Music in Greece

by

Panayotis League

• LAST MODIFIED: 31 July 2019
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0263

Introduction

Located at the geographical and cultural meeting point of Europe, Asia, the Balkans, and North Africa, the Greek peninsula and its islands have always been a crucible of intensive mixture. Egyptian, Phoenician, Persian, Roman, Jewish, Arab, Byzantine, Turkish, Slavic, Albanian, Vlach, Italian, and a myriad other influences are readily apparent in all facets of the millennia-old Hellenic culture, and the music of the Greek world is no exception. It is rooted simultaneously in the modal and rhythmic systems of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East—origins it shares with closely related musical systems in Turkey and the Arab world—and quick to absorb and modify the tonal and harmonic features of European music as well as repertoire from neighboring Balkan nations and beyond. This inherent syncretism is perhaps the most characteristic feature of music in the modern-day Hellenic Republic, the island nation of Cyprus, and their worldwide diaspora of nearly 5 million people. Greek music is also notable for its astonishing diversity; there are at least a dozen regional folk music genres that have more in common with analogous traditions on the other side of the nearest national border than they do with each other, and many of them share neither repertoire nor instruments with other styles played elsewhere in Greece. Like the analogous Sanskrit sangita in the Indian context, the ancient Greek formulation of mousikē—a unified complex of performing arts, presided over by the Muses, that combines instrumental and vocal music, poetry, dance, and theater—remains relevant, as in many genres music, poetry, and dance are deeply intertwined on a structural and semantic level. The most sustained long-term musicological engagement with music in the Greek world has come from scholars of Byzantine chant—the liturgical music of the Eastern Orthodox Church—because of the genre’s close connections with medieval Western chant and the wealth of available manuscripts. Several generations of philologists and folklorists have produced important studies on the oral poetry so central to traditional Greek song, both in comparison to ancient epics such as the Homeric poems and in relation to contemporary regional streams of oral literature. Compared to the substantial body of literature on related traditions in the Balkans, Turkey, and the wider Mediterranean, relatively little work has been done by ethnomusicologists on the folk and popular music of Greece; but a talented generation of young Greek scholars trained in Europe and North America, as well as the exponential growth of ethnomusicology programs at Greek universities, is beginning to reverse this trend. This article seeks to give researchers a broad sense of extant scholarship across the many genres of Greek music, from foundational works in philological folk song studies and chant to ethnographic studies of music and dance across the Greek world and recent contributions to the realms of ethnomusicological theory and minority studies.

General Overviews

The majority of general introductory works on music in the Greek world pertain to ancient Greece, reflecting Western scholars’ prolonged interest in the historical, philosophical, and tonal aspects of music in Antiquity. The two included here take complementary approaches to the subject; Mathiesen 1999 is a more general encyclopedia-style overview that also engages with medieval iterations of ancient music, while Anderson 1994 goes into more technical detail and focuses on the classical and Hellenistic periods. The one general overview of Byzantine or Greek Orthodox liturgical music presented here, Stathis and Terzopoulos 2014, concentrates on more recent developments in chant. Finally, the four general works concerning folk music pertain to organology (Anoyanakis 1979 and Maliaras 2008), sung folk poetry (Politis 2011), folk and liturgical traditions from a musicological and philological perspective (Baud-Bovy 1983), and folk song since independence from the Ottoman Empire (Liavas 2009).

• Anderson, Warren D. Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

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  A meticulously researched overview of musical theory and practice in ancient Greece, with individual chapters focusing on music in daily life; vocal music; instruments; rhythm, tempo, and an excellent survey of meters; modes; melody and form; theory; notation and pitch; extant fragments of notation; and historical synthesis.

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• Anoyanakis, Fivos. Greek Popular Musical Instruments. Athens, Greece: National Bank of Greece, 1979.

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  An overview of instruments and instrumental techniques used in traditional Greek music, richly illustrated with color photographs from Anoyanakis’s personal collection, now housed in the Museum of Greek Folk Instruments in Athens. Especially notable for its broad inclusion of instruments from all regions and time periods of post-Byzantine Greece, from masterpieces made for urban Ottoman Greek art musicians to children’s musical toys.

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• Baud-Bovy, Samuel. Essai sur la chanson populaire grecque. Nafplio, Greece: Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation, 1983.

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  Written at the end of an illustrious life and career by the founding father of musicological approaches to Greek folk genres, this volume provides a relatively brief but rigorous introduction to the music and poetry of traditional Greek music from a historical perspective that takes into equal account both documented connections to ancient and Hellenistic phenomena and the legacies of Venetian and Ottoman rule. (Title translation: Essay on Greek folk song.)

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• Liavas, Lampros. Το Ελληνικό τραγούδι: Από το 1821 έως τη δεκαετία του 1950. Athens, Greece: Εμπορική Τράπεζα της Ελλάδος, 2009.

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  An introductory survey of the historical development of Greek folk, popular, and art song from the founding of the modern Greek state to the post–World War II period, focusing on the inherent connections in Greek culture between poetry, music, and movement. Examines diverse genres of rural and urban song, tensions between Eastern and Western identity, and music across the Greek diaspora, profiling important artists and placing musical developments in dialogue with historical events. (Title translation: Greek song from 1821 to the 1950s.)

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• Maliaras, Nikolaos. Βυζαντινά μουσικά όργανα. Athens, Greece: Παπαγρηγορίου-Νάκας, 2008.

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  A thorough summary and organological analysis of the extant iconographic and literary sources of knowledge about musical instruments in the Byzantine period, filling a major lacuna in Byzantine musicology and applying a rigorous evidence-based approach that avoids the generalizations and speculations that characterize much Greek writing on the subject. (Title translation: Byzantine musical instruments.)

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• Mathiesen, Thomas J. Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

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  A well-organized survey focusing on theoretical and practical aspects of music in ancient Greece, presented in concise encyclopedia-style entries. Includes sections on musical activity in the context of ritual, theater, and secular life; a catalogue of musical instruments organized according to the Sachs-Hornbostel system; music theory in Early Antiquity, the Hellenistic revival, and Late Antiquity; and ancient music in the Middle Ages.

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• Politis, Alexis. Το δημοτικό τραγούδι. Rethymno, Greece: University of Crete Press, 2011.

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  A comprehensive overview of traditional Greek song from a philological perspective, engaging with the subject as oral literature. Includes sections on the social function of Greek folk song, content, morphology, aesthetics, absorption into the written tradition and the impact of this process on orality, detailed analysis of selected songs, and commentary on important edited collections of song texts from the 19th to the 21st century. (Title translation: Greek folk song.)

