Mevlevi dervishes at Santa Sofia

With playback!
(via this forum discussion)

Fourth women's karsilamas & İzmir Zeybeği

Azizies

Continuing from the previous post on this, two renditions of the composition in the classical Ottoman style.

St. George and the dragon

St. George is himself an example of cultural cross-overs. He has something to do with Eastern Christians' take on the figure of the crusader. But imagery of people on horseback slaying serpents goes back even to ancient Egypt (according, at least, to wikipedia):

From Rhodes:



From Crete:



One might even stretch it so that it goes up to here:


And maybe even here?

Η βρύση των Πεγειώτισσων

[I should have mentioned these guys in this post.]

Parts of the lyrics of Βρυση των Πεγειώτισσων are found in various Cretan songs.
For example, this version of the 'Χαλεπιανός Μανές' which I discussed here.:




[The same lyrics are sung over different melodies, and there's an old recording of a version of this that I couldn't find online.]

And also Ξηροστεριανό Νερό:





There's also something about the way in which the melody closes which kind of reminds me of the standard melody on which mantinades are played ('κοντυλιές'), e.g.



(Thanks, I.)

Το γιασουμι

Update: On the lyra in Cyprus

This article claims that, contrary to the speculative discussion in my previous entry on the subject, there is some evidence that a kind of lyra used to be played in Cyprus.
There is even an artist and instrument maker notable for his lyras, Leonidas Spanos, who works in the village of Dali.

(Let's hope this isn't occasion for the kind of weird ethnocentric speculation that came up with the tabouras (see the link to the relevant article from this previous entry.)

Τα μμαθκια τα γιαλλούρικα / Βάρκα μου μπογιατισμένη

Plus a symphonic version here..




Freshly painted boats seem to inspire singing (see e.g. this or this).

new versions of the old songs

This blog has tended to employ non-conventional approaches to the music of Cyprus. So I thought [despite various worries about the manifold problems with this revisionist Zeitgeist (in which I'm afraid this blog might be participating)] I'd put together some recent takes on 'traditional' Cypriot music.

The legendary DJ Drimiteros performs the canonical cypriot works.

Monsieur Doumani "rearranging folk music from the island of Cyprus"

Labri Giotto - Αγιά Μαρίνα jαι Jυρά

M.Takoushis & G.Karapatakis Quartet - Agia Marina jai Jira

KITE music - Το τέρτιν της καρτουλλας μου and Ροδαφνούσα by the affiliated αἱ φωναί

Kikadot - Asherombasman

Ocarina Project - 4th Women's Karsilamas

Giannis Koutis - Kypriako Zeimpekiko and also To tertin tis kartoullas mou.

vybbtuan - fashionable cypriotism



There's probably a lot that I'm leaving out - but this is a blog, so feel free to contribute to the list.

Note that many of these bands are coming together for the forthcoming Arminou festival this weekend.

Instruments: The violin [en geman touton, enjen pattihozoumon]

Scholarship seems to agree that bowed instruments weren't around in the ancient world, and use of the bow probably has a central Asian origin (see e.g. kobyz, and various other similarly shaped instruments such as the Nepali sarangi, or the morin khuur). Among the Western violin's ancestors are the now extinct Byzantine lyra (which apparently was tuned like the Dodecanese and Thracian lyra, with a middle drone string). And there's a long history of the transformation of the medieval rebec into the violin, which evolved from the Italian Renaissance onwards.

There's some speculation about whether the pear-shaped lyra was in use in Cyprus prior to or alongside the violin (see this article by Anogianakis, p. 18), which must have been imported around the 19th century, probably late. If this were the case, it would not necessarily be because the lyra was imported from Crete - there's also the hegit, played in nearby South-Eastern regions of Turkey:



One problem with the speculative supposition of the use of lyres in Cypriot music is that using the left-hand's fingernails to play, as the lyra and hegit demand, doesn't allow (or at least makes it very inconvenient) to press on two strings simultaneously, which apparently Cypriot fkiolaries [violinists] do all the time.
There are, nevertheless, some lyra-like instrumens which are played like the violin by pressing on the strings, e.g. in this dance (Καβοντόρικος Καραλίδικος) from Ag. Demetrios in Euboea, which sounds a bit like this Cypriot karsilamas.

