Study the past if you would define the future (Confucius)
Introduction
The subject of this study is the changing role of the informant vis-à-vis that of the researcher/collector in the recent history of modern-Greek folk music. Briefly, the role of the informant, formerly a subsidiary and rather neglected category in the context of folk song collections and recordings, has relatively recently been upgraded and come to prominence. The period spanned in this study is the mid-nineteenth century, when the earliest Greek song collections appeared, to the mid-twentieth century, when the situation began gradually to change. The transfer of information to the researcher in Greece was often carried out with no official permission and returns (e.g., remuneration), except perhaps for some moral encouragement (when that was deemed necessary). So, the most the informants could expect from the researchers for their contribution would be verbal recognition and public acknowledgement (usually through the newspapers).Footnote 1 It is true though that, even in the Western world, ethical considerations towards the informants were strongly raised only from the 1960s, despite some earlier calls to that effect.Footnote 2
Throughout the nineteenth century, informants were not asked to provide ample information (other than their name, age, and profession), such as their grammatical knowledge, musical education, exposure to other musical environments, etc. Other information not retrievable from the recordings was also missing, such as the informants’ musical receptivity, behaviour during the performance, and (social and artistic) status in the local community, which is now considered a sine qua non for a complete and reliable musical appreciation.Footnote 3 This did not happen out of respect for the informants’ personal “data”, but because this (and other data) was often considered unnecessary or irrelevant to the “main” information (song-text and music) that was supposed to be the main goal of the folklorists. To fully appreciate this practice, one should place them in the context of nationalism and the so-called “Grand Project” (Megali Idea) that preached the restoration of the Greek (Byzantine) Empire around Constantinople as the eternal capital of Hellenism.Footnote 4
So (to return to the main theme), after its classification in the archives of the institution of the researcher/collector, the information underwent a substantial and radical “transformation”. If by being deposited in the archives, the information was protected and safeguarded by the institution (or by the government, if it was a state establishment), what went missing was its registration as the intellectual property of the informant and the local community.Footnote 5 Over time, the archived information was “cut off” from its “natural” environment (the local community) and was identified with its new home (the institution’s archive).Footnote 6 If the institution proceeded to publish the collected information, the latter was credited to the academic achievement of the researcher and secondarily (or not at all) to the “cultural wealth” of the community from which it originated. Thus, publications sometimes do not even mention the exact place of the information, apart from the wider region.
In view of these observations, the Greek example represents an interesting and enlightening case, showing why things were in such a state in the past and how they have improved. The main reasons for the past difficulties faced by Greek collectors are to be found in (a) the absence or at best the degradation of the informant in relation to the information provided, (b) the collecting of musical information outside its functional space, in a “neutral” and predetermined place, (c) the classification of the information in a way foreign to that followed by the informant or the community, (d) and the placement of the musical information (misleadingly called “musical material”) in archives not accessible to informants and their communities. At the same time, some of their Western homologues (philologists and musicologists alike) had begun seeking a more reliable recording policy, as shown in the following contemporary publications from England.
For example, in the Introduction of James Henry Dixon’s Ancient Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England (Reference Dixon James and Bell1857:7), a song-text collection, it is stressed that the ideal collector should combine “genial literary taste with the local knowledge of character, customs, and dialect, indispensable to the collation of such reliques”.Footnote 7 Thus, he has included long introductory sections in every song, indicating the source, the historical context, the cultural environment of the age, etc. Similarly, L. Broadwood and J. Fuller’s music collection of English County Songs (Reference Broadwood and Fuller1893) offers a detailed documentation at the bottom of every song including names, places, possible variants, and other relevant information. Besides, in the Preface, the collectors cite a list of over-forty names who helped them, also inviting the audience, “if any readers should be able to throw light on any of the songs here given […] they will greatly oblige the editors by sending such information” (Reference Broadwood and Fuller1893:v–vi).
