The music of Greece is as diverse and celebrated as its history. Greek music separates into two parts: Greek traditional music and Byzantine music. These compositions have existed for millennia: they originated in the Byzantine period and Greek antiquity; there is a continuous development which appears in the language, the rhythm, the structure and the melody.[1] Music is a significant aspect of Hellenic culture, both within Greece and in the diaspora.
In ancient Greece, men usually performed choruses for entertainment, celebration, and spiritual reasons. Instruments included the double-reed aulos and the plucked string instrument (like pandura), the kanonaki, the lyre, especially the special kind called a kithara.
Music was an important part of education in ancient Greece, and boys were taught music starting at age six. Greek musical literacy created a flowering of development; Greek music theory included the Greek musical modes, eventually became the basis for Eastern and Western religious music and classical music.
Due to Rome's reverence for Greek culture, the Romans borrowed the Greek method[2] of 'enchiriadic notation' (marks which indicated the general shape of the tune but not the exact notes or rhythms) to record their music, if they used any notation at all.
The tradition of eastern liturgical chant, encompassing the Greek-speaking world, developed in the Byzantine Empire from the establishment of its capital, Constantinople, in 330 until its fall in 1453. It is undeniably of composite origin, drawing on the artistic and technical productions of the classical Greek age, of Jewish religious music, and inspired by the monophonicvocal music that evolved in the early (Greek) Christian cities of Alexandria, Antioch and Ephesus (see also Early Christian music). In his lexicographical discussion of instruments, the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. 911) cited the lūrā (bowed lyra) as a typical instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre), and the salandj (probably a bagpipe).[3] Other instruments used in the folk Byzantine-era music, were kanonaki, oud, laouto, santouri and other instruments that are still played in post-Byzantine regions today.
Ottoman era
The Greeks were familiar, in this period that stretched from the 15th century to the time of Greek war of independence, with the traditional Greek folk music, elements of the Ottoman music, such as with surviving Byzantine music and more specifically, hymns: Church music.[4] These genres have certainly reached a high degree of evolution. They were forms of a mono music that had many elements of ancient Greek origin but also, they had nothing to do with Western polyphonic music.[5]
By the beginning of the 20th century, music-cafés (καφέ-σαντάν) were popular in cities like Constantinople and Smyrna, where small groups of musicians from Greece played. The bands were typically led by a female vocalist and included a violin. The improvised songs typically exclaimed amán amán, which led to the name amanédhes (αμανέδεςamanédes, singular αμανέςamanés) or café-aman (καφέ-αμάν). Greek musicians of this period included Marika Papagika, Rosa Eskenazi and Rita Abatzi. This period also brought in the Rebetiko movement, which had local Smyrniote, Ottoman and Byzantine influences.
Greek folk music traditions are said to derive from the music played by ancient Greeks. There are said to be two musical movements in Greek folk music (παραδοσιακή μουσική): Acritic songs and Klephtic songs. Akritic music comes from the 9th century akrites, or border guards of the Byzantine Empire. Following the end of the Byzantine period, klephtic music arose before the Greek Revolution, developed among the kleftes, warriors who fought against the Ottoman Empire. Klephtic music is monophonic and uses no harmonic accompaniment.
Dimotika tragoudia are only from the mainland and accompanied by clarinets, tambourines, laouto, violins and lyras, and include dance music like syrtó, kalamatianó, tsámiko and hasaposérviko, as well as vocal music like kléftiko. The lyrics are based on dimotiki (folk) poetry (usually by anonymous lyricist) and popular themes are love, marriage, humor, death, nature, water, sea, religious, about klephts, armatoloi, various war fighters or battles etc. Some notable instrumentalists include clarinet virtuosos like Petroloukas Chalkias, Giorgos Gevgelis and Yiannis Vassilopoulos, as well as laouto and fiddle players like Nikos Saragoudas, Vasilis Kostas and Giorgos Koros.
Greek folk music is found all throughout Greece, Cyprus, and several regions of Turkey, as well as among communities in countries like the United States, Canada and Australia. The island of Cyprus and several regions of Turkey are home to long-standing communities of Greeks in Turkey with their own unique styles of music.