This type of speculation serves to exclude another speculative possibility, that of the use of the type of gourd or coconut based spike-fiddle that abounds in the middle eastern world, from the kamancheh used in Persia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, to the the joza of Iraqi maqam, to the Arab rebab in its many forms (used e.g. by the gypsies of the lower Nile, or to accompany epic poetry), to the Turkish kabak kemane which is made from water-gourds.
Water-gourds abound in Cyprus, and dried decorated gourds are a commonplace sample of 'traditional crafts'. And apparently gourds were used for making musical instruments in Cyprus: Anogianakis (p. 72) includes a photograph of a laouto made from a large dried gourd by some Paphite youngsters.
While thinking about this, it dawned on me that there's an odd Greek-Cypriot expression that I had once heard, which goes: "εν κκελλέ τούτη, έντζιεν κολόκα για φκιολίν' ('it's a head, not a gourd for a violin'). So it could be likely that herein lies stored a memory of a violin-like instrument made from a gourd.
If one had to engage in imaginative speculation, then, it would seem that the rebab, and not the Cretan lyra, is the way to go. And since we're already engaged in speculation, why not go even further and assume the existence of a variety of instruments made from gourds, including (based on the photographic evidence, limited though it might be) laouta-like instruments, and even gourd-based tamboura/saz-like ones, similar to this baglamas from Crete.

On food

So, since we've already strayed a bit beyond the mission statement, why not push it a bit further?
There's something slightly absurd about the usual association between (if not equalisation of) everything 'traditional', i.e. that if one is interested in pithkiavlia, then one need also care about Kkashiallos, and breadmaking, and weaving, and whatever happens to appear slightly pre-modern (with a nod towards Heidegger and the totality of equipment). Which is partly why this blog is not called 'Comparative "Laographic" Cyprology'.
But, all the while, there have been some tempting links to make to phenomena that transgress boundaries in similar ways that music does. The one that shouts out more is food.

There's a lot to say about Cypriot cuisine.* Since we're straying here, a few brief references to wikipedia should suffice. At least, for now.

So here we go.


What Cypriots call moujendra (μουτζιέντρα), from the Arabic مجدرة‎ (transliterated as mujaddara) seems to be common around the Middle East - a way of cooking lentils with rice, covered with sauteed onions. Variations of the dish are to be found in Persian cuisine and even the South Indian rice and lentil dish khichdi.**

Of course everyone knows that koupepia (stuffed vine leaves) aren't exclusively Cypriot. They are found everywhere from Russia, Persia, and the Caucasus to Albania, from Sweden to Egypt, and so on. Some more extravagant recipes include this classic Ottoman dish, which includes sour cherries. Though the similarity here is mostly linguistic, there's also Bangladeshi dorma.

And obviously πουρκούριν (bulgur) is quite common in the Middle East. (Too bad that it's not easy to find frikkeh, a kind of green bulgur, in Cyprus, other than served cooked in Middle Eastern restaurants).
But that might be a bit like saying that bread is common throughout the world. 'Pita bread', on the other hand, in the last decade or so seems to have been disseminated throughout the Western world in its Cypriot, not Greek or Lebanese or Syrian or Egyptian, formal variation.

One may add to the list χαλβά (halwa), apparently one of the most common sweets in the world.
There's also λουκκουμιν, which means on the one hand a sweet very similar to maamul, common from Morocco to the Levant, and on the other 'Turkish delight', (formerly known in its more politically correct version as 'lumps of delight'), which when produced in Cyprus is called 'Cyprus delight', and in Romania is called 'rahat' which has come to mean 'shit'.

There are also various parallels with Western cuisines to be pointed to, such as that between λούντζα (lountza) and Italian lonza, or even, intriguingly, between hare stifado (λαός τσιβκιά) and French civet (see this). There's Cypriot village pasta (μακαρούνια χωρκάτικα), ravioli (ραφκιόλες), pasticcio, and so on. 


These are only a few examples.

And let's not say anything about halloumi, shall we? Nor about the problems involved with patents and cold chewy halloumi salads with pine nuts and sun-dried tomatoes.


*The Cyprus Virtual Food Museum might prove helpful for further information. Recipes can be ordered according to historical period (and thus according to the usual narrative with regard to conquerors) though not enough, I think, is offered by way of comparison to neighboring cuisines. The conqueror story might actually help, since it produces a list of British, Ottoman, Venetian, Frankish, and other sources of inspiration for particular recipes.

**As an aside, I thought I might note that lentils were the food of the poor in antiquity, favored as such by the Cynic school of philosophers.
According to Diogenes Laertius, one of the exercises Zeno of Citium had to perform while training in Cynic αναίδεια under Crates was to walk around Athens with a bowl of lentil soup. Crates went on to spill the soup on his tunic, making it look like Zeno soiled himself, in response to which Zeno run away. Crates responded, in a tone that may be construed as racist: 'Τί φεύγεις, Φοινικίδιον; οὐδὲν δεινὸν πέπονθας' ('Why do you run, Phoenician? Nothing wrong has befallen you.' (DL VII, 3, my translation)).