Instead, until the end of the nineteenth century, no collection of Greek folk songs published by any Greek printing press named their informants, limiting their information to the songs’ place of origin. Most of these earliest collections only provided the song texts (lyrics), acting as poetic anthologies and repositories of the then-called “speech monuments” (according to Nikolaos Politis, founder of Greek Folklore).Footnote 8 Even in the early 20th century, when music collections of Greek folk songs began (sporadically and eclectically) to mention their informants, the emphasis of the collectors laid on the antiquity and value of their material! However, the trend of “informant indifference” did not abandon Greek collectors until well into the twentieth century, the most notable case being Simon Karas (1905–1999), a music teacher and founder of the Association for the Dissemination of National Music. A turning point in this regard was the music collection of the Academy of Athens (1968), edited by the eminent musical researcher, Spyros Peristeris (1913–1998), who took care to add some important details on the informants.Footnote 9
Some reasons for the lack of adequate documentation may have been (a) the centrality of the publications (printed in the capital), (b) the lack of strong connection and cooperation between the editors and the local communities and (c) consequently, the absence of the latter from the whole process (song gathering and publication).Footnote 10 Regarding the first point, the majority of publications in question were carried out in Athens, where the most organised and advanced printing houses existed. The editors (including those originally coming from the investigated communities) were also distanced from their sources, either symbolically (due to their higher social status that made their job somewhat superficial), or physically (due to their inability to stay for long periods in or return to the field). Therefore, local communities were not invited to participate actively in the whole process of editing and publication. As shown below, a turning point was a collection of 1923 by the Greek musicologist, K. Psachos (1869–1949), indirectly sponsored by the local community (a local association of the capital).
This is the first study on the theme of the informant in the context of Greek folk music (through past collections), and has unavoidably a strong descriptive character, although comments are occasionally made to better showcase the works and their authors. For this reason, no attempts have been made to apply a particular theoretical framework or methodology, for the priority of this study is to locate and discuss hitherto unknown data (the interpretation and analysis of which requires a separate study that can be taken up by this author in the future). Yet, this investigation should not be read as an implied attempt at critiquing Greek folk music or the country’s cultural past, but as a contribution to the study and better understanding of the dynamics of this musical tradition and its adaptability to the wider social and cultural environment(s). At the end of the day, the historical investigation is also laying of the finger “in the print of the nails” (as the Doubting-Thomas story goes), and contribution to the search for the truth.
The “age of information”
The earliest attempts at noting down Greek folk music began in the second half of the nineteenth century, except for some earlier sporadic transcriptions in literary journals. The first complete collection of Greek folk music is considered the 30 Mélodies populaires de Grèce et d’Orient (Paris Reference Bourgault-Ducoudray1877) by the French composer and music teacher, Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray (1840–1910), who recorded them in Smyrna and Athens, but added his own harmonization for piano.Footnote 11 Though based on a handful of informants, Bourgault-Ducoudray (Reference Bourgault-Ducoudray1877) does not fail to refer to his main source in Smyrna, i.e., the Greek Cypriot wife of the French consul (Madame Laffon), who also offered him accommodation. He also admits that his job was not a mechanical and tedious process but a real pleasure, since the songs were performed by his noble hostess on her piano! Otherwise, his main concern was the melodic and rhythmic properties of the songs and their relationship with ancient Greek music (hence his use of archaic terminology, such as Dorian, Lydian, and Phrygian tones).
Three years later, in the Collection of National Songs, edited by the Greek music teacher and composer, Antonios Sigalas (1804-c.1890), no names of informants appear, although the collector praises the “chants of the Greek people”, which he himself took care to rescue “from oblivion” and to hand over “to the coming generations”, keeping “unmolested their genuine melodies” (Sigalas Reference Sigalas1880:v).Footnote 12 The collection nevertheless gained the silver prize at the third Olympiad (1875) and was published at the expense of the Greek Parliament.Footnote 13 Also missing is the songs’ provenance, which is divided into general categories, with an unclear geographical origin.Footnote 14 That is why the Olympic committee urges the collector to proceed to other areas, “where either little or no influence was felt due to alienation, and no foreign tribes ever entered” (Sigalas Reference Sigalas1880:ix). Sigalas employed the Byzantine neumatic notation (also used by church musicians), so his transcriptions were not accessible to the wider music audience outside Greece.
