Lament from Epirus
Image by Robert Crumb, on the cover of ‘Lament from Epirus’
Christopher C. King, who describes himself as an ’auricular raconteur and sonic archaeologist’, is a curator and compiler of fascinating old music that is usually drawn from his own vast collection of vintage and antique records. Some years ago, on holiday in Turkey, he bought some unknown 78 discs in an Istanbul shop, and when he returned home to America he listened to them and found that those from Greece ‘seemed to tap into a well of emotion inaccessible to contemporary music’. A passion was born, and since then he has put together at least four albums of Greek folk music and has written a book, Lament from Epirus, on the subject.
Epirus, a region in northwest Greece that borders on Albania, is relatively isolated and largely composed of difficult and rugged mountainous terrain; it has frequently been invaded, has suffered brutal wars, and was ruled by the Ottomans for almost five centuries. There are strong Turkish and Arabic influences on the local music, and Roma or Gypsy musicians, distant descendants of nomads from the northern Indian subcontinent, are often its most admired performers. Lament from Icarus, a combination of travelogue, cultural history, and musical analysis, explains this background in great detail, but its main contentions are that Epirotic folk music is probably the oldest in Europe and that its tradition is still alive and vibrant.
King proposes that context is the defining element of ‘authenticity’. To reach a deep understanding of older vernacular music, he writes, you have to find an appropriate instrument of the right vintage and learn how to tune and play it, but this is only the first step in developing real insight into the tradition, which is formed by a dense network of cultural bonds and nuances. ‘Authenticity’, he says, is founded on social and musical knowledge that is related to place, past, and shared memory, and which creates continuity of perception and understanding. It also relies on ‘soulfulness’ and is akin to ‘intensity’, which King considers to be the fruit of profound harmony between a performer and a particular location, people, and music. The music’s richness and vitality are specific and local.
While disagreeing with the common belief that folk musicians are bound to lose contemporary relevance and individuality because they draw from a traditional and well-established repertoire, King stresses that their audiences usually expect to hear echoes from the past, music that grounds their collective memory and identity. In Epirus, for example, the panegyri feast-dances that are frequently celebrated on the saints’ days of rural villages and towns are a focus for communal experiences of this kind, attracting the return of emigrants from near and far. He explains that the underlying mood of a panegyri tends to be one of xenitia, of longing or mourning, and that the festivities are usually introduced and ended with a mirologi, a sad pentatonic instrumental that is defined in the book as ‘a formless dark thing, an improvisation with passages and phrases mimicking the wailed patterns of lamentations for the dead sung by women’, but which is now an expression of collective loss. In contrast, the other important musical form at a panegyri is the skaros, which is played, like the mirologi, on a clarinet or violin, and which imitates the notes and timbre of the ancient shepherd’s flute. The skaros contains patterns of notes that were originally used to encourage sheep to drink water, to move them in a particular direction, or to calm them during night-time grazing, and even today it is often played to quieten the collective mood of the villagers during the early morning hours of a festival.
King suggests that most exceptional musicians from Epirus have developed outstanding technique as well as the ability to express individual and collective pathos, and in that light he is especially enthusiastic about two musicians of the past, both of them Roma. The first of his compilations of their music is A Lament for Epirus 1926-1928 by the violinist Alexis Zoumbas, who had a brief and successful career at home before emigrating to America, where he played to exiles in Greek clubs and recorded intermittently. Zoumbas is reputed, probably incorrectly, to have led a hard and fast life, one not dissimilar to those lived by some American blues musicians, and his music, full of loneliness and longing, is dark, despairing, and often very moving. Zoumbas never returned to his homeland. The second, Lament in a Deep Style 1929-1931, is by a contemporary, Kitsos Harisiadis, who recorded his music in Greece a few years after Zoumbas. Harisiadis’ style is lighter than his compatriot’s, but it is just as beautiful and touching; his clarinet, fluid and expressive, can be oddly reminiscent of the mercurial tones of the reeded Indian shehnai and is sometimes equally transporting. In the album’s sleeve notes, King remarks that Harisiadis was known for his humility and had only one desire, ‘to heal people through his music’, going on to say that ‘if both men represent the apex of their craft - technically they were equals - then the values used to plot their mastery lie beyond musical skill. Their greatness derives from how they navigated their spiritual worlds - the unseen things that sustain musical inspiration’. Zoumbas went the way of sadness, Harisiadis the way of tranquility.
For further exploration:
Christopher C. King’s website: http://longgonesound.com/
A conversation with Christopher C. King: https://main.oxfordamerican.org/item/1499-what-it-is-we-choose-to-listen-to
An article by Christopher C. King in ‘The Paris Review’: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/09/22/talk-about-beauties/
The Wire’s soundtrack to ‘Lament from Epirus’: https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/christopherc-king-compiles-epirotic-folk-songs
