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Music of Crete |
| Music of Greece: Topics | |||||||||
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| History (Timeline and Samples) | |||||||||
| Genres: | Classical music -Folk - Hip hop - Jazz - Rock | ||||||||
| Regional styles | |||||||||
| Aegean Islands - Arcadia - Argos - Athens - Crete - Cyclades - Dodecanese Islands - Epirus - Ionian Islands - Lesbos - Macedonia - Peloponnesos - Thessaloniki - Thessaly - Thrace - Cyprus | |||||||||
The music of Crete is a traditional form of Greek folk music called κρητικά (kritika). The lira is the dominant folk instrument on the island; it is a three-stringed fiddle similar to the Pontian kemenche. It is often accompanied by the Cretan lute (laoúto), which is similar to both an oud and a mandolin. Thanassis Skordalos and Kostas Moundakis are the most renowned players of the lira.
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Crete was colonised from Egypt, bringing with it the gifts of civilisation that lead to the establishment of the great trading nation that was Minos. It was in rebellion against the tribute to be paid to Crete (and Troy) that Greece went to war. Prior to this Crete was trading with all parts of the Black Sea, (consider the journey of the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece) as well as the Mediterranean and further abroad than this as well. The tales of Hermes, originally a Cretan God along with Herakles who brought the Olympic games to mainland Greece, tell of Hermes first day on Earth venturing from the cave where his mother had secreted him. He stumbled upon a toroise with great delight, and returning to the cave there fashioned a lyre from him. This Lyre Hermes later gave to Apollo who in turn passed it on to the Thracian Orpheus. The Gadulka (Bulgarian lyre) is still a popular instrument in Bulgaria which once formed part of greater Thrace. All of this greatly predates any involvement with Arabs described below.
The earliest documented music on Crete comes from ancient Greece. For many centuries, Cretan music was primarily influenced by eastern techniques and styles. The Cretan lira is almost the same as the lyre of Constantinople.
As regards the origins of the Cretan lira there are two schools of thought: 1) The lyre was brought by the Arabs who arrived from Spain and stayed in Crete as conquerors from 823 AD to 961 AD. During these years, the lyre was present in Crete continuously. This means that the Arabic rebab of that period is morphologically the same as the lyre of Byzantium. 2)The lyre ‘arrived’ in Crete from Constantinople, probably through the Dodecanese, and "entered" the island through Sitia, which is the neighbour of Kasos and Karpathos. This must have happened by the 12th century (1101 – 1200 A.D.), since two centuries are more than enough for a musical ‘trip’ from Constantinople to Crete. Following the Crusades, however, the Franks, Venetians and Genoese dominated the island and introduced new instruments and genres. By the end of the 14th century, a poetic form called mantinada became popular; it was a rhyming couplet of fifteen syllables. The introduction of the violin by the end of 17th century was especially important.
After the fall of Constantinople, many church musicians fled to Crete, as did numerous Venetians. A French physician in 1547 (Pierre Belon) reported warrior-like dances on Crete, and Sherley, an English traveler, reported in 1599 of wild dances performed late at night.
The oldest surviving folk songs in all of Greece can be traced to the 17th century, when songs in the rizitika type (see below) were "recorded" by monks at Iviron and Xyropotamos at Mount Athos. Recording secular folk songs was almost certainly forbidden by the monk's code of conduct. However, the connection between music and religion continues in modern Crete; priests are said to be excellent folk singers, including the rizitiko singer Aggelos Psilakis. It was during this period, when modern Cretan folk music was formed, that Francisco Leontaritis was active. Leontaritis is said to be the father of modern Greek music.
After the Turks conquered Crete in 1669, a distinct Cretan Muslim musical tradition developed, tabachaniotika, similar to rebetiko. In the 1810s, Georgios the Cretan helped to revive Byzantine music traditions. Today, most Cretan songs and music have strong eastern influences; some tabachaniotika songs have passed into the contemporary repertoire.
By the early 20th century, the violin was playing a more prominent role in Cretan folk music, and was preferred in Western Crete, while the lira was preferred in Eastern Crete. The West Cretan highlands also featurs rizitika; these are heroic ballads without instrumental accompaniment.
A combination of the violin and lyre, the viololyra, was created in 1920. Twenty years later, the modern form of the lira appeared when a lyraki and violin were combined by Manolis Stagakis, replacing the lira drone strings with three strings in succession (d-a-e'). As a result the range of the lira was increased, and the lira could start playing dances from the violin repertoire as well. Replacing the falcon bells which had traditionally been used to keep the rhythm was the boulgari, a smaller stringed instrument that arrived in Greece from Turkey in 18th century (and was used in Tabachaniotika). Nowadays the laouto is used in this role.
Some of the earliest popular music stars from Crete were Andreas Rodinos, Yiannis Bernidakis (Baxevanis), Stelios Koutsourelis, Stelios Foustalieris, Efstratios Kalogeridis, Kostas Papadakis, Michalis Kounelis, Kostas Mountakis and Thanassis Skordalos. Later, in the 1960s, musicians like Nikos Xylouris and Yiannis Markopoulos combined Cretan folk music with classical techniques. For the above choices, Nikos Xylouris received the negative criticism of conservative fans of the Cretan music but he remained popular, as did similarly-styled performers like Charalambos Garganourakis and Vasilis Skoulas. Nowadays, prominent performers include Antonis Xylouris or Psarantonis, Giorgis Xylouris, Ross Daly, Stelios Petrakis, Vasilis Stavrakakis, the group Chainides, Zacharias Spyridakis, Michalis Stavrakakis, Mitsos Stavrakakis, Dimitrios Vakakis, Georgios Tsantakis, Michalis Tzouganakis, Elias Horeftakis, Giannis Charoulis, etc.
As Magrini (1997) has argued, modern marketing of Cretan music has concentrated on the lira as the most distinctive Cretan instrument, to the extent that other instruments are seldom heard. This includes the violin, as well as the bagpipes askomadoura.
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