Sigalas was not alone in his neglect of informants whom he sacrificed on the altar of a more “valuable” information: earlier publications only give the songs’ place of origin and possible date of composition. Such is the case of the collection, Popularia carmina Graeciae recentioris compiled by the German philologist and educator, Arnold Passow (1829–1870) who gathered the previously published material (some 646 songs!) and had a great impact on the field (Passow Reference Passow1860).Footnote 15 By then there had appeared the collection, Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne by the French author and traveller, Marie-Louis-Jean-André-Charles Demartin du Tyrac, comte de Marcellus (1795–1865), where every song is accompanied by a French translation and extensive commentary, but only the place of origin and sometimes the circumstances of the recording are indicated (Marcellus Reference Marcellus (comte de)1851).Footnote 16 Extensive commentaries (though not always reliable) are to be found in the third volume of the collection Canti popolari toscani, corsi, illirici, greci (Venice Reference Tommaseo1842) by the Italian (Dalmatian) linguist and activist, Niccolo Tommaseo (1802–1874).Footnote 17
At the same time, Greek collectors, as a rule, failed to mention their informants, limiting themselves to some accounts of the historical figures or events associated with the songs. They also describe the people as a rather impersonal mass, despite their admiration for their popular muse and demotic language! Thus, according to their introductory comments, they were often confronted by the villagers with irony and mistrust. They even complain about the “incomplete form” of some interpretations (especially by women) that makes them search for the supposed entirety of the songs. Elsewhere, they sound as if they wished to have assembled the songs automatically, i.e. without being obliged to get into contact with their rustic informants. Sometimes they show themselves as benefactors of the people, for the sake of whom they collect and publish these simplistic creations of popular imagination. Here, at play is the issue of social division between collectors and informants, which is insinuated in the comments of the former.
The earliest Greek collection, properly called National Songs (Reference Manoussos1850), was prepared by the Greek intellectual, Antonios Manoussos of Corfu (1828–1903). Manoussos is said to have been urged by the Greek poet laureate, Dionysios Solomos (1798–1857), following the latter’s disillusionment with Tommaseo’s collection (Reference Tommaseo1842).Footnote 18 Instead, Solomos praised the older published collection of the sort, Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne (1824–1825) by the French historian and philologist, Claude Charles Fauriel (1772–1844), where Manoussos drew much of his material and comments from.Footnote 19 Fauriel (Reference Fauriel1824–25) did not travel to Greece but gathered his collection from the Greek community of Paris, a prominent member of which was the Greek scholar and writer, Adamantios Korais (1748–1833), who urged the revolted Greeks to send folk songs to the French collector. Fauriel’s main goal was to find the “missing” links between ancient and modern Greek poetry and assist the cause of the Greek revolution (1821). In his extensive introduction, he refers here and there to some blind troubadours of modern Greece, whom he compares with Homer.Footnote 20
In a different (more sympathetic) manner, Manoussos attempted to promote an image of the “people” (laos) by praising their (demotic) language over a purified, pseudo-archaic Greek (katharevousa).Footnote 21 His main point of departure from Fauriel was that he did not focus on the rhapsodes of ancient Greece but on the troubadours of the modern enslaved country. However, the people seem to be used purposefully to promote the supposed continuity of the Greek language and possibly of the Greek race. In his long preface (written in dialogic form) Manoussos (Reference Manoussos1850:3–4) places some representatives of the anonymous “people” vis-à-vis the song collector, to whom they owe the international reputation of their art:
People: Pray, is it you that print our songs? Editor: Indeed, I publish them through printing. Why? Are you having any objections? People: Not really! You think so? We are illiterate; we are not entitled to do so. Editor: You are wrong, my friends, these are your own works, it is the outpouring of your soul, and nobody but you can hear them and correct their weaknesses and errors. People: It can be so, as you say; yet we are not here to correct you but to do our duty and thank you for making public and praiseworthy those songs that, in the sweetest hours of our lives, when our soul reposes, with a glass on the one hand and our love on the other, [make us] forget the troubles and hardships and find consolation in the song. Editor: I accept your thanks, as a token of your goodwill and not as your duty; this is a duty not only of mine but of those Greeks who have received some education and upbringing, who, if they honestly love their nation, have to take care of, study, and not let the bright works go missing. Those [songs] that Italians, French, Germans, English, all advanced nations […] with such efforts and expenses, with such care and respect, gather and examine, and publish their translations with many praises.