Cretan syrtaki [Κρητικό συρτάκι]

This one ventures beyond the blog's mission statement, since it's not really about music from Cyprus.

So, Theodorakis stole the tourist-friendly soundtrack for Zorba from the Cretan master laouto player Giorgos Koutsourellis (who, it seems, successfully sued him):


My search for this led me to wikipedia, which claims that the Guinness record for longest line of Zorba dancers was recently given to a performance on an Ayia Napa beach.

Addendum: Tambouras/Saz

Some more on the tambouras/saz in Cyprus:

- Two recordings, from 1973, of Turkish Cypriots playing saz.

One is called Karacaoğlan, and is an ashik song (see also another version from Turkey here)



The other, from the same album, is called Cicek Dagi




- A recording of 'I vrisi ton Pegiotisson' with Christos Konstantinou on saz



- The Solomou family sing (I think on playback) a Maronite φωνή accompanied by electric saz, amongst Christmas decorations



- An article on the confusion behind the use of 'tambouras' (an instrument that has been more or less extinct since the second world war) in current Greek musical education.

Opa [Şinanay]

This one needs no introduction.



(According to the uploader, this is 'authentic cypriot music'.)

Later on the Turkish-Cypriot rock band incorporated it into this song (thanks to D. for having shared this):

Lefkosia, 1947, Mevlevi tekke (from the British Pathe archives)

The knife dance

Weapon dances in general, and knife dances in particular, exist in most cultures throughout the world. The role of the knife in the dance, and the function of the dance itself vary from culture to culture, and from dance to dance. A quick search on youtube, for instance, will bring up the following examples:





There are various Cypriot dances which utilize particular objects (I suppose they are no longer objects when utilized in the dance ritual - and one may wonder as to whether they are even to be called instruments). These include dances with sickles, sieves, and glasses.
Contrary to the previous three, the knife dance is not often danced for tourists. In fact, I could not find any recordings of either performances, or the music that accompanies it. This rendition by Halaris just doesn't seem right:



[I'm not sure about this, but] it's more likely that the music that accompanied the knife dance is the same as that which accompanies the sickle and sieve dances. A strikingly similar tune accompanies the Lesbian knife dance:



(The tunes of other knife dances, such as this one from Pontus, or these two from Konya and Thrace, vaguely remind me of some Cypriot melodies, but I think that's coincidental, or even my imagination.)

It is customary (as was in antiquity) for many knife dances in the region to be representations of violent struggle. Yet, I've heard, the Cypriot knife dance, which was performed at weddings and other festive occasions, was sometimes the occasion for real bloodshed, and apparently one knew (if one was 'sensible'), in particular villages, to leave before it started.

A noisy paradox (or waking up on the wrong side of one's bed)

There's a lot of paradox involved in the notion of the 25th of March as somehow being a 'national holiday' (in Cyprus, jiolis), to be celebrated with, among other things, parades. At least one of the paradoxes is a musical one, and has to do with the history of the kind of music that is employed in celebrating 'the overthrow of the Ottoman yoke', and/or the refusal to pay Ottoman taxes.

Music, and particular brands of noise, had been employed in military practice since antiquity. I've heard that the Byzantines, for example, are known to have attempted to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies by using the hydraulis, an organ that used water to create its sound.

Here's some more recent examples of water organs:






One of the most distinctive innovations associated with the Ottoman army was its use of marching bands, the so called mehterân (according to wikipedia, 'thought to be the oldest variety of military marching band in the world'). They look and sound kind of like this (in historical reenactment):



The music of these bands, closely interlinked with the janissaries, were to later influence the music of various notable European composers (Mozart, Beethoven, etc) in their alla turcas.

E.g. Mozart's Overture to 'The Abduction from the Seraglio' (from Concerto Köln and Sarband's 'Dream of the Orient'):



[Slavoj Zizek makes much of this dimension of turquerie (in 'The Disturbing Sounds of the Turkish March', 2007), talking about Turkey's appearing in the role of Europe's other in Beethoven's ninth symphony. I attended one of his lectures on this, at the end of which a gentleman (I regret that I do not know his name) pointed out that the march in Beethoven's ninth symphony, though often misunderstood to be a Turkish march, is in fact a French march.]

In other words, ironically, the 'European-style' marching music that is used to celebrate independence from the Ottoman empire really copies music that mimicked Ottoman marching music.

Sufism in Cyprus

Naqshbandi dervishes in Cyprus, with Sheikh Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Qubrusi al-Haqqani, performing a Somalian-style (if I'm not mistaken) Hadra:

Saviour, are you with me?

By the late Mick Karn.
Continuing from here.
(Thank you Y.!)