URSABLOG: Joining The Dance

When I first moved to live in the centre of Athens, I would catch snippets of Greek music as I passed by a café, shop or taverna. It would invariably be accompanied by a bouzouki (the long-necked instrument resembling a mandolin) twiddling away. Back then it just added to the atmosphere of my new home: background music to a new life. But as I have become more, well, embedded here, my curiosity and consequently my knowledge has grown, and my appreciation of the diverse regional origins and genres has deepened. Whilst the influences are there to be found from both east and west, Greek music is truly different and unique, unlike any other music in the world.

If I was to pinpoint the Greek music that most speaks to my soul, it is that which originates from three very different places: Ikaria, Crete and the Pontus, in order of preference. All this music is meant to be danced to, but whilst I am fairly proficient in dancing to Ikarian music, Cretan music – and dancing – fills me with a fear of embarrassing myself. As for Pontic music, the steps are so intricate and confusing that having tried once, I will never try again, at least not until I immerse myself in a musical Pontic family for some weeks and am taught properly.

My fondest memories of Greek island life, until now at least, are from Ikaria, in particular going to panigyria with friends. It is hard to express: you are eating and drinking with friends, and the music begins, and crowds of literally hundreds of people gather in circles, holding on to each other, dancing the same steps to the continuous melody, rising and falling in waves of sound as the cyclical rhythm drives forward. The music, the people, the dancing, the summer sky all seem to merge into one pure and powerful emotion where all troubles are banished and everything is at peace. When the music stops and the dance finishes, it is like being woken from a dream so beautiful that like Caliban, I cried to dream again.

I want to explore Cretan music in the same way – I have listened to the music and seen dances at weddings – but I have not experienced the full package in Crete where I am assured it is outstanding in its scale and emotion. The rare occasions I have experienced Pontic music have left me hungry for more.

These are traditions very much wedded to a place and time, but it would be a mistake to think that Greek music is of the past, and only brought out at weddings and for the tourists. Far from it: Greek music is embedded in Greek society in a way that other, less fortunate European cultures cannot dream of. It is only after so many years of being here that I am beginning to understand how deeply important Greek music is, not only to the complex fabric of Greek society, but to life in Greece itself.

Every once in a while, in a café, bar, or taverna I hear a recording of a song being played that really catches my ear, so I Shazam it to listen to it again later on Spotify. Once on Spotify, if the song really does appeal to me – and was not just part of the mood of the evening – I ‘Go to Song Radio’ and create a list of similar music, which I then listen to, liking songs that appeal to me along the way. In this way Spotify has created many playlists for me, and I have become familiar with many songs.

However I don’t want to give the impression that I listen fervently to music as I read the Spotify equivalent of sleeve notes on the artist and the recording. No, the music accompanies me as I move around my flat, or as I do brain work at home or in the office, and I rarely pay attention to who the artists or composers are. It is the music that is important to me, so I find myself at a disadvantage when people ask me whether I like Greek music, and replying in the affirmative, I then struggle to say what particular songs or artists I actually like. I have a few singers that I like – Antonis Remos, Eleonora Zouganeli and Sokratis Malamas – which places me somewhere between bouzoukia and έντεχνο, but there are many more songs and artists that I am unable to positively identify.

And so it was when recently, with a friend, a song came on and I said “I really like this one!” “Hatzidakis!” she replied. “What’s not to like?”

So began a journey of knowledge, firstly through Spotify and then via the internet about the extraordinary career and works of the composer and artist Manos Hatzidakis. Most of you will know his most famous song, the immediately hummable but distinctly Greek “Τα Παιδιά του Πειραιά (The Children of Piraeus)”, the theme of the film Never On A Sunday. But his works are a bridge between many different traditions that in turn fundamentally influenced Greek music today.

On January 31st, 1949, he gave a lecture (you can read a translation in English of it here) where – apart from introducing the audience to the now legendary Markos Vamvakaris and Sotiria Bellou – he set out a powerful case in defence of rebetiko as a music form in itself. Rebetiko was known as the Greek blues, partly because it was seen as music of the lower classes, or even of the criminal classes, invoking a lifestyle that was anti-authoritarian at the very least, and if not directly involving drugs, prostitution, crime and poverty, certainly had sympathy and understanding of those who did. This of course set the artists, performers and listeners at odds with the authorities, and the more conservative society of the time.

The lecture came at a watershed in Greek society, and not only because the Greek Civil War was slowly coming to its bitter end. Rebetiko was becoming fashionable too, as more respectable people started to ‘slum it’ (as the English expression goes), tasting the forbidden fruits of the demi monde. Hatzidakis set out – with musical examples from two of the foremost artists of the day – to explain why rebetiko deserved not only to be taken seriously, but perhaps more importantly to be considered as not only Greek music, but an authentic artistic expression of what it means to be Greek, and not just of the Greek underclass.

As he points out

“The rebetiko succeeds in uniting in a marvellous way lyrics, music and motion. From the song’s composition to its execution, the conditions are instinctively prepared for this triple expressive coexistence, which at times, on reaching perfection, resembles the form of ancient tragedy.”

I would go further: not only does Hatzidakis’ music drink deeply from these roots, it allowed other composers to develop further and bring forth music unique in its expressive power. One such composer was Mikis Theodorakis who, like Hatzidakis, believed Greek music could unite folk traditions, poetry and classical composition. His most famous composition is undoubtedly the theme tune to the film “Zorba the Greek” – beloved by tourists and tourist tavernas everywhere – but it is another piece of music that has come to mean more to me.

I used to live in a flat in Plaka, in the historic centre of Athens, but unbeknownst to me, my flat was opposite the house where Nobel Prize-winning George Seferis used to live. When I found out this fact, I delved further into Seferis’ poetry, and he has since overtaken Cavafy in my literary affections.

One of his poems “Άρνηση” (Arnisi – “Denial”) was set to music (as part of the 1961 song cycle Epiphania) by Theodorakis, beginning with the lines:

Στο περιγιάλι το κρυφό

κι άσπρο σαν περιστέρι

διψάσαμε το μεσημέρι

μα το νερό γλυφό.

“On the secret seashore / white like a dove / we thirsted at noon / but the water was brackish.”

When Seferis died on 20th September 1971, in the middle of the military dictatorship, thousands came to his funeral even though public gatherings were dangerous. As the procession moved through Athens, the crowd spontaneously began singing Theodorakis’s setting of “Arnisi” even though Theodorakis’s music was banned by the junta, the composer having been imprisoned and forced into exile. The act of singing the song publicly was an open act of defiance: thousands of voices singing together in the streets, turning the funeral into one of the first large public demonstrations against the dictatorship.

So what was so important about the poem? There is one line:

πήραμε τη ζωή μας λάθος

κι αλλάξαμε ζωή.

“We took our life wrongly / and changed our life.”

I have been told that many Greeks at the time interpreted it as a lament for a country gone wrong and a call for moral awakening.

I no longer live in Plaka, but as I get to know this country and its people more intimately, I am coming to realise that it is hard to separate or compartmentalise different aspects from each other. Greece is not just its packaging: it rewards a life lived honestly and fully. As Lawrence Durrell once wrote (as I never tire of quoting):

“Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder – the discovery of yourself.”

Yes, it has been harder, but it has also been, and continues to be, deeply rewarding. And in these dark days, as storm clouds gather around the world, I am happy to live in a country that can express itself and find expression through its music and its arts. It may turn out to matter more than you think.

Simon Ward