Any reference to informants is also absent from the Collection of Demotic Songs in Epirus (1866) gathered by the Greek educator, Georgios Hasiotis (1842-c.1900), who came from that region, despite his assurance to the readers that the songs are presented “as they are uttered by the Epirotes, particularly by those of Zagori [=the remotest part of this region], without laying a sacrilegious hand on them” (Hasiotis Reference Hasiotis1866:xxvi).Footnote 22 It should be noted that Hasiotis would help, a decade later, the French translator of Ducoudray’s collection (Achille de Lauzières) in rendering the song texts in French. In his own collection, however, illiterate informants are described as an anonymous mob that gives the learned collector a headache for their carelessness. For example, Hasiotis (Reference Hasiotis1866:xxvii) complains that women’s songs are often performed incomplete or unfinished. In the relevant passage, the collector confesses that:
in this collection, we experienced many troubles, and what is worse, very often we could not write down the whole song from the women and girls, either because they did not remember it or, often due to carelessness and ill memory, because they added material from other song or mixed two or even more songs in one; so only when they sang them in festivals or feasts or other circumstances, then one could safely collect them.
In the same year as Sigalas (Reference Sigalas1880), the Collection of Demotic Songs of Epirus was published in Athens by the Greek author, Panagiotis Aravantinos of Parga (1811–1870), who was based on his late father’s rich collection of some 600 songs (that had been gathered by 1860). Although Aravantinos (Reference Aravantinos1880:xi) assures the reader that he has preserved the original dialects and had rendered them “as they are found in the mouth of the people”, he gives no anthroponyms or toponyms (it is Epirus and Epirotes at large).Footnote 23 And yet, in 1872, the collection had gained a prize in a competition convened by the prestigious Greek Philological Society of ConstantinopleFootnote 24 for the hitherto unpublished songs and their variants. The editor also praises the decision of the Greek Parliament to support financially a collection of folk songs (possibly pointing to Sigalas’ work) and urges other collectors to do so. In his preface, Hasiotis (1880:xxii) complains about the inhospitable and mocking behaviour of some of his informants during his fieldwork:
Very often in my research, I earned the mockery of some half-taught or pseudo-intellectuals, and not rarely I also caused the fury of those who knew a song, whom I saw wondering or even attacking me when I asked them to recite one of them so I could write it down, for they thought I made a fan of them.
To be fair though, Greek collectors of the time were primarily concerned with emphasizing the historical and patriotic aspect of their material since they lived in an age of nationalism that shook the entire Europe (if not the world at large). At the same time, they had to confront the then-thorny problem of the spoken (demotic) language and its relationship with its written (often purified) form.Footnote 25 In this context, some collectors even proceeded to “correct” some original songs (by discarding Turkish or other Slavic material) to make them sound more Greek! Others paid attention to a supposedly ancient linguistic substratum (certain words that sounded or seemed archaic). So, any straight reference to the informants and the circumstances of song gathering was deemed unnecessary and obsolete.Footnote 26
Similarly, in the eminent music newspaper Phorminx,Footnote 27 published between 1901 and 1912 in Athens, mention is only made of the song collectors, who sent parts of their unpublished material to gain publicity or recognition.Footnote 28 The newspaper’s general editor was Georgios Nazos (1862–1934), director of the Athens Conservatoire and, despite his German musical education, a promoter of Greek traditional music.Footnote 29 From 1904 onwards, the mastermind of Phorminx was the Istanbul-born music teacher and composer, Konstantinos Psachos (1869–1949), who was well-versed in oriental as well as western music and education.Footnote 30 And yet, what is often offered in the newspaper is the geographical context of the songs, the origin of the collectors, and their professional status (musician, professor, secretary, etc.). Emphasis was also lay on the melodic and rhythmic properties of the songs (usually written down in Byzantine neumatic notation) which are described with archaic or Byzantine terms (such as Spondee – Second plagal mode).
Even the great French linguist cum Hellenist, Hubert Pernot (1870–1946),Footnote 31 in his pioneering collection, Mélodies populaires greques de l’Ile de Chio recueillies au phonographe (1903), the first one to be collected with the aid of phonograph on the island of Chios in 1898–1899, contains very scant details on the identity of the informants. The musical transcriptions of folk songs and dances were put to musical score by the French composer and critic, Paul le Flem (1881–1984).Footnote 32 All 14 instrumental pieces are ascribed by Pernot (1903:12–24) to “some violinist of the village” (Ces airs ont été executes devant le phonographe par un violoniste de la ville) whereas half of his (most numerous) vocal songs are said to have been executed by “a man/woman, choir of women/young girls” (Chanté par un homme/une femme/ de […] ans, par un chœur de femmes, par un chœur de jeunes filles). Only half of his 114 transcriptions name the performer, who is usually a woman (named only with their Christian names, Marouka, Calliope, Anastasie, Froso, Kali l’aveugle, etc.).