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• Stathis, Gregorios, and Konstantinos Terzopoulos. Introduction to Kalophony, The Byzantine Ars Nova: The Anagrammatismoi and Mathēmata of Byzantine Chant. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014.

  DOI: 10.3726/978-3-0353-0357-5Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  A new English translation of a classic overview of one of the most dynamic and influential chapters of Byzantine music history, the 14th-century innovations of virtuosi composers and singers active in the period between the Latin occupation and Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.

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Reference Works

There are several excellent reference works on ancient, Byzantine, and folk music in the Greek world, many of which are available online: of those included here, Levy and Troelsgård 2001 focuses on Byzantine chant; Lingas 2012 on all facets of music sacred and secular in the Byzantine period; Mathiesen 2011 on music in ancient Greece; and Mathiesen, et al. 2001 on ancient, post-Byzantine, art music and folk traditions. Barker 1984–1989 is a collection of primary sources on ancient music.

• Barker, Andrew, ed. Greek Musical Writings. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984–1989.

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  A two-volume compendium of primary sources on ancient Greek musical theory and practice, translated and annotated with a modest bibliography of secondary sources. Volume 1, The Musician and His Art, focuses on passages from literature and philosophy that deal directly with musical performance, while Volume 2, Harmonic and Acoustic Theory, presents foundational texts by scientists and philosophers from the 6th century BCE into the early Byzantine period.

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• Levy, Kenneth, and Christian Troelsgård. “Byzantine Chant.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 4. Edited by S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell, 734–756. London: Macmillan, 2001.

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  A detailed and comprehensive overview of liturgical music in the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, both broad enough to serve as a thorough introduction and focusing on a diversity of technical details. Includes sections on manuscript sources; different historical notation systems; the modal system; the various categories of chants, psalmody, and hymnography; the development of divergent florid styles and personal expression; liturgical function; theory; and relations to Slavic and Western liturgical music. Available online by subscription.

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• Lingas, Alexander. “Music.” In Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Edited by Elizabeth Jeffreys, John F. Haldon, and Robin Cormack. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

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  A dense and thorough overview of the known spectrum of musical culture in the Byzantine period, including both secular and sacred forms. Includes sections on the pagan and Christian foundations of Byzantine music; the beginnings of psalmody in Constantinople and Palestine; the development of liturgical music and its notation system over the centuries until the Ottoman period; music theory; and the tensions in modern attempts to reconstruct medieval performance practice. Available online by subscription.

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• Mathiesen, Thomas. “Ancient Greek Music.” In The Oxford Companion to Music. Edited by Alison Latham. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

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  Provides a brief and general overview of mousikē as music in the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods, with short sections on history and function, musical instruments, music theory, and extant notations, paying attention to both the historical record and hermeneutic issues. Available online by subscription.

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• Mathiesen, Thomas, Dimitri Conomos, George Leotsakos, Sotirios Chianis, and Rudolph M. Brandl. “Greece.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 4. Edited by S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell, 327–359. London: Macmillan, 2001.

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  Covering all periods of Greek music except the Byzantine era, this entry is divided into four sections: ancient Greece, covering social context, musical instruments, theory, notation, and extant fragments of compositions; liturgical music in the post-Byzantine period from 1453 to 1830; Greek art music since 1770; and traditional music in terms of both pan-regional principles and distinct regional styles. Particularly valuable for the inclusion of a comprehensive bibliography after each section. Available online by subscription.

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Journals

Though various journals aimed at ethnomusicologists, musicologists, and folklorists occasionally publish articles on Greek music, Μουσικός Λόγος (Mousikos Logos) is the only widely available journal focusing on music in the Greek world.

• Μουσικός Λόγος (Mousikos Logos). 2013–.

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  An open-access peer-reviewed online journal in English, the only one of its kind taking a musicological perspective on the connections between music-making and other dimensions of culture and society in the Greek world.

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Anthologies

The explosion of interest in traditional music on the part of Greek folklorists, philologists, and musicologists in the 20th century has led to a great wealth of collections devoted to transcriptions of melodies and song texts from all over the Greek-speaking world. Baud-Bovy 1935–1938 focuses on the Dodecanese Islands near the Turkish coast; Baud-Bovy 2006 on the large island of Crete; Dragoumis 2015 on the island of Evia near Athens; Hatzitheodorou 1989 on the island of Kalymnos; Petropoulos 1979 on the urban song tradition known as rebetika; and Tsiamoulis and Erevnidis 1998 on Ottoman art music by Greek composers. Many practical musicians active in the Greek periphery actively notated their repertoire; Sousamlis 1904 and Pratsos 1963 provide two exceptional examples. Pöhlmann and West 2001 presents a comprehensive collection of extant ancient Greek compositions, and Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae is the most important series of liturgical notations and commentaries.

• Baud-Bovy, Samuel. Τραγούδια των Δωδεκανήσων. Athens, Greece: Βιβλιοπολείο Ι. Ν. Σιδερή, 1935–1938.

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  An annotated collection of traditional songs and instrumental dances from the Dodecanese Islands in the southeastern Aegean, collected by the author during in situ fieldwork and rendered in Western notation. One of the first such systematic attempts to catalogue and analyze Greek folk music from a unified musicological and philological perspective. (Title translation: Songs of the Dodecanese.)

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• Baud-Bovy, Samuel. Μουσική καταγραφή στην Κρήτη 1953–1954. Athens, Greece: Center for Asia Minor Studies, 2006.

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  An annotated compendium of song texts, transcriptions, commentary, and field notes from Baud-Bovy’s fieldwork on the island of Crete in 1953–1954, compiled and published after his death. Includes traditional lullabies, life cycle songs such as wedding praises and laments, instrumental dance music, and a wealth of mantinádes, the rhyming couplets that are central to Cretan tradition. (Title translation: Musical research in Crete 1953–1954.)

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• Dragoumis, Markos. Μελωδίες από τη βόρεια Εύβοια, Τόμος Α’. Athens, Greece: Center for Asia Minor Studies, 2015.

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  A compendium of traditional songs and tunes from the large island of Evia to the northeast of Athens, originally collected by a variety of folklorists in 1962 and presented here in annotated transcriptions in Western notation. Includes essays on the musical history of the island and the fieldwork expeditions, as well as two compact discs. (Title translation: Melodies from northern Evia, Vol. 1.)

