On Cretan Music and creativity…

I have been engaged with Cretan music, at varying degrees of intensity, for the past thirty years. The sum total of this lengthy experience and the countless “moments” of my life spent playing or listening to Cretan music have unavoidably led me to form my own picture of its modern incarnation and my own taste. Cretan music is certainly an amazing, vivid, “blazing” local folk music that easily and justly takes its place as such on the world music map. It boasts a great wealth of idioms and local subcategories, and wonderful dances, with local expressive styles that differ from one end of the island to the other.

Its other characteristic is that, as a living tradition, it is open to new ideas and expressions, becoming the subject of experimentation and dialogues, flirting with other types of music, whether related or not. So it is in little danger of becoming boring and monotonous, although, with all these “experiments” and “innovations”, I believe it is certainly “long-suffering”.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful “experimentation” and “intervention” is a very fine one, and varies from listener to listener. But there is a general rule that one could say applies in most cases: if something is done using music as a yardstick, with high artistic criteria and taste, then the result will probably be objectively better. If, however, it is done to serve other purposes (for instance “because that’s what people want to hear”, or “to make it sound good on the machines”, or in order to “mess around with” the traditional material to make it “slicker”), the result will probably be substandard – although the non-artistic, “commercial” purposes will have been served just fine… So, while I would be the last to say “drop the experimentation and play ‘genuine’ music as it was up to the 60’s”, I hear so many poor versions and arrangements of traditional material on the radio, that I unintentionally find myself thinking such thoughts too…

Somebody who prefers everything to be “genuine” could easily say that Cretan music has suffered a lot from me, too. My compositions related to Cretan music are not usually recorded “formally” and “locally”, but contain living dialogues with musicians from other traditions. Each time I compose music for a record, my aim is to show off my pieces in the best possible way. That’s why I don’t stick to the same unified arrangement from start to finish, but try to discover in what way (and therefore with what instruments and what musicians) each melodic line and piece can best be highlighted, preserving its own colour and character. As a student of the Labyrinth Musical Workshop for the past twenty years and a member of the Labyrinth group, with a presence on the European “World Music” scene, for the past fifteen, I have had the good fortune to form personal, two-way artistic relationships both with Labyrinth teachers and with musicians of my own generation, which has provided me with many potential collaborators within and without Crete and Greece. Over the years, these bonds have become so strong that I always go back to these people when recording my music. The fact that, through my compositions, Cretan music may meet sounds drawn from other traditions is by no means an end in itself; but if this occurs, I accept it as a happy result. Obviously, of course, this applies to my own compositions, which are mostly what I record. When I use already well-formed old material, I prefer to keep the arrangements simpler. I am becoming disappointed with traditional pieces that have been “messed around with” too much, because I rarely (if ever) prefer them to the authentic recordings (e.g. by the protomastores, the great masters). So maybe it’s better for each artist to exhaust his or her creativity and serve his vision with all his might, untrammelled by considerations of respectability when recording his own music, for which he therefore bears full responsibility (of concept, arrangement and execution). If, nevertheless, some people think that I am mistreating or torturing Cretan music even through my own compositions, I would like to assure them that it has not seen the end of its sufferings – not as long as we still have our health, inspiration, disposition and opportunity. Of course these are personal and entirely subjective thoughts and views, which may yet change over time, who knows…