May has come, my eyes! Summer has come!
The season when we will marry.
I've brought you May, my lady, Mayday in the evening.
You can't plant trees in May or June,
Only the tree of love will bear leaves and fruit.
My May with its flowers and its many songs…
From the Kythnos/Thermia song 'Mais'
I returned to Sifnos in the spring of 1998, this time with my partner, who wanted to learn to play the laouto. We stayed in the same house I had found five years earlier - a house up above the sea with a panoramic view of the Aegean. Antonis Komis, the old fiddler I had taped in '93, had died only months before, but we found three other musicians, all of them up in years, who gave us lessons willingly. They were friendly people, with a natural graciousness and dignity that made a deep impression on me. One fiddler - Apostolos - a man of 72, was an ironsmith - engaged in the craft of making gates, balconies and the like - a big, rough-hewn man with large workman's hands, a weathered face and a very deep, resonant voice. His laouto player, Yiannis, was ten years his senior - a thin, rather gaunt man who sang in a hoarse, croaking voice above the dense, booming chords of his old, much-played laouto. He lived next to an old church that sat up above the country road outside of the main town and gave lessons sitting on a stone wall. As we sat with him in early April the hills around us were green with the winter rains and fruit trees had begun flowering.
The third musician - another laouto player named Yiannis - lived in the same village as Apostolos. This Yiannis was 65, a retired builder, and five years a widower - a silver-haired man with a silver moustache and an aristocratic air, his manner at once regal, yet unassuming and humble. We walked up to the village on many evenings during our month on the island, and spent many hours in his living-room with its old wooden floors, listening to him sing as he played his very large laouto (though his voice was quite weak and easily overpowered by his instrument). A few years later, I learned that he had remarried and I was happy for him, but not more than a couple of years later I learned that he had died of liver problems and was sad for his widow, who had had so little time with this gallant man.
It was he who had taken us on the evening of Aghios Yiorgos (St. George's Day) in April of '98 to the nearby house of a relative (who, like all Greek men named Yiorgos, was celebrating his name day) and we sat at a long table piled with food - eating, drinking and playing for those gathered there. Later, we got a ride down to the tiny village near the house by the sea and Yiannis took out his laouto and began playing as he walked down the dark, empty street with us trailing behind him, holding his empty case for him. A mysterious and overwhelming elation poured through me as I watched this silver-haired islander striding along the dark, narrow street, his huge laouto in his arms, playing and singing in the night. What world had I walked into? Perhaps I was dreaming? He stopped in front of a dark house, continuing to play, and then banged on the door loudly with his fist. He kept on banging until the lights came on inside and someone came to the door.
Whichever Yiorgos lived there (another relative - most likely another cousin, named for the same grandfather) had already celebrated his name day earlier in the evening and gone to sleep. But no matter! There he was, buttoning his shirt while his wife brought food and drink to the table of the small saloni and we sat down to yet another round of celebrating. Yiorgos had a son who played violin (though not at all well) and the boy was given a chance to play with Yiannis, but kept asking to play more when his turn was over and the strange kseni (foreign lady) took over.
Needless to say, as foreigners who played Greek music we were met with surprised smiles and warmth on many such occasions and we would meet other musicians still in their younger years who had moved to Athens but who had not lost the sweet hospitality - the filoxenia - of their Greek island origins.
We had also been given the names of musicians on the island of Kythnos (also called Thermia), two islands to the north. Feeling that it was time to move on, we travelled there a couple of days before Protomayia (May Day), a big holiday in Greece, when people gather wildflowers and make wreaths to hang on their doors. The musicians with whom I had arranged lessons told us that they would be playing on that evening, so we went down to the appointed place which was not really a town square, but merely an open area between houses on a narrow street in the very labyrinthine village where we now found ourselves.
Tables and chairs had been placed against walls, and we sat down at one. Food was brought to us - a government gift to the public on this national holiday, and we sat eating as the little area slowly filled with people.
In a little while our teachers appeared and climbed up to the chairs placed on a table against a wall. There were no microphones, no sound system. They began playing in the unique style of this island, which can only be described as rhythmically eccentric in the extreme, with the laouto chords playing on the offbeats in wild patterns and both violin and laouto tuned down a whole tone to accommodate the voice of the violin player. Since the high string of the violin was additionally a whole step below the standard modern pitch (E) to D, in a tuning known as 'A la Tourka' (Turkish style), it was truly amazing that these instruments and the voice of the violin player were fully audible above the clapping, shouting, singing and dancing of the crowd. During much of the evening, a line of men stood within two feet of the table where the musicians were seated and sang along with fierce, joyful intensity, often initiating verses.
The Greek word for dance - horos - is the same as the word for chorus. And in many places Greeks sing while they are dancing. In this case, the chorus was united with the musicians - a very different phenomenon from musicians 'performing' for an 'audience'. As the music built to a feverish pitch, couples began taking turns doing the Kythnos version of the ubiquitous island dance called the ballos, doing voltes (or revolutions), beginning face to face with handkerchief-linked hands that swing from side to side and then rise up into the air and bring the couple repeatedly back-to-back with shoulder blades touching. While each couple took its turn, the rest of the dancers and singers fell back and cheered them as they went round and round.
That night the song that celebrates the coming of good weather (kalokairi, the Greek word for summer, meaning exactly that) was sung many, many times by this small village community, the words echoing between the stone houses and rising up into the night sky as it seemed they had done forever, year after year, generation after generation.
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Discography:
CD: Sto Yemisma tou Fengariou, Ekdosi Melodiko Karavi 2003; ISBN 960-86853-9-7.
Cassette: Songs of Amorgos, Sifnos and Kythnos, SDNM105; Society for the Dissemination of Greek Music. Field recordings by Simon Karas from the late 1950s through the 70s. Available at the Museum of Greek Folklore Instruments (MELMOKE) in Plaka (210-325-4129) and at many outlets for traditional Greek music (Audiophile in Paroikia or Metropolis/Mousiki Gonia/Xylouris, all within a few hundred metres of each other on Panepistimiou in Athens). See Paros Life December 2004 edition for additional details on mail order services.
Suggested reading:
Traditional Dance in Greek Culture by Yvonne Hunt. Published by Centre for Asia Minor Studies, Kydathineon 11-13, Plaka 10558 Athens. Tel. 210-323-9225, Fax. 210-322-9758. email: kms@otenet.gr Open Mon-Fri, 10am-2pm. Contact author at: yhunty@yahoo.com .
Souzana Raphael is writing a series of articles for Paros Life about traditional Greek music. She began travelling to Greece from California in 1993 to further her study of Greek music played on violin and has been living for the last five years in a small village on Naxos, learning, performing, and writing articles and stories. Souzana gives lessons in traditional Greek violin styles and runs workshops for those interested in learning more about the origins and regional variations of Greece's older folk/urban music. For further information, contact her on 22850-32871 or by email at parea@nax.forthnet.gr.
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