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• Hatzitheodorou, Georgios. Τραγούδια και σκοποί στην Κάλυμνο. Kalymnos, Greece: Αναγνωστήριο Καλύμνου “Αι Μούσαι,” 1989.

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  An annotated collection of the traditional music of the Dodecanese island of Kalymnos, with folk songs, instrumental dance music, and paraliturgical repertoire in both Western and Byzantine (neumatic) notation. Includes introductions to Greek folk song in general, the specific musical traditions of Kalymnos, and the relationship between folk song and Byzantine chant; a catalogue of important local musicians; and hundreds of rhyming couplets organized according to thematic content. (Title translation: Songs and tunes in Kalymnos.)

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• Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae. Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard, 1935–.

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  Begun by Carsten Høeg at the University of Copenhagen, this ongoing collection of publications on Byzantine chant consists of five separate series (the Série Principale, Série Subsidia, Séria Transcripta, Séria Lectionaria, and Corpus Scriptum de Re Musica) focusing on facsimile reproductions of manuscripts, transcriptions, anthologies, and critical editions of medieval and early post-Byzantine theoretical treatises.

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• Petropoulos, Elias. Rebetika tragoudia. Athens, Greece: Kedros, 1979.

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  A comprehensive collection of song texts, historical photographs, short essays, and reminiscences of musicians associated with classic rebetika, the syncretic urban genre that arose out of the various folk traditions and the music brought to mainland Greece by refugees from Asia Minor. (Title translation: Rebetika songs.)

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• Pöhlmann, Egert, and M. L. West. Documents of Ancient Greek Music: The Extant Fragments Edited and Transcribed with Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.

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  An updated compendium that includes all sixty-one known compositions from the 5th century BCE to the 4th century CE in chronological order, in both ancient notation and (in most cases) modern Western notation. Each piece is accompanied by an extensive commentary on musical and poetic features and its social and historical context.

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• Pratsos, Panos. Μουσικό τετράδιο. Lesbos, Greece: Αναγνωστήριο Αγιάσου “Η Ανάπτυξη,” 1963.

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  A handwritten collection of hundreds of pieces of traditional, popular, and European art music notated by a professional musician active in the postwar music scene of the Greek island of Lesbos, providing evidence of the impressive depth and breadth of repertoire played by local musicians in the context of concerts, the theater, village fairs, and rituals. (Title translation: Music notebook.)

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• Sousamlis, Panayiotis. Τετράδιο Ευρωπαϊκής μουσικής. Lesbos, Greece: Αναγνωστήριο Αγιάσου “Η Ανάπτυξη,” 1904.

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  A handwritten compendium of Ottoman, Greek, and European melodies in Western notation compiled by a Smyrna-born clarinetist active on the island of Lesbos in the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman periods. The collection is especially notable for its seamless alternation between pieces in the modal makam system and popular European tunes; an invaluable primary source for scholars interested in musical pluralism in the Eastern Mediterranean at the turn of the 20th century. (Title translation: Notebook of European music.)

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• Tsiamoulis, Christos, and Pavlos Erevnidis. Ρωμιοί συνθέτες της Πόλης. Athens, Greece: Δόμος, 1998.

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  A collection of compositions in the genres of urban Ottoman art and popular music by Greek and other Orthodox Christian musicians who operated in and around the Ottoman court at Istanbul from the 17th to the early 20th century. Pieces are transcribed in the modified Western notation used by practitioners of Turkish classical music; the volume includes biographical information about the composers and an introduction to Ottoman makam (modal theory). (Title translation: Greek composers of Istanbul.)

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Ancient Greek Music

For a subject so far removed in terms of time and physical evidence from the present, the field of scholarship on ancient Greek music is impressively dynamic and diverse, from organological treatises (such as Hagel 2010) and philological approaches (such as Sifakis 1992) to multidisciplinary works inspired by critical theory and postcolonial and gender studies. D’Angour 1997 and Kowalzig and Wilson 2013 deal with music associated with the worship of the god Dionysus, while Weiss 2018, Power 2010, Wilson 1999, and Murray and Wilson 2004 examine the role of vocal and instrumental music in the context of the theater, competitions, and other politically charged public performance settings.

• D’Angour, Armand. “How the Dithyramb Got Its Shape.” The Classical Quarterly 47.2 (1997): 331–351.

  DOI: 10.1093/cq/47.2.331Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  An argument for the development of the circular chorus that performed hymns in honor of the god of theater and liminality Dionysus, relying both on dense philological analysis of a variety of texts and on analogies with performance practice in contemporary choral genres.

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• Hagel, Stefan. Ancient Greek Music: A New Technical History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

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  Takes an organological perspective on the development of pitch systems over the course of Greek Antiquity, focusing on the influence of the two dominant melodic instruments, the lyre (harp) and the aulos (shawm), on harmonic theory and practice.

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• Kowalzig, Barbara, and Peter Wilson, eds. Dithyramb in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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  A collection of essays concerning the dithyramb, the genre of choral hymn favored by worshipers of the god of theater and liminality Dionysus, investigating the social, political, and historical dimensions of its language, music, associated dance, and pictorial and literary representation.

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• Murray, Penelope, and Peter Wilson, eds. Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousikē in the Classical Athenian City. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

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  A collection of essays on various aspects of vocal and instrumental music, dance, theater, and allied arts in ancient Athens, with separate sections devoted to case studies focusing on their religious, performative, political, and educational dimensions. Notable for its focus on the relationship between musical theory and practice in classical Athens and the centrality of the performing arts to the inculcation of values and state ideology.

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• Power, Timothy. The Culture of Kitharôidia. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2010.

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  An overview of the largely secular, professionalized genre of song accompanied by the harp-like kithara popular at musical competitions in ancient Greece and Rome, positioning it as an intermediary between other better-known lyric, dramatic, and epic genres. Its four main sections deal with the kithara-playing career of the Roman Emperor Nero, the genre’s form and content, the legacy of virtuoso Terpander of Lesbos, and the Athenian festivals at which the kithara held pride of place.

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• Sifakis, G. M. “Homeric Survivals in the Medieval and Modern Greek Folksong Tradition?” Greece & Rome 2d ser. 39.2 (1992): 139–154.

  DOI: 10.1017/S0017383500024128Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Examines the thematic and structural parallels between the metrical language of the Homeric epics and Greek folk song since the Byzantine period from a philological perspective rooted in oral literature studies.

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• Weiss, Naomi. The Music of Tragedy: Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018.

