Musical Nationalism, Despotism and Scholarly Interventions in Greek Popular Music

by Nikos Ordoulidis

Overview

This book discusses the relationship between Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical music and laiko (popular) song in Greece. Laiko music was long considered a lesser form of music in Greece, with rural folk music considered serious enough to carry the weight of the ideologies founded within the establishment of the contemporary Greek state. During the 1940s and 1950s, a selective exoneration of urban popular music took place, one of its most popular cases being the originating relationships between two extremely popular musical pieces: Vasilis Tsitsanis's “Synnefiasmeni Kyriaki” (Cloudy Sunday) and its descent from the hymn “Ti Ypermacho” (The Akathist Hymn). During this period the connection of these two pieces was forged in the Modern Greek conscience, led by certain key figures in the authority system of the scholarly world. Through analysis of these pieces and the surrounding contexts, Ordoulidis explores the changing role and perception of popular music in Greece.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501369452
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	01/14/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Nikos Ordoulidis is an Academic Scholar and Lecturer in music at the University of Ioannina, Department of Music Studies, Greece. His research interests revolve around the condition of musical syncretism in popular music, in the networks of Eastern Europe, Balkans, Mediterranean and Middle East. Since January 2020, he has been undertaking postdoctoral research, titled 'the eastwards heterotopias of the piano', funded by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. He is an active composer with six discographical works. He is a member of the Modern Greek Studies Association, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, and the Hellenic Musicological Society.

Table of Contents

Glossary and transliteration
Further clarifications
List of music transcriptions
List of figures
Preface
Prelude
PART ONE: A STORY OF ORIGIN
1. A laiko (popular) song by Tsitsanis (1948)
2. A hymn from the Orthodox musical tradition
3. Comparison of the two pieces by Ilias Petropoulos (1968)
4. Comparison by Mikis Theodorakis (1970)
5. The stance of the laiko musician
6. Manos Hadjidakis and laiki music
7. The music critic Sophia Spanoudi
8. Two key personas of laiki music: Perpiniadis and Keromytis
9. Postlude
PART TWO: THE TWO MUSICAL WORLDS: THE BYZANTINE AND THE LAIKO
10. The Greek nation-state and ecclesiastical music
11. Systemizing chanting; and the protagonists
12. The 'musical issue' at the forefront once again
13. Urban music: Examination of a remarkable network
14. Reaffirming the laiko
PART THREE: FACTUAL HIGHLIGHTS REGARDING ECCLESIASTICAL MUSIC
15. The reference text and the musical act
16. 'Notes not noted in the text' – Constantinople as a reference point
17. Style, scores and the teacher
18. Modernists and conservatives
PART FOUR: ANALYZING THE TWO MUSICAL PIECES
19. Starting with the sound
20. Starting with the sheet music
21. A historical recording of the hymn
22. Postlude
23. EPILOGUE
Works cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Ordoulidis .. is well equipped to embark on this analysis through his combined expertise in musicology, Greek ecclesiastical chanting, and popular music performance. ... Overall, the book is a product of evident passion and knowledge, impressive in its depth and detail." --2022 Yearbook for Traditional Music

"Scholars of popular music have long been in search of its historical longue durée, the path along which multiple repertories, styles and social practices have converged over time, from diverse origins in the past to the sonorous cosmopolitanism of the present. Nikos Ordoulidis takes readers on a journey across this historical landscape in Greece, navigating a complex of distinctively Greek popular musics, those that fill the ecclesiastical worlds of the Orthodox Church and the national politics immanent in secular laiko music. Ordoulidis deftly weaves together analytical details from the songs themselves with his own captivating scholarly engagement." --Philip V. Bohlman, Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History and Music, the University of Chicago, USA

"Ordoulidis, a scholar-performer, rejects both the neoclassical and the medievalist versions of musical ethno-nationalism. He shows here how attempts to forge a Byzantine genealogy for a famous popular Greek song distort the realities of musical creativity. This book is an original and critical contribution to cultural historiography." --Michael Herzfeld, Ernest E. Monrad Research Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University, USA

From the Publisher