The emergence of the informant
We thus reached the beginning of the twentieth century, where the foundations of a more rigid method of recording folk music were laid. The earliest such example is the 260 Greek Demotic Songs (1905) by the Greek philologist and musician, Georgios Pachtikos (1869–1916), who, above the score, records the place of recording, type of dance and name of the informant.Footnote 33 Besides, in a separate alphabetical index, just before the transcriptions, he includes the names and ages of his informants. On the cover, he emphatically notes that his transcriptions came “from the mouth of the Greek people” of Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, Crete, and Cyprus, where strong Greek communities resided at the time (Pachtikos Reference Pachtikos1905). Pachtikos gathered his songs between 1888 and 1904, though in 1895 and 1896 he submitted some 80 of them to a Greek literary competition in Istanbul, where he gained a prize. Besides, in 1903 and 1904 he performed some of his transcriptions in two recitals in Istanbul and Athens, respectively (an event sponsored by a Greek donor).Footnote 34
In the preface, Pachtikos (Reference Pachtikos1905:xxv) exposes his method of fieldwork: he began recording the songs moving from house to house but found it impractical (for many women with children gathered out of curiosity while others were preparing for their turn, thus causing havoc) so he decided to set his camp in a central place and have a proper audience.Footnote 35 Pachtikos did not use any audio machine (which was rare in Greece at the time) but wrote down the melodies by ear, asking the singers to repeat them as many times as he deemed necessary. He also records the sentiments of pride and nostalgia he shared with his informants during the audience and his contact with them (Pachtikos Reference Pachtikos1905:xxxiii–xxxvi). At the same time, he confesses that he did not write down all the songs interpreted by his informants if they did not meet some of his criteria, not only of musical standards but also of “authenticity” (what he calls “Greekness”, in terms of language and music).
Yet, his collection seems to be somewhat distanced from the local informants and their communities whom it was supposed to serve, the reasons being the editor’s and publisher’s identities. Pachtikos was a very literate man of his time, and an advocate of the harmonization of Greek traditional music (ecclesiastical and folk) to sound modern and meet the western standards. Thus, following Ducoudray’s precedence, he inserted a harmonic accompaniment, stressing that Greek folk music contains harmonic principless and can be interpreted by European instruments.Footnote 36 For the same reason, he chose the European staff notation over the Byzantine neumes, in the hope that his work could become more accessible to a wider audience. As to finance, the publication was sponsored by the Greek tycoon and philanthropist, Grigorios Maraslis (1831–1907) and was included in the series after his name (Maraslis Library).Footnote 37 In the preface, Pachtikos rushes to praise his benefactor and urges other affluent Greeks of the diaspora to follow this example.
In this direction were the transcriptions of the aforementioned Psachos, some of which he would independently publish, such as his Demotic Songs of Skyros (Reference Psachos1910), where the performers have a rather fair treatment. At the end of his introduction, Psachos (Reference Psachos1910:xv) acknowledges his gratitude to the Mayor of Skyros, the local counsellors, and “the medical and teaching bodies” (possibly his sponsors), who made possible his stay on the island for a week. Special thanks he confers on his interpreters (by naming them), foremost to the director of the local Primary School, whose “sweet muse” was his main source of information, as well as to three ladies including one schoolteacher. He extends his thanks to them despite knowing that he “will trespass upon their humility” but considers this endeavour as his “sacred task” (Psachos Reference Psachos1910:xvi). Included in this publication is a small sample of folk songs from neighbouring Thessaly, and the islands of Salamis and Psara. Psachos was the first Greek musician to use both staff and Byzantine notation since he was an accomplished teacher and composer of Byzantine chant.Footnote 38
Psachos would later expand his references to interpreters and the loci of their songs in other publications (sponsored by local communities), the most indicative example being his Demotic Songs of Gortynia (Reference Psachos1923), a mountainous area in central Peloponnese, sometimes identified with ancient Arcadia. The publication was made “at the expense of the Gortynian Association of Piraeus”, as was plainly written on the cover, that being the very first time such an enterprise was undertaken in modern Greece. In the introduction of this publication, the undersigned members of the Association’s board of directors note how they had invited Psachos to carry out the fieldwork, how happy they were at the outcome of the enterprise, and expressed their intention to proceed to the publication of other recordings not included therein (something that did not happen). They concluded their address by inviting other associations in various parts of Greece to imitate them and contribute to the “musical regeneration of modern Greece” (Psachos Reference Psachos1923:viii).
