Lament in a Deep Style

Christopher King is a collector of music from Epirus, the rugged northwestern Greek territory. He has compiled four previous CDs, and his book Lament from Epirus was reviewed in #139. Kitsos Harisiadis (1889-1968) was a Roma copper-worker who taught himself klaríno (folk clarinet) and recorded 24 tracks in Athens between 1929 and 1931. King obtained 78rpm discs from dealers, weighing down the tone arm in his home studio with matchsticks, tongue depressors and plastic spoons to get the most out of the grooves when remastering.

The staples of Epirot village-festival music are the seven-note skári (skáros is the singular) originally played on shepherd's flute to direct flocks, and the pentatonic mirologiá, laments for the dead or exiled that are sung a capella elsewhere across Greece but in Epirus are instrumental; Harisiadis was a master of these. The tracks lack vocals, aside from the other musicians saluting and praising each other; instruments include the laoúto (four-stringed lute) and fiddle (played by Demetris Halkias, who is especially good on ‘Mirologi in Do’). Harisiadis' tone is sweetly full, the rhythms are varied (on danceable tunes such as ‘Frasha’) the fiddle and klaríno sinuously intertwined. The excellent liner notes evince Christopher King's devotion to Epirus, describing festival music as public exorcism and collating stories about Harisiadis.