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THE MUSICAL TECHNIQUES OF THE REBETIKO INSTRUMENTALISTS.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES WITH INSTRUMENTALISTS IN ISTANBUL.
by
Pavlos Erevnidis [Athens]
[Hydra
Rebetiko Conference, October 2004]
In
the second half of the 20th century, the study of laikí (popular) music
in Greece did not concern itself sufficiently with the analysis of musicians
who played instruments such as the ud, the kanun, the lyra
etc. This was due to the predominance of the bouzouki, with the result that the
Greek musicologists, not having active instrumentalists playing those
instruments, were not in a position to give due weight to the real value of the
musicians of the 1930s and 1940s. Thus we heard nostalgic evaluations, such as
that Nikos Stefanidis was one of the finest players of the kanun
in his time. Also, the lack of understanding of the theory of maqam as a
result of the westernization process of the music of Greece led people’s
opinions in two directions:
a )
The main direction was the interpretation of the various different musical
phenomena with the so-called “major-minor”;
b )
The other direction, which expressed itself as a reaction to the former, was
the school of Simon Kará, which expressed a view of an “unbroken
continuity” with Ancient Greek music. The Kará school, which was more isolated
and elitist, understood musical phenomena with a terminology which was a
mixture of terms from different periods of the development of the musical
system of church singing (psaltiké).
At
the start of the 1980s we saw a revival of the aforementioned traditional instruments.
This was due mainly to the coincidence of the rise of “Ethnic” music and the
other related kinds of music. This revival was a result of the work on various
kinds of music, both Greek and otherwise, at first marginal, and later
progressed into more popular areas such as contemporary Greek popular song, the
kind which is known dismissively as “skyladhiko”, or “laiko-pop”, In the
whole of this repertoire, and even in its most “pop” versions, there are
examples of the ud, the saz and the clarinet, often played with great
skill by gypsy and Turkish musicians, but also by Greeks. The bad examples of
playing on these instruments are often the work of bouzouki performers who,
since they have no models to work from, simply play these instruments with the
techniques that they already know.
So,
within this framework, the perspective that we should adopt when trying to
analyse the playing of musicians such as Agapios Tomboulis, the two Lambroses,
and all the other musicians, needs to take into account the simultaneous use of
their instruments in Turkey, and especially in istanbul. The attempt to extend
our analysis into areas such as Persia and Arabia would be judged as
“ideologically suspect, since all these musicians, leaving aside the fact that
they had family relations with their fellow-countrymen who lived in Istanbul,
their musical material derived exclusively and directly from their ancestral
homes in Anatolia.
It
is also a very interesting fact that in Athens and Istanbul we find a
multi-ethnicity as regards the origins of the musicians – one need only think
of performers such as Tomboulis and Roza Eskenazi.
Our
research has to bear in mind the fact that the theoretical and technical
knowledge of the aforementioned musicians compared to their peers in Istanbul
were relations like those of the capital to the provinces, with all the
consequences that this entails. If
contemporary researchers expoit this fact, we can for example cross
musical phenomena, such as the intervals that are played in different maqams,
and to confirm in a wider framework the deviations of musical practice from the
offending musical theories that were created in the twentieth century by Huseyin
Sadrettin Arel in Turkey and Simon Kará in Greece. Within the above
ideological framework I shall attempt in what follows an entirely original
attempt at assessing the technical performance of instruments such as the ud,
the kanun, the lyra etc. Towards the end I shall refer to the
intervals that these musicians use in makams such as saba, taximia and
karcigar.
So,
beginning with the ud I shall examine the playing styles of the two
Armenians Agapios Tomboulis and Markos Melkon.
As
a general characteristic we should say that they follow the technique of the
peniá of the street (?). In Istanbul there were two schools as regards the use
of the pena (plectrum). One – certainly the oldest – is the one in which the
plectrum strikes the strong close to the bridge (kavalári), producing a
sound that is more bright and stronger. The negative aspect of this technique
is that it increases the sense of the ud as a percussive instrument. The
main representative of this school was Giorgos Batzanos. He was the only
musician of Istanbul who did not the impression of a percussion instrument.
From all the other representativ es of this school we have the impression of a
“heavy” right hand, and at the same time it creates also some bad results as
regards performance. It is obvious why this technique is used by all the
musicians of the taverns, because it gives a greater intensity (? loudness),
and at that time there were no microphones.