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  Focuses on musical aspects of the work of the 5th-century BCE tragedian Euripides, arguing that his frequent references to music and music-making are both integral dramaturgical devices and a primary source of expanded knowledge about musical practice in classical Greece.

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• Wilson, Peter. “The Aulos in Athens.” In Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Edited by Simon Goldshill and Robin Osborne, 58–95. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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  Drawing on the historical record and the writings of various philosophers, considers the performance context and social and political significance of the aulos—the ubiquitous shawm at the center of private and public soundscapes in ancient Athens—as a contradictory site of transgression, danger, and irrationality.

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Byzantine Chant and Liturgical Music

Scholarship on the music of the Eastern Orthodox rite—commonly referred to as Byzantine chant after the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire under whose patronage it flourished—is extremely robust, drawing on centuries of continuous and active commentary in a multitude of languages on the theoretical and practical aspects of the genre and its connections with other related traditions. Some of these works focus on the intersections and tensions between Eastern and Western philosophies and aesthetics in different parts of the Greek world at different points in history: Conomos 1974 examines chant in the late Byzantine period, Giannopoulos 2006 in 16th- and 17th-century Crete, Andrikos 2012 in late Ottoman Smyrna, and Erol 2015 and Plemmenos 1997 in late Ottoman Istanbul. A particular strength of research in Byzantine music is its approach to manuscript study, informed by an acute awareness of the ways that interpretation and performance practice are informed by often-competing oral traditions; Lingas 2003 and Arvanitis 2010 are excellent examples of the diverse fruit that this approach bears. Groundbreaking recent work on chant has drawn on interdisciplinary approaches informed by embodiment studies (Antonopoulos 2017), ethnomusicological fieldwork (Lind 2011), and sonic mapping techniques (Gerstel, et al. 2018).

• Andrikos, Nikos. Η εκκλησιαστική μουσική της Σμύρνης (1800–1922). Athens, Greece: Topos, 2012.

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  Examines the social, historical, ideological, and aesthetic dimensions of the development of a distinct local style of liturgical chant in the majority-Greek city of Ottoman Smyrna over the course of the long 19th century, paying particular attention to its relationship with the wider world of musical performance, composition, education, and publishing in the same time and place. (Title translation: The ecclesiastical music of Smyrna, 1800–1922.)

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• Antonopoulos, Spyridon. “Kalophonia and the Phenomenon of Embellishment in Byzantine Psalmody.” In Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium. Edited by S. A. Harvey and M. Mullet, 87–109. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2017.

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  An exploration of the melismatic genre of kalophonia in terms of its primacy in the embodied experience of worship in the Byzantine era, focusing on the musical devices by which composer-performers manipulated liturgical texts for the twin purposes of artistic expression and devotional meditation.

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• Arvanitis, Ioannes. “Ο ρυθμός των εκκλησιαστικών μελών μέσα απο τη παλαιογραφική έρευνα και την εξήγηση της παλαιάς σημειογραφίας.” PhD diss., Ionian University, 2010.

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  Presents a holistic musical-prosodic theory governing the old heirmoi and stichera chants upon which chains of new compositions are based, arguing for the primacy of melodic contour and binary rhythm in determining the poetry of what amount to diachronic series of contrafacta. (Title translation: The rhythm of the ecclesiastic chants through the paleographic research and the transcription of the old notation.)

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• Conomos, Dimitri E. Byzantine Trisagia and Cheroubika of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: A Study of Late Byzantine Liturgical Chant. Thessaloniki, Greece: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1974.

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  Aimed at scholars with substantial knowledge of the musical and social context of late Byzantine chant, this study presents a detailed structural and stylistic analysis of two important genres of liturgical chant in relation to their theological significance and role in shaping performance practice.

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• Erol, Merih. Greek Orthodox Music in Ottoman Istanbul: Nation and Community in the Era of Reform. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.

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  Examines the “music question” that dominated discourse around Ottoman Greek Orthodox chant over the 19th century, as clergy, musicians, and laity debated the relative merits of preserving the Eastern heritage, modal character, and oral transmission of traditional chant versus embracing modern Western models of polyphony, standardized notation, and systematic transmission.

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• Gerstel, Sharon E. J., Chris Kyriakakis, Konstantinos T. Raptis, Spyridon Antonopoulos, and James Donahue. “Soundscapes of Byzantium: The Acheiropoietos Basilica and the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki.” Hesperia 87 (2018): 177–213.

  DOI: 10.2972/hesperia.87.1.0177Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Based on a groundbreaking project involving the acoustical mapping of several medieval churches in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, this article uses both those measurements and the objective experiences of researchers and chanters to explore the “archeoacoustics” of two specific churches in the context of their original design and aesthetic and liturgical function in the Byzantine era.

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• Giannopoulos, Emmanuel. Η άνθηση της ψαλτικής τέχνης στην Κρήτη (1566–1669). Athens, Greece: IBM, 2006.

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  An examination of the hybrid school of liturgical music that developed in Venetian-controlled Crete in the century before the Ottoman conquest, based on an exhaustive analysis of all the extant manuscripts of Orthodox chant from the period; argues for the predominantly Byzantine character of the Cretan liturgical music rather than the direct influence of Latin chant. (Title translation: The flourishing of the psaltic art in Crete, 1566–1669.)

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• Lind, Tore Tvarnø. The Past Is Always Present: The Revival of the Byzantine Musical Tradition at Mount Athos. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

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  One of the first studies of Byzantine chant from an explicitly ethnomusicological perspective, privileging ethnographic fieldwork rather than historiography and textual analysis. Examines the musical practices of the monastic community of Vatopedi on the autonomous Athos Peninsula in northern Greece, focusing on the intersections between the monks’ own research and interpretation of past practices and wider debates about authenticity and tradition in Byzantine chant.

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• Lingas, Alexander. “Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine Chant.” Acta Musicae Byzantinae 6 (2003): 56–76.

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  A detailed examination of the method used in the highly influential publication series Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae (cited under Anthologies) to transcribe the traditional neumes of Byzantine chant into Western notation, tracing disagreements about interpretation to divergent assumptions about performance practice and debates about Greek cultural identity in relation to medieval and modern Europe.

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• Plemmenos, John G. “The Active Listener: Greek Attitudes towards Music Listening in the Age of Enlightenment.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 6 (1997): 51–63.

