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.