment affects the music as well as the way of life of the local society and the musicians. All the way to the type of alcohol they consume, what feelings it brings, and how even that matches the needed local expression.
In the last part, CL continues saying that he considers it unacceptable to sing about places whose location you do not know and you have not visited, in order to give the songs the right feeling. Examples from Agia Marina, Vasilikos and Kapesovo Villages were used to make the point.
Passage 5:
CL: Also, for north Epirus. If you do not know the history of North Epirus, you cannot sing like it.
S1: starts to sing Deropolitisa.
CL: Yes! Deropolitisa. I cannot perform in this song. Personally, I can’t. Albania and north Epirus. I have never been there. Even for a ride to go with the car. And we have a lot of friends from there. I don’t have the experience.
People there have found trouble. Some people of north Epirus they consider themselves Greek and here we consider them Albanian.
There are some cases in syrta that you do not need to give pain. It does not matter. The instruments lead you. The rhythm takes you. In Epirus this is not the case. If you do not take it yourself where it must go it cannot be heard. Its unpleasant.
Yet another mention of the intention behind the music. The musician is called to live the story of the melodies and the songs to play them otherwise the song is not delivering the message that it should. Immersion in different areas is crucial to the interpretation of music, proving that knowing the notes is not enough. The images and the energy of each place guide the way of the music derived from those places.
Passage 6:
S1: Look it is music connected to earth. And the themmatology as we talked. And consequently, the music phrases that form are phrases that do not have forced sophisticated art. Not to become complicated. You just have to breath the music. How do you breathe? When we breath and talk we do not do it in a sophisticated way. We are talking about ordinary (simple) people.
So you will not find melodies going away from your octave. It stays there in its octave.
You will not find complex harmonies, nor melodies. So, all this comes in these 5 notes to put your feelings. You must put your brain to go off the 5 notes ok. But that is not the point.
You can move only in the five notes. In the pentachord. And this is your song. Take a song. What is it? 5 notes.
Here we have a very important testimony of a singer explaining the fundamentals of playing music. The instruments and voices are called to express in an original way that depicts environment and way of life. Not in a pretentious way. Simplicity and directness guide the music to become one with the environment and be the right tool in the hands of each community. Restricting the skill to simplicity is the way of getting value out of life. As simple as breathing.
Passage 7:
S1: It is since ancient Greece. It stopped and continue later.
Back then the music was functional. You do not play music just to play music. You play for the function of it. An offering to a god, music for theatre. But I think in the past this was not a separate thing. At all times the function was there. When someone passed away, we would lament in the church, after we would still lament on the grave. At all times the was the need.
Here we encounter the strongest point of music sociology in this interview. The intention of the music is in the centre of everything, always in the service of community. This process is lost in time and appears frequently through the years. Lamenting is one of the strongest examples of music becoming the medium of expressing feeling and feeling complete, even in the most desperate of times, personal or collective.
Passage 8:
S2: Here we sung two minors and one major. These go on and on, stis pikrodafnis, vasilikos tha ginw, de mporo manoulam and so on. Now we play with the tempo. If we are quite normal with time, we go to this tempo. Closer to the dawn we will go to a much slower tempo, for example.
S2: These are only for the dawn of day.
No in the same rhythm 4/4 if you are in the case of dancing, I have my tempo here in 150bpm they become almost rumbas.
We are here in this category, in weddings, in celebrations and so on, If they dance you sing faster songs and if not.
S1: These are the programs of today right? It needs to last for hours and hours.
But when you also sing, I have a great sorrow in the heart, you cannot sing it fast. This cannot happen. This one you sing it slow; it is not celebratory!
S2: What S1 says, exists with different lyrics se touto to xwrio.
That can be faster but still not too fast.
In this passage, S2 explains a few of the rules about how to set up an expressive performance. The aspects of feeling in terms of joy and sadness exchange places with the use of different scales and tempo defines the spirit as the hours of the day and the performance progress along with the expression. Every occasion has its own signature aesthetic, tempo, and mood. Not because the players decide but because the occasion dictates it.
Passage 9:
S1: One of the pillars of Byzantine chant, Chrysanthos in the 1800, separated the musician in three categories, the empirical one, the one from art and the scholar. He claimed that the scholar should be able to move and direct human feelings through music. You want to make them sad; you make them sad, you want to make them happy, you make them happy, you want to make them forget, you make them forget. And every sound in the 8 sounds has a little explanation that characterises it. One is like emvatirio, one is hydonic, one is like this one is like that.
Yet another beautiful example of sociology and the purpose of music out of the words of a Byzantine scholar.
The ability of the musicians to help in guiding the listener in the direction they please.
This is a serious and conscious choice of the musicians to lead the community through circumstances and all the way to catharsis.
Passage 10:
CL:
1) pikrodafni,
2) kontoula lemonia
3) Nteli papas. Priest is compared to nature. How do you describe the beauty of a person?
how do you describe a feeling.
Because this is what they were in contact with, and they know.
Here we have the explanation of CL regarding the thematic of lyrics that borrow scenes from the local natural environment to describe people and circumstances. In the music of Epirus, the music and the lyrics have a very tight connection with nature and most of the characteristics of emotions feeling and beauty derive from metaphors from nature. This comes down to traditional knowledge and everyday life scenes.
Passage 11:
What type we have not touched?
instrumental.
They are skaros, laments, played and sung, kagelia,
The instrumentals are more decorated. Klamata from Preveza.
Klamata is not very typical from here.
It is happier.
They see the sea these people.
‘’in the islands people they are more open’’
Filoksnia (hospitality) is sacred.
As you can see.
Finally, we touched on the instrumental parts of the music of Epirus. Even in the absence of lyrics, the music expresses function. There are different styles for Sephardic songs, different for life in the mountains, different for life close to the sea, all tied up with the concepts of community, inclusion, and hospitality. In the music of Epirus, nothing stands by chance. There is a purpose that becomes a tool in the hands of the community.