Spotlight on.. Greece
The music of Greece!! The musical legacy of Greece is as diverse as its history. Cypriot music has many similarities to traditional Greek music, and their modern music scenes remain well-integrated.
In ancient Greece, mixed-gender choruses performed for entertainment, celebration and spiritual reasons. Music was an important part of education in ancient Greece, and boys were taught music starting at age six, with theory including the Greek musical modes, which eventually became the basis for Western religious and classical music.
By the beginning of the 20th century, music-cafés featuring bands typically led by a female vocalist and including a violin and a sandouri were popular. The improvised songs typically exclaimed aman aman, which led to the name amanedhes or café-aman.
Traditional dhimotika are accompanied by clarinets, guitars, tambourines and violins, and include dance music forms like syrto, kalamatiano, tsamiko and hasaposerviko, as well as vocal music like kleftiko. Greek folk music is found all throughout Greece, as well as among communities in Australia, the US and Canada. The island of Cyprus and several regions of Turkey are home to long-standing communities of ethnic Greeks with their own unique styles of music.
The most successful songs during the period 1870-1930 were the so-called Athenian songs, which were those performed on the Athenian stage in revues and operettas. After 1930, wavering among American and European musical influences as well as the Greek musical tradition, the Greek composers begin to write music to the tunes of the tango, the samba, and the waltz as well as the melodies that refer to Athenian serenades.
Rebétiko evolved from traditions of the urban poor and the earliest rembétika musicians were scorned by mainstream society. They sang heartrending tales of drug abuse, prison and violence, usually accompanied by the bouzouki. Entekhno is orchestral music with elements of Greek folk rhythm and melody, with Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hadjidakis being its most popular early performers. By the 1960s, innovative albums made éntekhno mainstream, and also led to its appropriation by the film industry for use in soundtracks. The music theme which appears in the 1964 Hollywood movie Zorba the Greek remains the most well-known Greek song abroad.
Laïkó was the pop music of the 50s and 60s, but was criticised for its decadence and "unpure" Turkish roots. Tsifteteli is, basically, Greek belly dance music. The Arabic and Turkish influence on this type of music is very clear, and adds to the cultural similarities Greeks have with the Middle East. Among the many popular modern artists who include tsifteteli in their music are Despina Vandi, Eleni Karousaki and Yiorgos Mazonakis.
Due to the common heritage much Greek music has with Turkey and the Middle East, there have been exchanges of music and duets with singers from these areas. Greek singers like Sarbel have traslated songs from Arabic to Greek, while many songs are currently sung as a duet in both the Greek and Turkish languages - a good example being "Anaveis Fwties" by Despina Vandi.