In his extensive introduction, Psachos (Reference Psachos1923:xviii) unfolds the chronicle of his research which began in 1915, when he was invited by the Association, who considered “as their primary task” the collection of folk songs from Gortynia. He praises the association’s decision that set an example for other societies. Psachos travelled to Gortynia in July 1915 and came to admire the wild nature as well as its mountainous and brave people. He gives a precise account of his fieldwork, such as geographical details of the villages, the time spent there, the circumstances of his accommodation, etc. He even includes the encyclical prepared by the association to assist him in his travel between the villages, explaining the reasons for his presence and recommending him to local authorities. He also gives his original travel plan and points to some places where he could not make it “due to fatigue and long hardship” (Psachos Reference Psachos1923:xxii). He expresses some kind of satisfaction at the outcome (the gathering of 110 songs during a week’s time).
Psachos seems to have found a follower in his pupil, Spyros Peristeris (1918–2009), a music teacher, cantor, and researcher of the Folklore Archive of the Academy of Athens.Footnote 39 Peristeris did not obtain any university diploma (for there was no musical department in Greece at the time) but studied at the then-prestigious Athens Conservatoire under Psachos. His first tutor was his own father, Dimitrios Peristeris, a physician and amateur musician, who occupied himself in Byzantine and folk music and was a contributor to the Phorminx newspaper. Spyros was a charismatic singer due to which he was appointed first cantor at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens, a post he kept until an advanced age. His voice coupled by a large and compact choir managed to reach almost every house in Greece due to the broadcast by the ERT state-owned public Radio and Television (ERT: Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation) at the Sunday service. He was attached to the Folklore Archive in 1950, while he continued to serve as cantor as well as music teacher of Byzantine music at the Athens Conservatoire.
In the context of folk music, his opus magnum was the Greek Demotic Songs – Music Collection (Spyridakis and Peristeris Reference Spyridakis and Peristeris1968), which he co-edited with the then-director of the Folklore Archive, Georgios Spyridakis (1906–1975). The work was a sequel of a volume containing only song texts (Spyridakis, Megas, and Petropoulos Reference Spyridakis, Megas and Petropoulos1962) also published by the Academy of Athens which has since remained a standard work of reference. He was the first musician of the Folklore Archive to use a sound machine (reel-tape recorder) with which he made thousands in situ recordings all over Greece, many of which he transcribed by including every single detail (small notes, pauses, gaps, etc.). This fact alone was a sign of the renewed importance of and respect for the informant’s choice during the performance. Peristeris had earlier published another music collection, entitled Songs of Epirus and Morea (Peristeris Reference Peristeris1950), where he included transcriptions of his own as well as his father’s recordings, by employing both Byzantine and staff notation.
In the 1968 collection, he opted exclusively for the staff notation which he used thereafter in his transcriptions (of religious and folk music) according to the musical principles set by UNESCO (as he notes in his introduction).Footnote 40 He was also careful to give the informant’s name and age, next to the place of the recording, plus separate indices containing the songs’ origin and other important details. Even the lyrics following the notation are often left as they were sung (unfinished or with gaps), the reader is referred to other song-text collections to get a more complete picture. In his voluminous handouts which he compiled (according to the archive’s policy),Footnote 41 he has saved other important details of the singer’s and community’s identity, the circumstances of his mission, and the quality of the recordings. What he did not do, however, was the recording of live performances during festivals or feasts, since he used to gather the interpreters in a central place (usually the village school) to save time for the tape and get the best-quality recordings.
