comparative cypromusicology

Variations of the melody from Barba-yiannakakis make various appearance in Asia Minor Rhapsody by Kostas Giannides (Giannis Konstantinides).

About this blog

As a description of my collection of random comparisons of Cypriot and other melodies, the word ‘Cypromusicology’ was suggested to me by my friend S., whom I dearly thank.

In contrast to the word ‘ethnomusicology’, which implicates some element of ethnicity in musical matters, ‘cypromusicology’ simply talks of the music which is and has been performed on the island of Cyprus.

Other problematic words, such as tradition, might come into play, though a skeptic might suspect that almost anything that is done by old folks on the island easily gets misconstrued as perennial tradition, an act which almost always contains invention and leaps of the imagination.

The mission of this blog is simply to bring to the fore some surprising supra-ethnic aspects of the multiple facets of the music of Cyprus, by tracing the surprising (or not so surprising) imports and exports of patterns and refrains involved in the construction of ‘tradition’.

The reverse engineering of these songs, following their traces through various locales, is quite closely correlated with the rise of new technologies and their consequent modification of geography, which partly relates to what Kostas Axelos called the planetic. (Note that all the material presented here was found online.)

comparative cypromusicology

Saturday 5 October 2019

Μπαρμπα-Γιαννακάκης Κωνσταντινίδης (Ρουλλα μου Μαρούλλα μου)

Friday 29 December 2017

Ngoni & mandinades

Wednesday 4 October 2017

"Music in Cyprus" by Jim Samson, Nicoletta Demetriou 2015 – Routledge

Tuesday 3 October 2017

"Ειδολογικές επιδράσεις και Ιδεολογικές Επιρροές στη μουσική της Κύπρου την περίοδο 1878 –1931 μέσα από την εφημερίδα «Φωνή της Κύπρου»"

Thursday 22 December 2016

Jordi Savall