Folk dances and song of Moreas (Peloponissos), Greece
Authentic 78 rpm recordings 1928 - 1957

The Peloponnesos with its long history has had many significant battles fought on its earth. This is why a great many, and probably the most important of. the Peloponnesian songs, are chronicles of these struggles. The pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods of the 1821 war of independence are present in the Moreas song.
Besides relating the struggle of the individual and of a nation for freedom, the texts of Peloponnesian songs. of which those on this disc are only a tiny sample, touch on most aspects of human life and experience. They tell of the beauty of women, of passion and love, the sea with its storms and trials and the lovely Greek countryside, with partridges, swallows, and nightingales that are sometimes used metaphorically to mean young girls.

As for the modal character of the music - there are songs in chromatic modes, but songs in diatonic modes predominate and particularly those in the first mode (minor). The Byzantines were no doubt justified when they wrote in their musical manuscripts. "the first mode is called Doric; Dorians are the people of Monemvasis" (for the Byzantines, Monemvasis was synonymous with the whole Peloponnesos).
The most characteristic song meter of the Peloponnesos is that of the kalamatianos dance songs in 7/8 meter (3 + 2 + 2). This dance is now popular throughout Greece. A faster dance is the Peloponnesian Syrt6s in 4/4 meter, as well as the island type syrtos in the same meter from the coastal regions opposite the Saronic Gulf and Cycladic islands. The 6/4 meter of the Tsamikos dance songs completes the three principal types of song meter of this area.
Traditionally the instruments of the Peloponnesos are the floghera (flute), either wooden or made of bamboo, and the tambouras, carved from a single block of wood. These are played now in only a few places. There are still. but only in the mountainous regions pipizes or karamoutzes - double reed instruments - and the large drums, the toumbana. The clarinet, violin and laouto continue to be popular, but rarely does one find a sandouri player, and even rarer are lyra players of whom there were many at one time in the area opposite the islands.