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

One has not properly been to Turkey unless...

One has not properly been to Turkey unless...

She has overstayed her intended date of departure, each day carrying out the same futile conversation with herself and those around her. “Should I stay?”

She has danced in a tiny street with an older man while a woman’s passionate voice sings achingly beautiful Rebetiko songs.

She has watched a red moon rise slowly from the horizon while a fire crackles next to the sea and a kitten purrs like a motor.

She has shamelessly snored under an olive tree, taking refuge from the afternoon sun.

She has sung an aria for an older woman as a birthday gift, only to be told “Anything you want, it is yours. I am the mafia..” 

She has traded songs late into the night over a bottomless bottle of raki, blurring her ability to discern what language she is currently singing. 

She has jumped heedlessly into the sea in her bra and underwear, her swimsuit tucked uselessly away in Greece and an abandoned church on a small empty island beckoning.

She has wandered narrow broken streets and daydreamed over the romantic lines of a house leaning precariously towards crumbling to the ground.

She has watched men do “men’s work,” fully confident that she could solve their problems in half the time but enjoying the sounds of their grumbles and the way the sun glistens on their round bellies. 

She has attempted to play a zaz, her entranced fingers running curiously over the microtonal frets.

She has traded life stories with a beautiful woman in possession of a powerful voice, finding common ground in each word shared.

She has bought infused olive oil on the side of the road, susceptible to the claims of healing powers and loving the stories in the lines on the face of the old woman selling. 

She has shared a tiny boat with five sweaty friends and a nervous dog.

She has been held longer than necessary by an attractive police officer at border control, a man who seemed genuinely disappointed to discover that she is not single. 

She has bought a beer for the ferry ride home because duty free does not sell water.

She has returned, smiling (and slightly drunk from the aforementioned beer,) her clothes dirty and her backpack sticky and stained with the syrup of an already devoured baklava. 

In that Land with glory glowing

Come my heart together

Let us go seek the Friend;

So fear not with one accord

Let us go seek the Friend. 

In that land with glory glowing 

Where ever sing the nightingales;

‘Tis from thence these breezes blowing,

Let us go seek the Friend.

Ah, my heart is burning 
and my footsteps are turning,

For the truth I am yearning,

Let us go seek the Friend.

-Yunus Emre 

13th Century Turkey

It is always difficult to leave; pulling away from a port, lifting off from a runway, counting the steps, kilometers and miles from those you love and leaving pieces of yourself behind with each. 

It is difficult to be in love with the world, willing to call every and any port home, creating nostalgia and romance in every tree, mountain and body of water, wondering at the possibilities of each different path. But I am so in love with this world. I want my bare feet to touch her every day. I want to swim her depths, climb her heights and sleep in her embrace. I want my hair hopelessly tangled and my skin leathery from too much time spent kissing her sky. I want my mouth to know the shape and taste of every sound in every language. I want to sing her songs in my heart and feel her voice resonate in my chest... renewing my strength to breathe in and breathe out, my breath feeding her as she feeds me. 

Why I am not a Mother.

I used to dream of a little girl; A little girl, her brown eyes large with wonder and tiny fingers sticky with unmitigated curiosity. It never occurred to me whether she would be of my body, carrying my blood, my strengths and my deficiencies. She was simply a child whose hand permanently fit mine.  As the plans of a young woman have become the reality of my today, I have seen her less as being of me and more as being of the world. I look for her here, in Greece, in the eyes of the little boy who frequently sticks out his tongue at me or in the touch of the young girl who ties a homemade bracelet on my wrist. I wonder is she near, perhaps in one of the camps, alone and wandering between tents. Is she currently waiting on the shores of Turkey, her hand reaching to grip another who is no longer there? Is she lost at sea, is she waiting for me to stand up, to speak up, to do something, to do anything? 

Even so, doubts creep in. Would her small arms circling my neck serve as a tiny albatross anchoring me to a life of suffocating convention? Would I give her everything in my power at the expense of others, unaware of the world around us in my quest to care for her? Would I forget to love others or myself, obsessed only in loving her, or would I come to resent her, for always being more important than me?

I am incapable. I cannot protect her. I cannot assure her of good health. I cannot shield her from or cure her of loneliness and depression.  I cannot guarantee an ever present father. Hearts change and love is unpredictable. I cannot say that should she belong to another, she will not be taken and traded over and over until our hearts are broken so small that we cannot find the pieces. This is foster care. I cannot protect her from rising seas, stronger storms, polluted air and poisoned water. I cannot promise that I will be next to her, able to step in front for a bullet shot by another lost child. I cannot shield her from hate, from the pain of being different. I cannot stop bombs. I cannot say that should we be in danger, we can cross a man made border without her being torn from my arms. Her only recourse being to cry alone late into the night with just an emergency blanket for comfort. I cannot tell her that God is good when his word is so often used to justify acts of cruelty, greed, bigotry and hate. I cannot even guarantee that I will always be with her. I can only say that I would love her until the end of all I know. 

And so I return to my original question. Why am I not a Mother?

I am not brave.

Awkward Ambrosia

I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia. 

-Ptolemy

There is a special awkwardness to being the only person dressed on a nude beach (or as they say in Greece.. a beach..) There is also a certain unfairness to being surrounded by beautiful fit people after being fresh out of the second year of a Masters degree, a Masters degree which had sucked up all time to eat, sleep and exercise properly. Midday, when one of our companions left on an errand into town to pick up a friend, I prayed that he would bring back someone average, but sure enough, he returned with a stunning Spanish woman; tall with a beautiful face and completely comfortable in her own skin. I hated her instantly. (not really, she was actually quite lovely.)  I wasn’t even able to cover my awkwardness in the sea as I am a terrible swimmer and could possibly accidentally drown myself in my own mortification. To top things off, we were staying the night and I was woefully unprepared. (To be fair, it’s tough to fit a sleeping bag and blankets in my luggage from the States alongside 22 ukuleles..) 

Now, one might think that spending a weekend being perpetually embarrassed, completely unprepared and ever so slightly terrified of the sea would be a recipe for a miserable experience, but actually, quite the opposite occurred. I napped under a tree with a breeze off the sea blowing between my toes and rustling my hair. I learned that I am capable of having a mostly coherent conversation with a naked attractive man that I just met, all while keeping my eyes firmly focused up. I discovered the nearby hot springs and sunk my legs in next to a giggling pair of topless retired German ladies.  I ate delicious local cheese cut by a pocket knife and drank a potent Greek alcohol, of which I forgot the name. I would like to say that I forgot the name because I drank too much, but really, names fly from my memory. As a setting sun necessitating clothing, we relaxed on blankets mere feet from the gentle waves rolling in, and we played music; guitars, ukulele and voices carrying on the breeze. When darkness fell over, the stars took center stage, demanding us to drown our eyes in their depths. As a reward for our attention, multiple shooting stars left trails across the heavens. The constellation of the vain Greek queen Cassiopeia drew my eyes, time and time again, to her crooked crown. “I learned my lesson about vanity and am now here for all to see. But tonight the question is, did you learn, Jen?” 

Point taken...