VA - Five Days Married & Other Laments:
Song and Dance from Northern Greece, 1928-1958
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Following up on his 2011 compilation "Don't Trust Your Neighbors: Early Albanian Traditional Songs & Improvisations, 1920-1930s," 78 record collector/producer Christopher King ("Aimer et Perdre", 2012's Grammy-nominated "He is My Story: The Sanctified Soul of Arizona Dranes") continues southward on his sonic journey from Albania into the bordering region known as Epirus with his most recent collection, "Five Days Married & Other Laments". This new CD version of "Five Days Married" contains four tracks not previously available on the LP version (also released by Angry Mom Records). These tracks, by the Harisis group, are strange and dark and arguably more dronelike than some of the other material on the album. Many collectors and lovers of 78 music will probably want to buy this CD for these tracks alone, along with the Robert Crumb cover artwork now almost customary with each King release, original photographs, extensive notes by King, and handsome graphic design.
Located between Southern Albania and Northern Greece, Epirus is something of a cultural anomaly, an isolated, rural country that has long resisted assimilation from the outside world. Sandwiched between the Pindus Mountains on one side and the Ionia Sea on the other, the music of Epirus is a strange, cloistered hybrid of its surrounding countries, a place where Albanian Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians mixed freely together, producing an exotic alchemy of sounds characterized by bizarre asymmetric duets (two voices singing at once, one an octave lower than the lead, best evidenced on the track "Kyragiorgena" or Missus George-wife by Halkias Brothers Folk Orchestra), iso-polyphonic vocals (three to five voices combined at once in different registers to produce an odd droning effect, a fine example being "Stis Deropolis" or On the Deropolis Plain by Ton Kampo Group From Northern Epirus) and traditional instruments such as bone flutes, pipes, and lutes favored by the semi-nomadic sheepherders of the region (and heard to best effect on "Skaros," or Shepherd's Song, by Elias Litos & Lazaros Rouvas).
While usually labeled as demotic music, or song and dance music of the Greek village, the songs on "Five Days Married" offer something far rarer than a typical musical travelogue. What you're hearing is an actual cross-pollination of musical traditions captured on record, music so refreshingly alive and as acutely attuned to its strange mélange of cultural influences as to be nearly impenetrable. This is largely due to the shepherds who roamed the countryside of Epirus and originated this uniquely transient sound, a music unbound by any territorial or linguistic tradition, completely organic and in constant flux.
Many of the songs have a strong gypsy flavor, not surprising considering that much of the music was recorded by Roma musicians, gypsies who had played in Epirus for many generations. This is strongly felt on the title track ("Pente Meres Pantremeni" or "Five Days Married" by Halkias Brothers Folk Orchestra), a tragic ode to a bright marriage cut short by the husband's untimely death. This song is a rare example of a mirologi, or a song of lament for the departed, traditionally an instrumental but here presented as a vocal with truly heartbreaking lyrics:"For five days only was she a married woman--/ Then she made her way to her mother's. / With her golden bridal thread in her hair/ She mourned her husband./ On Friday evening she bathed,/ Changed clothes, and went away./ Saturday dawn found her/ By her husband's grave."
Other songs provide more lighthearted fare. Lively clarinet dominates some of the dance numbers, particularly "Stroto Pogonisio" (Smooth Dance From Pogoni), featuring the great Greek clarinetist Kitsos Harisiadis. The fiddle interplay on "Merko Moirologi" (A Lament for More Time by Manthos Halkias & Folk Orchestra) is truly sublime, playful, almost joyous, seemingly ironic for a piece about a plea for more time to live. Yet all the songs on this collection walk that thin line between the celebration of life and the mourning of death, what the Greeks refer to as chthonios (literally "of the earth or underworld"). These songs stare death in the face while merrily whistling past the graveyard. Each song on "Five Days Married & Other Laments" is a memento mori colored in bright pastoral hues, a reminder of death and a joyous celebration of life at the same time.