The singing becomes complex, the melodic lines intertwine but never become muddled, and while the less experienced singers among the guest intone a burden or drone, the first singer launches into new ornamentations, leading and guiding the others to the end of the song which resembles a collective sob. A second voice, that of a childhood friend, joins the first, embroiders, improvises, draws in the voices of the other companions at table. Then suddenly, a voice rises up it is almost a cry, a lament, hardly more than a few words, the first verses of an emigration song, вЂHappy when I forget, sad when I rememberвЂ™. To begin with a few called вЂtable tunesвЂ™ will be played to warm up the mood and speed up the flow of ouzo. The musicians bring out their instruments: a clarinet, one or two violins, the long-necked lute and the dГ©fi (tambourine). I rom time to time they come together on the occasion of some celebration families and friends are reunited and the village experiences a partial and temporary re-constitution around a table and several bottles of ouzo. Singers and instrumentalists all live and work in Athens. Moreover, KtГsmata, the village close to the Greek-Albanian border where our musicians come from, is today being ravaged by the emigration of its inhabitants, as is the entire region of Epirus. When one adds the difficult vocal training needed for a mastery of the вЂyodellingвЂ™ technique used by the singer called the вЂembroidererвЂ™, one realizes why the initiation into polyphonic singing must begin in childhood. Their performance demands not only a thorough knowledge of this extremely rich and varied repertory (the performers of the music recorded here claim that each song often has more than ten variants of both the text and the music), but also a perfect familiarity with polyphonic invention and a solid gift for improvisation. On listening to this recording one will readily understand how arduous an apprenticeship is necessary to master these songs. With the exception of a study by the musicologist, Spyros Peristeris, published in Athens in 1958, there has, to the best of our knowledge, been no other systematic work devoted to the extremely ancient musical tradition of Epirus, and particularly to its polyphonic songs.Д«ut musical traditions are in greater need of musicians to perpetuate them than of researchers, and looked at from this point of view, the future of Epirote polyphonic music is more than precarious. Introduction to the Polyphonic Songs of Epirus

Polyphonic music