Nisiotika is a general term denoting folk songs from the Greek islands, especially the Aegean Islands. Among the most popular types of them is Ikariótiko tragoúdi, "song from Ikaria".
Ikariótikos is a traditional type of dance, and also the name of its accompanying type of singing, originating in the Aegean island of Ikaria. At first it was a very slow dance, but today Ikariotikos is a very quick dance. Some specialists say that the traditional Ikariotikos was slow and the quick "version" of it is in fact Ballos. Music and dancing are major forms of entertainment in Ikaria. Throughout the year Ikarians host baptisms, weddings, parties and religious festivals where one can listen and dance to live traditional Ikarian Music.
Modern nisiótika
Singer Mariza Koch was largely responsible for the revival of interest in Nisiótika in the 1970s and 1980s.[6] During the 1990s and 2000s, singers such as Yiannis Parios and Stella Konitopoulou helped this music gain occasional mainstream popularity.
The Heptaneseankantádes (καντάδες 'serenades'; sing.: καντάδα) are based on the popular Italian music of the early 19th century and became the forerunners of the Greek modern song, influencing its development to a considerable degree. For the first part of the next century, several Greek composers continued to borrow elements from the Heptanesean style.
Rebetiko was initially associated with the lower and poor classes, but later reached greater general acceptance as the rough edges of its overt subcultural character were softened and polished. Rebetiko probably originated in the music of the larger Greek cities, most of them coastal, in today's Greece and Asia Minor. Emerged by the 1920s as the urban folk music of Greek society's outcasts. The earliest Greek rebetiko singers (refugees, drug-users, criminals and itinerants) were scorned by mainstream society. They sang heartrending tales of drug abuse, prison and violence, usually accompanied by the bouzouki.
The scene was soon popularized further by stars like Vassilis Tsitsanis. His song Συννεφιασμένη Κυριακή - Synnefiasméni Kyriakí became an anthem for the oppressed Greeks when it was composed in 1943 (during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II), despite the fact that it was not recorded until 1948. He was followed by female singers like Marika Ninou, Ioanna Yiorgakopoulou, and Sotiria Bellou. In 1953, Manolis Chiotis added a fourth pair of strings to the bouzouki, which allowed it to be played as a guitar and set the stage for the future 'electrification' of rebetiko. This final era of rebetiko (mid 1940s–1953) also featured the emergence of night clubs (κέντρα διασκεδάσεως) as a means of popularizing music. By the late 1950s, rebetiko had declined; it only survived in the form of archontorebetiko (αρχοντορεμπέτικο "posh rebetiko"), a refined style of rebetiko that was far more accepted by the upper class than the traditional form of the genre. The mainstream popularity of archontorebetiko paved the way for éntekhno and laïkó. In the 1960s Manolis Chiotis popularized the eight-string bouzouki and set the stage for the future 'electrification' of rebetiko.
Drawing on rebetiko's internationalization by Tsitsanis and Chiotis, éntekhno (or éntechno) arose in the late 1950s. Éntekhno (Art-Popular song) is orchestral music with elements from Greek folk rhythm and melody; its lyrical themes are often based on the work of famous Greek poets. As opposed to other forms of Greek urban folk music, éntekhno concerts would often take place outside a hall or a night club in the open air. Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hadjidakis were the most popular early composers of éntekhno song cycles. They were both educated in Classical music and -among other reasons- the lacking of a wide public for this kind of music in Greece, drove them to the invention of Éntekhno, in which they transferred some values of Western art music,[11] such as ballads tune.
Theodorakis was the first composer to use the bouzouki in this genre of music, trying to include this organ into the mainstream culture. Other significant Greek songwriters included Stavros Kouyoumtzis, Manos Loïzos, and Dimos Moutsis. Significant lyricists of this genre are Nikos Gatsos, Manos Eleftheriou and poet Tasos Livaditis. By the 1960s, innovative albums helped éntekhno become close to mainstream, and also led to its appropriation by the film industry for use in soundtracks.