  DOI: 10.1080/09681229708567261Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  An analysis of an early-19th-century Ottoman Greek text devoted to articulating an aesthetic theory of listening to liturgical music from a pedagogical perspective consciously informed by classical revivalist ideology, French Enlightenment philosophy, and contemporary European theories of listener typology.

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Ottoman Greek Music

The Greek population of the Ottoman Empire was an active force in musical life both urban and rural, in art and folk traditions; post-1922 refugees took their aesthetic prerogatives, repertoires, instruments, and techniques with them to Greece and points farther afield. Ethnomusicologists in particular have produced important work on this aspect of music in the Greek world, combining ethnographic fieldwork with archival research. Zannos 1994 and Pennanen 2004 concentrate on the changing and often fluid modal identity of Ottoman Greek music in liturgical and secular contexts, respectively. Gauntlett 2003 and League 2017 explore different facets of the musical lives of Asia Minor Greek refugees in their descendants in Greece and the United States, while O’Connell 2006, Poulos 2013, and Poulos 2014 examine the void left in Turkey by the forced expulsion of Greek musicians and the ways that both populations have taken nostalgic and mythologizing approaches to retelling their shared musical and cultural history.

• Gauntlett, Stathis. “Between Orientalism and Occidentalism: The Contribution of Asia Minor Refugees to Greek Popular Song, and Its Reception.” In Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey. Edited by Renée Hirschon, 247–260. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003.

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  A historical overview of the impact of the music, instruments, and performance techniques brought to mainland Greece by refugees from Asia Minor, focusing on the commercial recording industry in the 1920s and 1930s.

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• League, Panayotis. “Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2017.

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  Drawing on various theories of mimesis, investigates the legacy of Ottoman intercommunality in the musical practices of Anatolian Greeks both on the island of Lesbos and in the greater Boston area, where many refugees settled in the 1920s. Combines ethnography of several generations of musicians, dancers, and record collectors with detailed analysis of handwritten notations of Ottoman and European repertoire from the early 20th century and several decades of homemade and commercial audio recordings.

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• O’Connell, John Morgan. “The Mermaid of the Meyhane: The Legend of a Greek Singer in a Turkish Tavern.” In Music of the Sirens. Edited by Linda Phyllis Austern and Inna Naroditskaya, 273–293. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

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  Using the analogy of the mermaid as a subaltern figure in Turkish folklore, explores the career of Deniz Kızı Eftalya Hanım (b. 1891–d. 1939), an Istanbul Greek singer active in the liminal public space of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman winehouses, and argues that her public persona, singing style, and choice of repertoire mediated between secular and mystical conceptions of urban Ottoman music and competing Greek and Turkish mythologies.

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• Pennanen, Risto Pekka. “The Nationalization of Ottoman Popular Music in Greece.” Ethnomusicology 48.1 (2004): 1–25.

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  Examines how the Hellenocentric cultural nationalism of post-1922 Greece impacted the ways that musicians, audiences, critics, and researchers have conceptualized the urban Ottoman music brought to Greece by musicians from Asia Minor, and argues for a more nuanced view taking into account the legacy of Ottoman pluralism and the distinction between social and national memory.

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• Poulos, Panagiotis. “The Non-Muslim Musicians of Istanbul: Between Recorded and Intimate Memory.” In Ottoman Intimacies, Balkan Musical Realities. Edited by Risto Pekka Pennanen, Panagiotis C. Poulos, and Aspasia Theodosiou, 51–68. Helsinki: Foundation of the Finnish Institute at Athens, 2013.

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  A critical examination of popular Turkish nostalgia for the Ottoman era as it relates to the loss of Istanbul’s non-Muslim musicians, focusing on how dominant ways of presenting the music of minority composers reorient public understandings of the city’s pluralistic past away from the historical erasures of the early Kemalist period and toward the new notion of a global, European Istanbul.

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• Poulos, Panagiotis. “Greeks and Turks Meet the Rum: Making Sense of the Sounds of ‘Old Istanbul.’” In When Greeks and Turks Meet: Perspectives on the Relationship since 1923. Edited by Vally Lytra, 83–108. London: Ashgate, 2014.

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  Examines the work of the Istanbul-based group Bosphorus, formed in the 1980s to perform the music of Greek, Jewish, and Armenian Ottoman composers, as a means for both Greek and Turkish audiences to construct new historical interpretations of the Istanbul Greek or Rum community and its significance in relation to the transition from Ottoman Empire to modern ethno-nationalist states.

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• Zannos, Ioannis. Ichos und Makam: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zum Tonsystem der griechisch orthodoxen Kirchenmusik und der türkischen Kunstmusik. Bonn, Germany: Orpheus-Verlag, 1994.

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  A rich and detailed theoretical study of the parallel modal systems governing the liturgical music of the Greek Orthodox rite and the art music of the Ottoman court, arguing for centuries of mutual influence in the form of common composers, practitioners, and social and artistic scenes during the Ottoman era. (Title translation: Ichos and makam: Comparative studies on the tonal system of Greek Orthodox church music and Turkish art music.)

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Traditional and Folk Music

Traditional music in the Greek world remains somewhat analogous to the ancient formulation of mousikē in terms of its unified structure of music, poetry, and dance, and scholarly approaches to Greek folk music tend to reflect this holistic performance practice. Some important works, such as Cowan 1990, Kavouras 1992, and Loutzaki 2001, emphasize the political and social dimensions of dance, while Magrini 2000, Tsekouras 2016, and League 2016 focus on thick ethnographic analysis of poetic dialogue in a musical context. Htouris 2000 is a monumental survey of music on the island of Lesbos, Dawe 2007 concentrates on various aspects of musical life on the island of Crete, and Sarris, et al. 2010 combines statistical techniques to analyze the instrumental music of the island of Karpathos. Finally, Keil, et al. 2002 provides an elegant multi-sensory portrait of a community of Romani musicians and dancers in Greek Macedonia.

• Cowan, Jane. Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

  DOI: 10.1515/9781400884377Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  A groundbreaking study of the tensions, contradictions, and misunderstandings inherent in public and private dance and music events in a small town in northern Greece, paying particular attention to the ways that dancers articulate gender politics through bodily performance in a variety of situations from traditional wedding celebrations to formal social dance parties.

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• Dawe, Kevin. Music and Musicians in Crete: Performance and Ethnography in a Mediterranean Island Society. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007.

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  A collection of related essays about the lyra (upright bowed fiddle) and laouto (steel-string plucked lute) music of Crete, focusing on musically enacted articulations of masculinity, interactions with the local and global music industry, tensions between traditional values and economic necessity, and the cultural politics of musical mixture.

