To bind, to tie, to knot, to connect (Μπαγλαμας)

There is a narrow house sandwiched between other narrow houses sitting on a hill on the north side of town. After climbing the breath stealing hill to reach this little house, one opens the door and faced with a flight of stairs, continues upward. At the top of the stairs, there is a tiny unfinished bedroom to the left and a minuscule kitchen to the right, complete with a floor painted colorfully by a child’s hand and meticulously lacquered over by a loving father. 

Directly in front of the stairs, a door opens to reveal a room in seeming disarray. Wood fragments sit tilted against each other. Drills, saws, clamps and pliers decorate counter tops and walls, and instruments in varying states of brokenness lay waiting for a restoration of their beauty. A man moves through this room, his thick dark hair colored by traces of sawdust, and his hands, with capable dirt under the nails, touch briefly on each piece of wood as though touching a living being. He steps forward, lifting his arms to open optimistic blue shutters and reveals the sea below, bathing the room in afternoon light. The incense of heated wood perfumes the air and dust holds court.  

This man and another talk quietly, their voices echoing on the periphery of my consciousness as I study the fascinating room around me. The buzzing of the conversation behind me shifts to prices and timetables and I jump in impulsively, my fingertips coated in dust from tracing the exotic shape of an instrument I couldn’t name “Yes,” I say without hesitation, “Can you make one for me?” 

There is great irony to the names of the instruments distinct to Rebetiko, the names being derived from their Turkish origins. Bouzouki (μπουζούκι) comes from the Turkish word bozuk meaning “broken.” While this meaning could be figuratively applied to the state of many bouzouki players, the concept of being broken actually applies to the shifted tuning of the instrument itself. The Bouzouki is a fretted stringed instrument in the family of the lute and a descendent of the Turkish Saz. While the Saz was fretted, the frets were spaced microtonally to account for the non-western intervals of the Turkish scales. The frets of the Bouzouki, however, are tempered spacing to whole and half steps and the tuning of the strings are D, A, D. 

Baglamas (Μπαγλαμας) comes from the Turkish word bağlamak, meaning “to bind, to tie, to knot, to connect.” A Baglamas is the smaller counterpart to the Bouzouki, tuned the same yet an octave higher, comparable in size to a soprano ukulele and a Portuguese cavaquinho. As Greek politics shifted, and Rebetiko became a persecuted art form, the petite frame of the Baglamas allowed it to be slipped unseen into a sleeve or coat pocket.  Due to the higher register and the bright timbre, the notes of the Baglamas carry over the full sound of a Rebetiko group. 

There is a responsibility to having and instrument created for you. There is a respect that one must have for the maker beyond simple compensation. There must be an acknowledgement of the work done and love offered. There must be an understanding of the instrument itself, a familiarity of the smell of the wood, the smoothness of the texture and a comfort with the weight. I am soon to be bound to a baglamas, an instrument I have never attempted to play. My fingers will find the shapes for the first time on the neck of an instrument that will be measured and crafted specifically to the contours of my hands. My baglamas will carry the humidity of the sea absorbed in the wood and my fingers will learn to play Rebetiko, a music so full of passion and love, that I find myself needing to re-examine my own definitions.   

Someone recently told me that one cannot ask for Love, it must simply be given. I disagree. Perhaps it is my musician’s heart that rebels against this explanation, but to me Love is not a gift. It is a process, an action, a verb. It is in the clumsy years long journey of learning the scales, in the bending and sanding of wood, in the building of a house, brick by brick, in the combing of a child’s hair, in the touch of a hand with callouses forged by pain. Love is not an exclusion of all other paths but rather the following of one path as it veers and curves, changing horizons and notes with every verse. Love is loud as she shouts demands and she is quietly vulnerable through the soft hours of the night. She causes fear, gives power and takes responsibility. She does not follow rules or have a need to be conventional. Love bleeds into the broken notes of the bouzouki, sighs through the words of the rebetes, and ties herself to the strings of the baglamas. Love is what drives us to make music, to write and to create art.  Love builds instruments.

*****

We left the little workshop on the hill, closing the door on the cool shadows of the interior and stepping into the intense afternoon sun. My friend looked at me and then looked away, shaking his head. “Jen,” he commented drolly, “This is Greece. You could have asked for a better price.” 

Well, shit.

"I'll come to meet you again down at the shore" Φραγκοσυριανή

“The problem with getting older,” he stated, “is that we begin to have too many memories.” He leaned back in his chair philosophically rolling his cigarette; this man with skin darkened by a Mediterranean sun, the top three buttons of his white shirt hanging carelessly open, his sleeves rolled to reveal wrists liberally dusted with dark hair turning grey. 

“I grew up with this music. These songs tell the story of my life.” She sat, her posture straight with her feet tucked under her, her eyes intense and her wavy dark hair crowning the representation of a stunning woman powerfully in her prime. 

A coffee table, laden with beer and wine glasses, tobacco and an ornate moroccan ashtray sat between us. Pink walls, warm lamps and colorful art surrounded us. A puppy yowled and yawned and the sounds of cats chatting filtered in. Balcony doors opened to reveal the sea and the soft glow of orange lights from the city below. Turkey glimmered and winked on the horizon in the distance. We sat late into the early morning hours, as three musicians put together their list of songs to play the next night at a restaurant across the water in Turkey; one man, lost in his wanderings and afraid to find home, another man living so close to his Turkish home, but unsettled, and woman carrying so many memories that a listener aches to hear her sing. I sat, a privileged quiet observer, as each song was called, discussed, taken apart and put back together. I closed my eyes as they played, mentally placing my own parameters around the form of each song, attempting to bend the scales to the knowledge of my western ears. 

After the music stopped, I would ask a novice’s questions, “What was that song about?”  And after every song, the woman would look at me, her lips quirked with dry humor. “Pain.” 

Of course. 

But not every Rebetiko song is about pain in it’s pure form. Some sing of coffee, of being a waitress, of a woman’s power, of teasing, of hashish and some are political. After the Greco-Turkish war in the 1920s, a wave of over one and a half million refugees flooded into the poorest neighborhoods of the big cities; Athens, the port of Pireaus, and Thessaloniki. As their music blended with the already existing forms, Rebetiko began to evolve into the voice of the outcast, the poor, the displaced, and the laborers carrying Greece through the industrial revolution. While the Greek middle and upper classes turned their ears to the sounds of western classical music, the hidden heart of each city belonged to Rebetiko.

Passed on as an oral tradition, songs generally begin with an improvised instrumental solo (Taximi) The bare basics of a Rebetiko ensemble would consist of a harmonic instrument (rhythm guitar,) a solo instrument (baglamas, bouzouki..) and a singer. The harmonic structure of each song is fairly simple, often times centering around the key of D minor and usually consisting of no more than four chords. The melodies, however, are far more complicated, pulling their notes from different modes and emphasizing unexpected chromaticism. The lyrics evoke daily life, describing trials and joys with unapologetic stark simplicity.

I settled into my chair in the apartment on the hill as music moved past and through me. Perhaps I looked bored or maybe just tired.  But inside, the words and winding notes were wrapping around the heart of this foreign listener and giving a tight squeeze.  

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