Apart from Peristeris’ musical activities per se, one should note his efforts of keeping strong and stable ties with the musicians he recorded and interviewed, his status and reputation accounting for this. As the first cantor of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens since the 1950s, he was well-known all over Greece through radio broadcasts to the extent that the local authorities and communities were happy to assist and have him around. Even today, his surviving informants and/or their descendants still recall with nostalgia and relate with pride several events (some of them hilarious) from their encounter with him, such as his participation at the local services, and his constructive and respectful way of interviewing people. The most affluent people of the local communities offered him accommodation and drove him wherever he wished to go (even though folklore missions were financially covered by the Academy of Athens). Others (mainly male informants) used to travel to Athens to listen to him in the cathedral and renew their acquaintance.
Peristeris’ example was soon followed by subsequent musicians of the Folklore Archive, one of the most notable cases being Stavros Karakasis (1903-1973), an Istanbul-born Greek who was raised in Egypt before coming to Athens in 1958.Footnote 42 His family left Istanbul after the Constitutional Revolution of the Young Turks (in 1908) and settled in Egypt, where a sizable Greek community thrived at the time.Footnote 43 While in Athens, Karakasis studied violin at the National Conservatoire and cooperated with well-known violinists, such as Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999). In 1959 he was employed by the Folklore Archive, for which he conducted many successful and productive missions all over Greece, taking thousands of recordings from local singers and instrumentalists. His cosmopolitan background was a great asset (he spoke fluent French) but also geared him towards a greater appreciation for the role of the informants in musical praxis.
Along with the concerted efforts of the Folklore Archive, we should mention the (rather dubious) contribution of Simon Karas (1905–1999), a self-made music teacher and writer, who came from western Peloponnese but had settled in Athens.Footnote 44 Karas was a passionate man with no special musical gifts but an unceasing enthusiasm for studying and promoting traditional music (sacred and secular alike). He was also a nationalist ideologue and patriot, preaching the unity and continuity of Greek music from antiquity through Byzantium to modern Greece.Footnote 45 He was employed in the Greek state radio (ERT), where he eclectically recorded and broadcasted traditional music from all over Greece between 1937 and 1972. At the same time though, he taught (for free) the principles and a selected repertoire of Greek traditional music at the Society for the Dissemination of National Music, of which he was the founder and eternal chairman (co-chaired by his benevolent wife).
In the mid-1970s, Karas began releasing his previously collected material from various places in Greece, with a grant from the Ford Foundation in Greece.Footnote 46 Some transcriptions of his recordings he then included in his voluminous Method of Teaching National Music, published in the 1980s, where he attempted to equate the principles of religious and secular music. However, in his vinyl covers but mainly in his published notations he consistently left out any information about his fieldwork or the local participants, limiting himself to general musical observations and other historical and “folklorish” accounts. He is often said to have intervened in the musical recordings by advising the performers on how or what to play, and even replacing an instrumentalist (though on an accompaniment instrument, such as the lute) if there was not one around! His main concern was the “purity” of Greek music which was supposedly devoid of “foreign” influence.
His somewhat “backward” tactics were followed for a short period of time by some of his pupils; yet after his passing, things have changed within the Society and among his followers. The current directors of the Society have begun releasing the old material in a more updated form and content, focusing on stricter documentation (where it exists) and the supply of new material.Footnote 47 What is still missing, however, is the broader cultural and social context in which the recordings take place, since most of the songs have been recorded outside their functional (ritual or other) context. In this spirit, this author has for some years now begun a programme of “retracing” and “crosschecking” much of the past material for the Folklore Archive, by going back to the places of the original recordings and identifying surviving informants or their acquaintances to provide him with the necessary information.Footnote 48 At the same time, he has supplied the archive with fresh material, drawn from actual local performances during festivals or feasts, and kept track of the local communities and other socio-cultural societies.
Conclusion
The above exploration into the main collections of Greek folk music between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries showed how the collectors and editors of the time conceived and handled the role of the informant. Although not a linear development, the treatment of the musical informant in these collections seems to have followed a rather progressive and “corrective” process, from the past “invisibility” and oblivion to a later stage of emergence and then prominence. Having said that, one cannot ignore some “drawbacks” that took place well into the twentieth century, showing the various dynamics inherent in contemporary Greek culture, but also the strength and durability of the new tendency. Therefore, this study can be useful to modern researchers both as a historical knowledge of the past and as a cautionary warning of what one should take care of in the future. It may also be supplemented by similar studies from other parts of the world, to establish the role and importance of the musical informant in the process of collecting folklore material.