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• Htouris, Sotiris, ed. Μουσικά σταυροδρόμιο στο Αιγαίο: Λέσβος (19–20 αιώνας). Athens, Greece: Exantas, 2000.

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  An expansive edited volume of ethnomusicological, historical, and sociological approaches to the traditional music and dance of the island of Lesbos, including life histories and profiles of important musical families; analyses of repertoires, regional styles, and the social function of music and dance; and transcriptions of popular melody. Accompanied by several compact discs of field recordings. (Title translation: Musical crossroads in the Aegean: Lesbos, 19th–20th century.)

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• Kallimopoulou, Eleni. Paradosiaká: Music, Meaning, and Identity in Modern Greece. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009.

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  An ethnography of Greece’s urban traditional music revival in the early 2000s, focusing on the syncretic “paradosiaka” genre, which draws on the repertoire, instrumentation, and aesthetics of various genres of regional Greek, Turkish, and Balkan folk music, Ottoman art music, and Byzantine chant. Notable for its nuanced portrayal of competing ideologies from a practitioner’s “insider” perspective.

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• Kavouras, Pavlos. “Dance at Olymbos, Karpathos: Cultural Change and Political Confrontations.” Ethnografica 8 (1992): 173–190.

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  An ethnographically rich study of traditional dance, music, oral poetry, and social relations in the context of religious feasts on the Dodecanese island of Karpathos, home to some of the Aegean’s oldest extant folk genres. Focuses on the tensions that arise when the communal nature of local dances, the need for individual expression through bodily movement and sung speech, and traditional concepts of time and space are affected by mass migration, outside influence, and political change.

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• Keil, Charles, Angeliki Vellou Keil, Dick Blau, and Steven Feld. Bright Balkan Morning: Romani Lives and the Power of Music in Greek Macedonia. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002.

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  Combining eloquently composed texts by the Keils, artful black-and-white photographic portraits of musicians, dancers, and community members by Blau, and a “sonic ethnography” assembled by anthropologist/acoustemologist Feld, this book examines the identity, musical agency, and social lives of Romani musicians in northern Greece. One of the few musical ethnographies of Greek Roma, it explores the power relations that condition the lives of the Roma, the interrelations between musical agency, Romani identity, and marginalization, the role of the Roma as musical mediators of affective representations of ethnicity, and the socioeconomic reality of this minority community.

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• League, Panayotis. “The Poetics of Meráki: Dialogue and Speech Genre in Kalymnian Song.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 34.2 (2016): 367–398.

  DOI: 10.1353/mgs.2016.0031Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Proposes a theory of the music-poetry interface governing the ways that singers from the island of Kalymnos match extemporaneous rhyming couplets to a variety of complex melodies, and how the deformation of linguistic syntax in the context of dialogic musical performance often enhances the emotional and social impact of oral poetry.

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• Loutzaki, Irene. “Folk Dance in Political Rhythms.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 33 (2001): 127–137.

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  Analyzes specific folk dance and music events from five crucial periods in modern Greek history as polysemic instances of innovation in style, the repurposing of traditional forms in service of diverse political agendas, and venues for exploring the shifting power relations between the authority of the state and public practice.

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• Magrini, Tullia. “Manhood and Music in Western Crete: Contemplating Death.” Ethnomusicology 44.3 (2000): 429–459.

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  A nuanced examination of how male practitioners of dialogic song in Western Crete (the genres of rizitika and extemporaneous couplets or mantinádes) articulate gender-bounded values rooted in conflict, precarity, and the forging of social and familial alliances through melodic and poetic fragmentation, repetition, and exchange.

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• Sarris, Haris, Tassos Kolydas, and Panagiotis Tzevelekos. “Parataxis: A Framework of Structure Analysis for Instrumental Folk Music.” Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies 4.1 (2010): 71–90.

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  Proposes a highly systematic yet ethnographically rooted method of analyzing the non-strophic instrumental dance music of the Balkans and Greek Aegean islands, in which short melodic segments are played in both established and extemporized sequences, by tagging and annotating recordings of performances toward establishing a database for researchers.

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• Tsekouras, Ioannis. “Nostalgia, Emotionality, and Ethno-regionalism in Pontic Parakathi Singing.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016.

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  Considers the social and affective aspects of the dialogic participatory singing practiced by the descendants of refugees from the Black Sea coast of Turkey who were resettled in northern Greece in the 1920s, focusing on the genre’s role in reinforcing the ethno-nationalist and regionalist dimensions of Pontic Greek identity. Also notable for its valuable and comprehensive summary of Pontic music as a whole.

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Rebetika and Urban Popular Music

Over the 20th century, the syncretic urban genre broadly known as rebetika has gone from the margins of the Athenian underworld to an emblematic sonic and social marker of Greekness across social strata everywhere in the diaspora. Pennanen 1997 and Andrikos 2018 detail the myriad ways that Eastern and Western elements combined to construct the hybrid modal character of urban song in mid-20th-century Greece, while Gauntlett 1991 and Stamatis 2011 examine the political dimensions of rebetika at very different times of crisis in post-dictatorship Greece. Holst 1977, Sarbanes 2006, and Tragaki 2007 combine reflexive ethnography to explore the social significance of rebetika music and subculture on both an individual and a collective level.

• Andrikos, Nikos. Οι λαϊκοί δρόμοι στο μεσοπολεμικό αστικό τραγούδι: Σχεδίασμα λαϊκής τροπικής θεωρίας. Athens, Greece: Topos, 2018.

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  A detailed theoretical examination of the modal system employed by composers and performers of urban popular music in Greece between the two world wars, when the influence of music and musicians from Asia Minor was at its height. Draws on the author’s intimate acquaintance with Byzantine, Ottoman, and both Greek and Turkish folk music, and includes annotated transcriptions. (Title translation: Popular modes in interwar urban song: A sketch of popular modal theory.)

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• Gauntlett, Stathis. “Folklore and Populism: The ‘Greening’ of the Greek Blues.” In Proceedings of the Fourth National Folklore Conference, November 1990. Edited by Margaret Clarke, 85–91. Canberra: Australia Folk Trust, 1991.

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  Traces the co-option of the music of the rebetiko revival of the early 1980s by the populist Panhellenic Socialist Movement party, and dissects the multilayered irony of establishment politicians willingly patronizing music associated in the popular imagination with lawlessness, liminality, and anti-authoritarianism.

