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.