δρόμοι (dromoi) roads, paths

δρόμοι (dromoi) 

roads, paths

The sun had just started a descent from it’s peak, golden shadows beginning to stretch. A wind had picked up since the night before, making the sea slightly more rough and edging on chilly. We sat, four of us, on a cheerful yellow blanket under a tree thick with leaves, our instruments ready. One musician bent to lift her accordion competently onto her slim shoulders, adjusting her body to the familiar weight, her strong fingers testing through fragments of melodies. Another musician laughed and rolled his eyes, lifting his guitar onto his lap, shifting the mildly ineffective sarong that he had tied carelessly around his waist. And one more musician, the lines at the edges of his dark eyes attesting to a ready smile, laid restless hands on a guitar perhaps too heavy for the seaside, but beautiful none-the-less.  Quick conversation and teasing insults floated over the top of birdsong and the tuning of instruments, while the smell of the sea mingled with the sweetness of tall grass and earth. A horse grazed nearby. 

The music began.

In Western music, there is a concept dating back to the late Baroque period, which turns up most notably in Handel’s Messiah.  This concept known as the Doctrine of the Affections, (Affektenlehre) states that each musical scale arouses specific emotions in the listener. For example, the key of C Major represents innocence and simplicity while the key of D Major is the key of triumph. This is why music teachers having a bad day, should make all students play in the key of F Major (calm..) The ancient Greeks pioneered this idea a few thousand years before with the Doctrine of Ethos, the word ethos referring to one’s character or being. Philosophers of the time were so convinced that music had the power to affect one’s character, that Plato strongly suggested music should be regulated so as not to awaken the wrong ethos. (He would have been standing with all of those moms picketing heavy metal concerts in the 90s.) But does music make the character or does the character pick the music?  

Present day Greeks give their musical scales the plural name dromoi, which romantically translates to roads. Each scale is a different path, a different choice, a different possibility and presenting a different struggle. Rebetiko grew from fire and struggle, it’s form rising from the ashes of the Greco-Turkish war. In the early 1920s as the Ottoman empire fell and a newly independent Turkey was born, the nebulous border between Turkey and Greece violently shifted. This resulted in a mass resettling of people on either side, commonly along religious lines. Muslims from Crete were resettled along the the western edge of Turkey, their religion matching but their culture and language different, a difference still apparent today. In September of 1922 a fire raged in Smyrna (present day Izmir) for nearly ten days, destroying the Greek and Armenian sections of the city and killing tens of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks and Armenians rushed to the sea, desperate to cross (much as today.) As this wave of refugees flooded into Greece, they brought with them different food, culture, language and of course, music. They blended the Turkish scales, makamlar, with elements of Byzantine music, mixing in traces of pain, struggle and humor to influence the style of music known as Rebetiko.  

And so, back on the yellow blanket of present day, musical phrases began to take shape, their 9/8 meter dancing between the leaves of the trees. Voices rose, laughter coloring the notes, and the hairs on my neck and arms lifted. In that one moment I could feel the excitement of a new dromos being set before me. I could choose to dive in and make this music mine. 

For just a taste (in 4/4 time) 

Ό,τι κι αν πω δε σε ξεχνώ

και μπρος στην πόρτα σου περνώ

σου λέω λόγια μαγικά

με το μπουζούκι μου γλυκά

Κλαίω με δάκρυα και καημό κα

ι με πικρό αναστεναγμό

πως πάντα λιώνω και πονώ

για σε μικρό μελαχρινό

Έχουν σωπάσει τα πουλιά

και στης νυχτιάς τη σιγαλιά

σου φέρνει ο άνεμος γλυκά

τα λόγια μου τα μαγικά

Whatever I say I do not forget you

and forward to your door

I say words magically

with my bouzouki sweets

I cry with tears and sorrow

and bitter sigh

that I always melt and I hurt

for a small brunette

The birds have been silenced

and in the night of silence

the wind brings you sweets

my words the magic