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• Holst, Gail. Road to Rebetika. Athens, Greece: Anglo-Hellenic Publishing, 1977.

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  One of the first English-language books on rebetika, notable for its mixture of first-person narrative, translated first-person accounts of musical and social life of practitioners, and literary analysis of song texts.

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• Pennanen, Risto Pekka. “The Development of Chordal Harmony in Greek Rebetika and Laika Music, 1930s to 1960s.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 6 (1997): 65–116.

  DOI: 10.1080/09681229708567262Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Based on transcriptions of commercial recordings and interviews with prominent musicians, examines the Westernization of urban Greek popular music after World War II via the adaptation of chordal harmony to modal melodies in theory and practice, emphasizing that indigenous modality both was affected by functional harmony and modified it in significant ways.

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• Sarbanes, Janet. “Musicking and Communitas: The Aesthetic Mode of Sociality in Rebetika Subculture.” Popular Music and Society 29.1 (2006): 17–35.

  DOI: 10.1080/03007760500142738Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Considers rebetika music and subculture as an anti-structural mode of collective, relational sociality that employs bricolage and improvisational forms to subvert dominant social mores and resist the codification of individual and collective identity.

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• Stamatis, Yona. “Rebetiko Nation: Hearing Pavlos Vassiliou’s Alternative Greekness through Rebetiko Song.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2011.

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  A rich ethnographic analysis of the crisis-era Athens rebetiko scene as a rejection of European hegemony and articulation of an alternative, independent Greek identity based on collective action, solidarity, and musically enacted catharsis.

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• Tragaki, Dafni. Rebetiko Worlds. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2007.

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  An ethnography of the rebetiko revival scene in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki in the early 2000s, focusing on the interpersonal aspect of music-making, practitioners’ personal ideologies in relation to their interpretations of the history of rebetiko song over the 20th century, and the subjective process of “insider” ethnographic fieldwork.

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Art Music

Art music in Greece has been largely ignored by European and American researchers, but it presents a fascinating field of illuminating case studies and larger national trends; stylistic and genre-bounded innovations in European music from the 18th century onward found parallel and related expressions in Greece, where composers and performers were able to draw upon a myriad of local and national traditions distinct from hegemonic European forms. Romanou 2006 is an excellent overview of art music in modern Greece, while Siopsi 2011, Xanthoudakis 2011, Andronikou and Sallis 2012, and Charkiolakis 2017 tell different aspects of the story of Greek national identity as it was composed and performed in concert halls across the country. Mantzourani 2011 examines the life and work of twelve-tone composer Nikos Skalkottas, while Harley 2004 analyzes Iannis Xenakis’s compositions in light of his diverse influences and artistic evolution, and Matossian 2005 provides a biography focusing on his philosophical motives and Greek identity.

• Andronikou, Michalis, and Friedemann Sallis. “Centring the Periphery: Local Identity in the Music of Theodore Antoniou and Other Twentieth-Century Greek Composers.” Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music 33.1 (2012): 11–34.

  DOI: 10.7202/1025553arSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  An insightful critique of trends toward a Euro-American nationalization of music history, arguing that a close examination of art music made in Greece—both broadly speaking and in terms of the work of specific 20th-century composers—reveals an intellectual and artistic tradition in constant dialogue with the classical and Byzantine heritage, regional folk and liturgical music, and a plethora of hybrid approaches to musical creation deserving of more attention from non-Greek researchers.

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• Charkiolakis, Alexandros. “The Notion of the Enemy in the Greek Operatic World of the 19th and 20th Centuries.” New Sound: International Journal of Music 50.2 (2017): 300–315.

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  An analysis of nationalist tendencies and heroic themes in opera by composers of the Greek National School, including a thorough and useful overview of the Greek opera scene as it developed and spread throughout the nation.

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• Harley, James. Xenakis: His Life in Music. New York: Routledge, 2004.

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  Examines the work of the contemporary composer in terms of its chronological evolution, charting the influence of architecture, mathematics, and the natural sciences in addition to detailed analysis of both early unpublished compositions and his most celebrated pieces.

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• Mantzourani, Eva. The Life and Twelve-Note Music of Nikos Skalkottas. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011.

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  A biography of the composer focusing on his youth, his studies in Berlin, his mature period back in Greece, and the development of his personal twelve-tone compositional technique, including detailed analysis of his use of sets and set-groups, his linear serialism, and his movement toward free dodecaphonic technique.

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• Matossian, Nouritza. Xenakis. Lefkosia, Cyprus: Moufflon, 2005.

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  An updated version of the only authorized biography of the 20th-century composer; focuses on his philosophical motivations rather than the technical details of his work, and is notable for its attention to his intellectual and artistic formation in Greece as well as his political activism in Greece during and after the Second World War.

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• Romanou, Kaiti. Έντεχνη ελληνική μουσική στους νεότερους χρόνους. Athens, Greece: Koultoura, 2006.

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  A historical overview of European-style art music by Greek composers, focusing in particular on the post-independence period of the 19th century and providing detailed archival lists of known productions. (Title translation: Greek art music in modern times.)

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• Siopsi, Anastasia. “Music in the Imaginary Worlds of the Greek Nation: Greek Art Music during the Nineteenth-Century’s fin de siécle (1880s–1910s).” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 8.1 (2011): 17–39.

  DOI: 10.1017/S1479409811000048Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  An analysis of the hybrid national character of art music produced and consumed by the Greek middle class at the turn of the 19th century, simultaneously influenced by German Romanticism, notions of historical continuity with classical culture, and a preoccupation with incorporating elements of Greek folk and liturgical song.

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• Xanthoudakis, Haris. “Composers, Trends, and the Question of Nationality in Nineteenth-Century Musical Greece.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 8.1 (2011): 41–55.

  DOI: 10.1017/S147940981100005XSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Traces the beginnings of musical nationalism in the progressively Westernizing post-Ottoman Kingdom of Greece, from the Italianate composers of the Ionian Islands to the eventual spread of 19th-century central European and Russian art music trends throughout the country and the crystallization of various local schools of popular art song.