A specific form of éntekhno was the so-called "political song"; songs with political message, of the Left, which arose during the military junta and became very popular after its fall in the late '70s. Manos Loizos, guitarist Panos Tzavellas, Maria Dimitriadi and Maria Farantouri were some representatives. Thanos Mikroutsikos released an album featuring Greek partisan songs of the Greek resistance, with his own orchestration. A form of éntekhno which is even closer to western classical music was introduced during the late 1970s by Mikroutsikos. (See the section 'Other popular trends' below for further information on Néo Kýma and contemporary éntekhno.)
Laïkó (λαϊκό τραγούδι 'song of the people' / 'popular song' or αστική λαϊκή μουσική 'urban folk music'), is a Greek music genre that is composed in Greek language in accordance with the tradition of the Greek people. Laïkó followed after the commercialization of rebetiko music. Until the 1930s the Greek discography was dominated by two musical genres: the Greek folk music (dimotiká) and the elafró tragoudi (literally: "light song"). The latter was the Greek version of the international urban music of the era. Classic laïkó (κλασικό/παλιό λαϊκό) as it is known today, was the mainstream popular music of Greece during the 1960s and 1970s. It was dominated by singers such as Grigoris Bithikotsis, Marinella, Stelios Kazantzidis, Panos Gavalas and others. Among the most significant songwriters and lyricists of this period are considered George Zambetas, Manolis Hiotis and Vassilis Tsitsanis; of course the big names of this kind are still in Greek business. The more cheerful version of laïkó, called elafró laïkó (ελαφρολαϊκό, elafrolaïkó 'light laïkó') and it was often used in musicals during the Golden Age of Greek cinema. Contemporary laïkó (σύγχρονο λαϊκό), also called modern laïkó, is currently Greece's mainstream music genre. Some of the strongest Greek dances and rhythms of today's Greek music culture laïká are Nisiotika, Syrta, Hasapika, Kalamatiana, zeibekiko, syrtaki and Greek belly dance and the most of them are set to music by the Greek instrumental bouzouki. Thus, on the one hand there is the homogenized Greek popular song, with all the idioms of traditional Greek folk music, and on the other, the peculiar musical trends of the urban rebetiko (song of the cities) known also in Greece as αστικό.[12]
During the same era, there was also another kind of soft music (ελαφρά μουσική, also called ελαφρό, elafró 'soft (song)', literally 'light') which became fashionable; it was represented by ensembles of singers/musicians such as the Katsamba Brothers duo, the Trio Kitara, the Trio Belcanto, the Trio Atene and others. The genre's sound was an imitation of the then contemporary Cuban and Mexican folk music,[13] but also had elements from the early Athenian popular songs.
Modern laïká (μοντέρνα λαϊκά)—also contemporary laïkó/laïká (σύγχρονο λαϊκό/σύγχρονα λαϊκά) or laïko-pop (λαϊκο-πόπ)—is currently Greece's mainstream music along with some pop recordings.
Modern laïká emerged as a style in the early 1980s. An indispensable part of the contemporary laïká culture is the písta (πίστα; pl.: πίστες) "dance floor/venue". Night clubs at which the DJs play only contemporary laïká where colloquially known on the 1990s as ellinádika. Over the years until today, the aim of Greek music scene is only one: quality. Virtuoso musicians and expressive singers take every season, with more professionalism and love for what they do to entertain the Greek audience, to lure and to make it dance with the songs and music that everyone loves. All this music effort take place in Europe and internationally. Greek-American music includes rebetiko and Greek folk music. The Greek music culture exists as a serious aspect of Hellenic culture, both within Greece and in the diaspora.
