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.