{8}Daily Traditional Music{8}

I think we're on number 8???

Figured I'd visit a region, musically, that I found Incredibly Interesting.
Epirus is what connects Greece to the Balkans. It used to be much larger in the ancient times, but thanks to Slavs and Turks, It's split itself into many different countries with their own languages. But due to a few balkan wars in the Byzantine Era, a fraction of Epirus was returned to it's (debateably) rightful owner, Greece. (Try me bitch.)

Despite the geography, and history, Epirus, in itself, seems to be have it's own culture. It's music different to that of the rest of Greece. Sure, the lutes are there, and the percussion is still there, but the addition and the regional love for the clarinet combined with Balkan melodies and that slow Dimotiko rhythm brings the clarinet away from the industrial history, and implements it into something more natural. It reminds us that the Clarinet is, as it always has been, a woodwind instrument, albeit one made of various metals, but the Northern Greeks have reminded us that Metal, too, is a natural resource. Where the Western European culture had turned the clarinet into a symbol of human community, the Greeks brought the clarinet to the mountains, and then the clarinet brought the mountains to us, listening from our speakers.

I chose this song because I heard it played during a regional holiday. Ioannina celebrates it's indepenedence from Ottoman Albania in 1912. It stuck with me a second. The roads filled, children and adults dressed up in costumes, music blasting at full volume and NOBODY was angry. NOBODY complained. If it weren't for the shitty politics, and crappier bureaucracy, these things would make Ioannina a suitable home for me.