In effect, there is no single name for modern laïká in the Greek language, but it is often formally referred to as σύγχρονο λαϊκό ([ˈsiŋxronolaiˈko]), a term which is however also used for denoting newly composed songs in the tradition of "proper" laïkó; when ambiguity arises, σύγχρονο ('contemporary') λαϊκό or disparagingly λαϊκο-ποπ ('folk-pop', also in the sense of "westernized") is used for the former, while γνήσιο ('genuine') or even καθαρόαιμο ('pureblood') λαϊκό is used for the latter. The choice of contrasting the notions of "westernized" and "genuine" may often be based on ideological and aesthetic grounds.[14]
Criticism
Despite its popularity, the genre of modern laïká (especially laïko-pop) has come under scrutiny for "featuring musical clichés, average singing voices and slogan-like lyrics" and for "being a hybrid, neither laïkó, nor pop".[15]
Skyládiko (Greek pronunciation:[sciˈlaðiko]; pl.: Skyládika; Greek: Σκυλάδικο, meaning "doghouse") is a derogatory term to describe some branches of laïkó music and some of the current nightclubs in Greece in which a form of popular Greek music is performed. It is performed with electric bouzouki and guitars. It is associated with mass entertainment of lower quality and until the 1970s was marginal, but gained popularity after the 1980s. Critics of this genre relate it with modern laïká, mentioning the low quality and the indispensable common part of the pista (πίστα, pl.: πίστες) "dance floor/venue".[16]
Nikos Xydakis, one of Savvopoulos' pupils, was among the people who revolutionized laïkó by using orientalized instrumentation. His most successful album was 1987's Kondá sti Dóxa miá Stigmí, recorded with Eleftheria Arvanitaki.
Thanasis Polykandriotis, laïkó composer and classically trained bouzouki player, became renowned for his mixture of rebetiko and orchestral music (as in his 1996 composition "Concert for Bouzouki and Orchestra No. 1").
A popular trend since the late 1980s has been the fusion of éntekhno (urban folk ballads with artistic lyrics) with pop / soft rock music (έντεχνο ποπ-ροκ).[19] Moreover, certain composers, such as Dimitris Papadimitriou have been inspired by elements of the classic éntekhno tradition and written songs cycles for singers of contemporary éntekhno music, such as Fotini Darra. The most renowned contemporary éntekhno (σύγχρονο έντεχνο) lyricist is Lina Nikolakopoulou.
Even though it has always had a considerable number of listeners supporting it throughout the history of the post 1960s Greek music, it is only very recently (late 2000s) that pop-oriented music has reached the popularity of laïkó/laïká, and there is a tendency among many urban folk artists to turn to more pop-oriented sounds.[20]
Artists
The following classification is conventional and categories may occasionally overlap with each other. Each artist is entried under the genre designation that the Greek musical press usually classifies him or her.
1970s–2010s(songs from this period of Greek laïkó were mainly influenced by the music skydaliko, including branch of laiko music and some of the current nightclubs in Greece in which this music is performed, the country music movement and style folk-pop)
Since the late 1970s various independent scenes of "marginal" musical genres have appeared in Greece (mainly in Athens, Piraeus, and Thessaloniki). Most of them were short-lived and never gained mainstream popularity but the most prominent artists/bands of these scenes are critically acclaimed today and are considered among the pioneers of independent Greek music (each one in their own genre).
^Samuel Baud-Bovy, Δοκίμιο για το Ελληνικό Δημοτικό Τραγούδι, 3rd edition, Πελοποννησιακό Λαογραφικό Ίδρυμα, Ναύπλιο: 1966, pp. 1–13. (Υπάρχει μια συνεχής εξέλιξη από την αρχαία Ελληνική μουσική έως και το δημοτικό τραγούδι, η οποία μαρτυρείται, εκτός από τη γλώσσα, στο ρυθμό, τη δομή και τη μελωδία).
^Ulrich 1963, p. 25 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFUlrich1963 (help)
^Ioannis Foulias, "The composer Dimitri Mitropoulos and his relation to the Greek National School of Music", Contribution to the Conference "The National Element in Music", Athens Concert Hall, 18–20 January 2013. Organization: Faculty of Music Studies of the University of Athens, Music Library of Greece "Lilian Voudouri".
^In contemporary use though, the terms έντεχνο ποπ, and έντεχνο ροκ may be ambiguously used to denote, respectively, Grecophone indie pop and alternative rock, not necessarily having the typical characteristics of éntekhno.
Ulrich, Homer, and Paul Pisk (1963). A History of Music and Musical Style. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanoich. LCCN 63013512.
Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp. 126–142. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN1-85828-636-0.
Notaras, Giorgos. Το ελληνικό τραγούδι των τελευταίων 30 χρόνων, 1991. ISBN960-236-148-4.
Kalogeropoulos, Takis. Λεξικό της Ελληνικής μουσικής, editions Γιαλλελή, 2001. ISBN960-7555-39-2.