Music of Crete

Some of this variation continues today and in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries has received greater attention by scholars and the mass media.

Lyra, violin, and laouto (Cretan lute) predominate, but other common instruments include the mandolin, mandola, oud, thiampoli (souravli), askomandoura, classical guitar (especially in Eastern Crete), boulgari, and daouli (davul).

Certain traditional dances from other regions of Greece, most notably kalamatianos and ballos, are also widely performed by professional Cretan musicians, usually with Cretan-composed lyrics, in musical gatherings since at least the twentieth century.

For this reason, sometimes when mantinadas are transcribed, they are broken into four shorter lines in a rhyme scheme of ABCB as opposed to the traditional form of a couplet.

The metrical rhythm of mantinadas usually falls into eight successive iambs followed by an unstressed syllable, the form known in Greek as political verse and akin to the English-language fourteener and ballad stanza.

Sometimes a certain pairing of a particular mantinada with a particular melody (e.g., based on a well-known professional recording) will also congeal among much of the population and therefore tend to be repeated in performance.

A common musical accompaniment for the improvisation of large numbers of mantinadas is called a kontilia (Greek: κοντυλιά), a four-measure melody.

Since the twentieth century, an island-wide canon of rizitika songs has taken shape, especially in the wake of a commercially influential recording of them arranged by Yannis Markopoulos and sung by Nikos Xylouris in the early 1970s.

The First Lines of the Erotokritos: Του Κύκλου τα γυρίσματα, που ανεβοκατεβαίνουν, και του Τροχού, που ώρες ψηλά κι ώρες στα βάθη πηαίνουν Tou Kiklou ta girismata, pou anevokatevainoun, kai tou Trochou, pou ores psila ki ores sta bathi piainoun Of the great revolving cycle on which they travel, and of the wheel, on which hours run high and low The "tabachaniotika" ([tabaxaˈɲotika]; sing.

Major features of the tabachaniotika songs are Dromoi (sing:in Greek dromos – δρόμος) (i.e., modes) and musical instruments such as the laouto and boulgarí (μπουλγκαρί, the Cretan orelse).

Kostas Papadakis believes that it comes from tabakaniotikes (ταμπακανιώτικες), which may mean places where hashish (Greek: ταμπάκο 'tobacco') was smoked while music was performed, as was the case with the tekédes (τεκέδες; pl.

Unlike rebetiko, the tabachaniotika was not considered underground music and was only sung, not danced,[3] according to Nikolaos Sarimanolis, the last living performer of this repertory in Chania.

Notable artists of this genre who were originally refugees from Asia Minor include the bouzouki player Nikolaos "Nikolis" Sarimanolis (Νικολής Σαριμανώλης; born in Nea Ephesos in 1919) as a member of a folk-group founded by Kostas Papadakis in Chaniá in 1945, Antonis Katinaris (also based in Chaniá), and the Rethymnon-based Mihalis Arabatzoglou and Nikos Gialidis.

Up until the Second World War, many early masters of the lyra, violin or laouto were recorded on 78, such as Antonogiorgakis, Harchalis, Kalogeridis, Kanteris, Karavitis, Lagoudakis (Lagos), Papadakis (Kareklas), Rodinos, Saridakis (Mavros).

Nikos Xylouris was among a new generation of musicians and recording artists whose work further helped to popularize Cretan music in the cities of Crete and beyond.

Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis also included a Cretan-syrtos-inspired opening song in his Kapetan Michales cycle (1966), written for theater and based on Cretan author Nikos Kazantzakis's Captain Michalis (frequently translated as Freedom and Death).

In 1968, German director Werner Herzog's short film Last Words includes extensive (uncredited) clips of Antonis Papadakis (Kareklas) and Lefteris Daskalakis performing Cretan music.

"[9] Numerous scholars have noted that modern Cretan music has been a predominantly male domain and, in particular, serves as a site for performing one's "manhood.

Later, in the 1960s, musicians like Nikos Xylouris (Psaronikos) and Yannis 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.