Transylvania

Ο χορός των μασσιερκών

Follow up from this post.

More 'impact'

It appears that this blog's output has reached the mainstream media (whatever one makes of it).
As A. pointed out to me yesterday, CyBC's 'Patates Antinaxtes' (25.04.2013) used Mehbooba in one of their sketches (at this link, around 12:19 - I think it's probably going to expire soon).

Πεστρέφιν/Peşrev

Apparently, Cypriot musicians refer to the refrain of various songs as ‘πεστρέφιν’. A quick search didn’t bring up any results, apart from this kid playing a ‘pestrefin’ from the ‘Mariniotou’ fone on the piano.

It looks like the word 'πεστρέφι' renders ‘Peşrev’ in Greek (see mentions e.g. here, here). Peşrev, as the wikipedia article linked above clarifies, does not mean refrain, but is a compositional form in Ottoman classical music. It's usually part of a suite (fasıl). Here's an example of an Ottoman peşrev in the maqam (mode) huseyni, composed in the 19th century (if I'm not mistaken) by Andonis Kyriazis:

"Impact"

Monsieur Doumani have a new song, a response to what's been going on in Cyprus these days.






Their description of the song on youtube refers to this blog, and in particular this entry.

Πορτοκκαλιά του Καραβά, μαντορινιά του Γιάφα

This melody about Karavas' oranges is usually classified as a 'φωνή', i.e. broadly speaking an approximate melodic development on which tsiattista are improvised. The lyrics standardly associated with it talk about Karavas' orange-tree, e.g. here or here:

But there are also other places called Karavas. For example, there is a village called Karavas in Kythera. The story goes that it's called that because it was founded by Cypriots from Karavas.
The Kytheran Karaviots have an association called 'Kytheran Karavas' Orange Tree', and people dress up in traditional Cypriot garb, singing and dancing 'Cypriot-style':

Slightly further up north, in the village of Kremasti at Lakonia, there's a very slightly different melody on which they also sing about Karavas' orange-tree. There they call it a μαντινάδα.

There are also various other versions of the song from different places. This is probably its first recording, by Rita Ambatzi (many thanks to E.X. for sending me this):

There's also a variation of the song from Samos:

The guy in the video claims that the song came to Samos from Asia Minor.

"κι απ' αγαπά του φαίνεται απο την παρπατηξά του
όμπρος και πίσω συντηρά να δει την πεθυμιά του"




"τ΄ αγαπημένα φαίνουνται που την παρπατησιάν τους
τζιαι απού το σούσμαν τον σιερκών τζι' απου το λυϊσμάν τους"

O Vangelis

Continued from previous post on Andronike:

Instruments: zurna / ζορνές

The zurna, ancestor of the Western oboe (through the medieval Shawm), exists in various forms throughout the world, from the Balkans to China.

In the Balkans, it was gradually, though not completely, replaced by other wind instruments, e.g. in northern Greece by the clarinet (see this documentary by ERT). This replacement took place to a much lesser extent in Turkey, where the davul-zurna combination is still prominent in folk music.

In the Arabic world it goes by the name of mizmar (see e.g. here, here, or most famously the Berber "Master musicians of Jajouka" here, and there's even this guy who made a MIDI zurna using arduino), or zamr/zamour in the Levant. [Other instruments also go by the name of mizmar, e.g. the Yemeni version of the Levantine mijwiz.]

There's the Iranian sorna.

The version that is most commonly encountered between Iran and North-west India is called the shehnai, here played by the master Bismillah Khan. The Southern Indian version is called nadaswaram.

Moving toward the 'far east', there's the Chinese suona. There's many other far eastern variations, but we won't cover them here.

In Cyprus, the davul-zurna pairing is still in use by Turkish-Cypriots, who play them in weddings and other festivities.



There's some older recordings from the 70s on this CD (the user who had uploaded the CD on youtube has made it private for some reason, so the link to the saz pieces on that CD from my previous post no longer work either).
There's also this photograph by Haigaz Mangoian of Cypriot musicians playing davul and zurna:

It wasn't exclusively the Turkish Cypriots who used the zurna and davul. I have heard people say they remember Greek Cypriots also playing these instruments. I've also previously posted a video of Maronites singing along to the zurna in this post.