In Epirus music has a healing function. Its people say that they needed their music, because life in the mountains has always been cruel and everything was uncertain. Music in Epirus is a balsam - a remedy - for the unknown and the fatal. - Christopher King, “Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music”.
Moirolói is a genre of the Greek folk music and part of the folk poetry of Greece. It is the lamenting song, sung during the night at the departed person’s house, where people gather and sing all together until the dawn. Moreover, it is also sung during the funeral service and expresses the pain of separation from the world of the living, the mourning of the person’s fate and their virtues. Moirolói can be described as the requiem of traditional music.
The sound of the folk song of Epirus and the unique character of its songs goes beyond the geographical limits of Epirus and can also be noticed in regions of Western Macedonia, Thessaly and Central Greece. (Kavakopoulos, 2018) The folk songs of Epirus - which are songs based on modes or pentatonic scales - depending on the geographical region that they come from, show their own musical idiom and character. These regions are:
Here an example of the instrumental Moirolói, recorded in the mountain Papigo in Epirus in 1993. The klarino player is Petroloukas Chalkias, one of the most significant figures in traditional music. The violinist is Achilleas Chalkias, the lutist Christodoulos Zoumbas and the defi player Nikos Kondos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWI1-KKgGz0
The base of the songs of Epirus, is the Moirolói. The source of this song is both sadness and happiness, even though this is condradictory. (Kavakopoulos,2018) The starting tune of each “glenti” (feast), whether it is a wedding or a funeral, is the Moirolói. The most significant part of it is its complex structure, that creates such passion, emotion and pain. Numerous are the examples of folk bands who sing songs of death on wedding ceremonies. (Kavvakopoulos,2018) Wedding songs show a lot of similarities to Moirolói and also songs of immigration, because they all talk about separation, which symbolises the break of the family. Some other similarities are that the song has a main character (the dead, the bride, or the person leaving their country) and that their themes come from myths, nature and social life. (Goudas, 2009)
Moreover, a very fundamental part is the dance. The way that the dancers express themselves is based on the rhythmical and improvisational patterns of the music and more specifically on the improvisational ornaments of the singer and the instrumentalist. The instruments that take part in the instrumental Moirolói are four and these are the klarino, the violin, the lute and defi (tambourine). (Kavakopoulos, 2018)
The traditional song of Epirus, after the war of 1940s and the following civil war, starts taking different forms. Younger generations gradually have more access to western music genres, slowly leaving behind the classical, traditional character of folk songs. As a result, songs become less complicated in rhythmical structure and they focus more on easier dancing patterns, showing a lot of similarities with dances that come from various islands of Greece.
As stated above, Moirolói has an improvisational character. It is a mourning, poetical improvisation expressing deep pain (Fauriel, 2007) and it is characterised by utter lyricism and extreme passion (Politis, 1999). Furthermore, these songs create a collective, public atmosphere. When a person passes away, especially in the villages, the church’s bells rings mournfully to inform the community that one of its members died. A the sound of the bell, everyone makes their way to the house of the person who died. (Goudas, 2009)
In the city the dead person’s spirit is not treated with the same honour as in the countryside. There, a person does not die alone but takes with them a piece from everyone. That’s why the lament is not only heard inside the house, but it starts already in the streets. It starts in the market, the small streets of the village, where all the families gather. (Papagiorgis, 1991) Everyone ends up in the family house of the dead person. Something worth mentioning is that at the gathering people stay with the family the whole night but only start singing at dawn. (Goudas, 2009)
The mourning also includes the common struggle; it circulates around it. There the female presence is very strong. Women play a leading role in the ritual. They are there to connect what cannot be connected; the old dead with the new one and with the living people they leave behind. (Papagiorgis, 1991) Moirolói laments, but through this mourning it creates a dialogue, a storytelling which unravels all the messages that the dead person is carrying to the underworld. It needs a collective spirit, something that disappears in the noise and the fast pace of the city, where the small communities are being vanished.
As Christopher King states, “human communities needed music and, as a result, the musicians were treated with respect. Whenever I listen to a recording from an isolated place, I hear the internal bonds that hide behind the music: the connection between the artist and the village and the connection of the song with the past, with the memory. I can hear the authenticity of what used to exist.”
A recording of the Moirolói “Mariola”, recorded in Pogoniani in 2017. The lead singer is Elias Kouros. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBOQLb2rYKU
The Polyphonic song is a significant chapter of the songs of Epirus where instruments are not included. These are the only polyphonic songs in the whole country. They are sung in 4 regions of Epirus: Chimera, Argirokastron, Deropolis and Pogoni. They are also sung in the south of Albania. The difference between the Greek polyphonic and Albanian song is that the last ones have 3 principal voices, while the songs from the region of Pogoni have 2 more. Secondly, the Greek songs have a more various, ornamented use of the voice. (Kavakopoulos, 2018)
Two are the categories of the Polyphonic Song: the “seated” ones and the ones that are meant to dance with. The first ones are slower in tempo. The voices that form this genre are divided into two categories: the principal voices and the auxiliary voices. The principal voices are three. Their role is to declaim the lyrics and to ornament the musical theme. Lastly, there is the pedal voice, which maintains the tonal basis of the song. The auxiliary voices are two. The one enters in order to help the lead singer rest for a while and the second one sings in an octave higher from the leading voice. This voice was usually sung by men in falsetto voice, or by women. In Byzantine times this voice was sung by eunuchs. (Kavakopoulos, 2018)
Until the 1950s, a lot of festivals and weddings started with Polyphonic songs. After these tunes, the orchestras took over with dancing tunes, which were nothing more than the instrumental Moirolói. The leading instrument was the klarino, which was always improvising with plenty of ornaments, to create variety and avoid a monotonous atmosphere.
A recording of one of the most famous Polyphonic songs of Epirus, “Yianni mou to mandili sou”, one of the most well known songs of immigration. The recording was made in Papigo in 1993, by Nikos Tatsis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itcGs-SY2D8
Kavakopoulos, Pantelis. “Song, Music & Dance in Epirus” (ΙEMA, 2018), pp. 72–84.
King, Christoper. “Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music” (Doma, 2018), p. 29-37.
Goudas, Silvia. “Ο θρήνος στο δημοτικό τραγούδι” (Lunds Universitet, 2009), p. 10-12. https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1423055&fileOId=1423056.
Papagiorgis, Kostis. “Ζώντες και τεθνεώτες” (Καστανιώτη, 1991), p. 21-26.
Fauriel, Claude. “Ελληνικά δημοτικά τραγούδια Α’: Η έκδοση του 1824-1825” (Ηράκλειο, 2007), p.80.
Politis, Linos. “A History of Modern Greek Literature” (Athens, 1999), p.104.