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Popular Music

Genre boundaries in Greece are particularly fluid, and “popular music,” regardless of its marketed identity, frequently incorporates tangible elements of various identifiable styles from throughout Greece and neighboring countries. Dimitriou 2015 and Samson and Dimitriou 2015 present various case studies from the island nation of Cyprus, where musicians have long moved between art, folk, and popular styles associated with Greek, Turkish, and European populations. Susam-Saraeva 2015 explores musical and poetic exchange between Greek and Turkish musicians and audiences through the recording industry and Internet, and Michael 2009 examines the philosophies of popular recording and performing artists working in a variety of genres and contexts. Tragaki 2019 provides a much-needed collection of new work on a variety of popular genres, Tsioulakis 2013 examines the Athenian jazz scene, and Economou 2015 concentrates on the reception of one of the iconic voices of postwar Greek music.

• Dimitriou, Nicoletta. “‘Our Land is the Whole World’: Monsieur Doumani and Reinventing Cypriot Traditional Music.” Mousikos Logos 2 (2015): 63–77.

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  Examines the aesthetics, marketing strategies, and ideology of the Nicosia-based world/folk group Monsieur Doumani, arguing that their eclectic, hybrid approach to performing Cypriot music has contributed to a revitalization of the tradition by changing not only the sound of the music but the way its practitioners look and act, thereby attracting younger audiences who have ceased to identify with village culture.

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• Economou, Leonidas. Στέλιος Καζαντζίδης: Τραύμα και συμβολική θεραπεία στο λαϊκό τραγούδι. Athens, Greece: Patakis, 2015.

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  An anthropological study not only of the life, career, and music of the immensely popular singer Stelios Kazanzidis, but also—and primarily—of the multivalent discourse surrounding his fans’ experience of listening to and singing along with his recorded voice, tying together theoretical threads from reception studies, music perception, and the therapeutic qualities of listening. (Title translation: Stelios Kazantizids: Trauma and symbolic therapy in Greek popular song.)

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• Michael, Despina. “The Aesthetic Imperative: The Musician’s Voice in Modern Greek Culture.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 27 (2009): 345–416.

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  Based on interviews with nearly three dozen musicians working across a broad spectrum of popular, folk, and art music and offering an extensive bibliography of profiles of popular musicians, this article examines musicians’ ideological motivations for practicing their art and interacting with the public based on the concepts of diaskedasi (entertainment), didaskalia (educating), and psych-agogia (spiritual guidance or formation).

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• Samson, Jim, and Nicoletta Dimitriou, eds. Music in Cyprus. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015.

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  The first edited volume in English to focus exclusively on the island nation of Cyprus; includes essays on Greek and Turkish Cypriot folk music, art music rooted in both Ottoman and European traditions, and popular music from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including ethnomusicology, historical musicology, journalism, and the performing arts.

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• Susam-Saraeva, Şebnem. Translation and Popular Music: Transcultural Intimacy in Turkish-Greek Relations. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015.

  DOI: 10.3726/978-3-0353-0769-6Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  A study of the symbiotic relationship between Greek and Turkish popular musics in the eastern Aegean, focusing on the affective dimensions of cultural sharing through the performance, recording, and consumption of Greek songs in Turkish translation and vice versa in the context of rapprochement between the two nations, their shared history of conflict, and their respective ethno-national agendas.

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• Tragaki, Dafni, ed. Made in Greece: Studies in Popular Music. New York: Routledge, 2019.

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  This edited volume provides a comprehensive review of contemporary scholarship on Greek popular music broadly defined. The volume is both interdisciplinary and intersectional, approaching a variety of music phenomena from perspectives rooted in ethnomusicology, comparative literature, and media and film studies, and touching on issues of national identity, regionalism, minority politics, and cosmopolitanism.

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• Tsioulakis, Ioannis. “The Quality of Mutuality: Jazz Musicians in the Athenian Popular Music Industry.” In Musical Performance and the Changing City: Post-Industrial Contexts in Europe and the United States. Edited by Fabian Holt and Carsten Wergin, 200–224. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2013.

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  One of the first ethnographic studies of professional jazz musicians in Athens, notable for its focus on musical agency across a variety of contemporary genres and the delineation of a particularly Greek urban aesthetic cosmopolitanism that is predicated on personalized representations of the musically foreign.

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The Greek Diaspora

Despite the large numbers of Greeks living outside of the nation’s political boundaries, scholarship on music-making in the worldwide diaspora has lagged far behind that on music in Greece itself. Bucuvalas 2018 is a monumental step toward filling this lacuna, bringing together a variety of perspectives on Greek American music; Stathis Gauntlett has done analogous work in the Australian context, with Gauntlett 2009 taking a particularly nuanced stance on musical and ideological relations with the motherland. Wood 2012 presents a detailed profile of a traditional musician in an insular Greek immigrant community in the American South, while League 2016 is a diachronic study of home recording technologies among Ottoman Greek migrants to Boston.

• Bucuvalas, Tina, ed. Greek Music in America. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018.

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  The first edited collection focusing on music in the Greek American diaspora, featuring essays on folk, popular, and liturgical genres by folklorists, ethnomusicologists, archivists, historians, and practitioners of Greek music and dance. Particularly valuable for both its introductory historical overview of Greek music in the United States and the breadth of the individual contributions.

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• Gauntlett, Stathis. “The Diaspora Sings Back: Rebetika Down Under.” In Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700. Edited by Dimitris Tziovas, 272–284. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009.

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  Illustrates the multiple ways that rebetika came to be among the most popular musical genres across generations in the Greek Australian community, as well as the hybrid features of musical practice and discourse in the Greek Australian context that work to subvert and provide a counterpoint to dominant forms produced in Greece.

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• League, Panayotis. “Genealogies of Sense and Sound: Home Recordings and Greek-American Identity.” Journal of Greek Media and Culture 2.1 (2016): 29–48.

  DOI: 10.1386/jgmc.2.1.29_1Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Examines the multigenerational transmission of aesthetic and affective practices in the Boston area’s Anatolian Greek community through an analysis of handwritten notations of Ottoman and European popular and art music from the early 20th century, homemade audio recordings of postwar Greek popular music, and ethnography of contemporary reactions to these archives on the part of their authors’ descendants.

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• Wood, Anna Lomax. “Musical Practice and Memory on the Edge of Two Worlds: Kalymnian Tsambouna and Song Repertoire in the Family of Nikitas Tsimouris.” In The Florida Folklife Reader. Edited by Tina Bucuvalas, 96–153. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012.

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  A profile of the tsambouna (goatskin bagpipe) player Nikitas Tsimouris from the island of Kalymnos and his musical family in the context of their resettlement in the Greek migrant community of Tarpon Springs, Florida. Includes a rich collection of translated song texts, poetic dialogue, and conversations about music and folkways in both the homeland and the adopted country.

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