The
other school, which has prevailed down to our own times, is represented by
Turkish musicians such as Nevres Bey, and particularly by Serif
Muhhidin Targan, which plays the plectrum a long way away from the bridge,
somewhere between the two small holes in the top of the instrument. In fact
Serif Muhhidin plays even further up, almost directly over the large central
hole. The resulting sound is more bass and more senstive. It lacks a little
of the brightness which distinguishes
the sound colouring of the Turkish type of ud from the Arabic or the
Persian. Musicians in Greece have a clear preference for the former kind of
playing, with the plectrum hitting the strings close to the bridge. And this is
because they are musicians of the taverns and not of the saray or the
aristocracy. It is also clear that Tomboulis has a very fine technique from the
point of view of speed of playing, although at some points he lets out tome notes
that are played a bit indistinctly. This can be seen in many instances. In his taximia
too Tomboulis was rather original. His strong sense of rhythm should not seem
strange to us, because it is due to the problems experienced with the early
gramophone records, and also, mainly, to the kind of music which he was
performing, which was popular music (laikó) which had strong impulses
(?) in its dances.
The
second person I want to consider was also an Armenian, Markos Melkon. He
was certainly the finest performer of ud to be found in Athens. His
style of playing (peniá) has the same characteristics that I referred to
previously. He plays close to the bridge, although not having such a difference
in sound from Tomboulis’s playing. From the point of view of technique he has a
very clear style, with the result that all his vibratos are distinct. One
interesting thing that we observe is that, in his taximia, while it is
clear from his playing that he knows the maqam very well, he never stops
for a rest at any moment. Frequent pauses are a characteristic of all good
musicians who improvise. His taximia have characteristics that we don’t
find in later improvisations, among performers on the bouzouki. Mainly this
fact of the absence of pauses.
To
continue, I would like to look at Lambros Leondarides, in relation to
his brother Parascho (?) in Istanbul, and their teacher Rusen Ferid
Kam, and Aleko Batzanó. The Leontaridis brothers play the lyra
in the way it was played by Rusen Ferid Kam, and not like their father Anastasios
Leontaridis. Anastasis plays with many bow-strokes, and ornaments the
melody more. This is natural because Anastasis was a fellow pupil in Vasilaki
of Cemil Bey, and so these two, together with Sotiris Tsantali,
play very differently, with more ornamentation. It is strange, or rather we do
not know the reason why the Leontaridis brothers learned lyra from Rused
Ferid Kam, who played with bigger bow strokes, and not with their father
Anastasis.
Lambros, as a player on the popular music scene around Athens, plays in a more sprightly way, and this is very interesting because it shows us that in Istanbul they could play like this, but clearly the personality of Rusen Ferid Kam imposed a playing of the lyra that was closer to the sound of the ney. Only Alekos Batzanós managed to escape from this and played differently. Only recently did I discover the reason: Alekos had Anastis as his teacher! This is referred to by Yorgos Batzan in an interview that he gave to the journalist Pekirgin on the occasion of the death of Alekos! Anastis taught lyra to the nephew of Alekos and not to the sons of Paraschos and Lambros who learned lyra from Rusen Ferid Kam. So now let us listen to some experts from among the lyra players.
Now
let us go to the kanun. Basically in Greece there were two main kanun
players, Lambros Savvaidis and Nikos Stefanidis. For a start I
should stress that technique on the kanun from that period until the
present day has developed to a very great degree. Thus players such as Ahmet
Yatman and particularly of Artaki Candan who are the players mainly
copied by the Greek players are thought of as outdated, in the sense that for
present-day players they are too easy. So nowadays we can see more clearly that
Lambros Savvaidis is more original and his style is clearly more compounded.
The vibrato technique that he uses is very interesting – in other words he is
continually moving the “mandali” (hammer) with his left hand, with the result
that a vibrato technique is produced which is used very much by players today,
particularly among the performers of “fandezi” music in Turkey.
Note
that he plays the “saba” in accordance with how it is traditionally
played, in other words with “open” intervals, and not as it is described in the
theoretical approaches of Huseyin Sadrettin Arel and Suphi Ezgi.
As
regards Stefanidis very many things could be said. He uses far fewer techniques
in his playing. This is due mainly to the fact that he played the kanun
again in his old age, with the result that it did not develop as much as might
have been expected. It is interesting to note that he uses intervals that are
“correct” in traditional terms, and not influenced by theoretical systems, for maqams
such as taximia, which means that he was not influenced by the
intervallic teaching of Simona Kará, with whom at a certain point and later he
shared a common path.
Stefanidis
played in the style of the great Armenian performer on the kanun Artaki
Candan. Certainly he would have heard him off the radio, as Simon Kará tells us
in an article about Nikos Stefanidis in the magazine “Tar”. We shall not extend
to players such as Ahmet Yatman, who clearly playes in a style which is more
the style of the “piatsa” (?), or Vechihe Daryal. However we should say
that generally the style of Stefanidis is not a taverna style, but clearly more
(?) detailed. Here we might simply recall that Stefanidis does not play
rebetiko music. We shall hear an example of the family of taximia from
Stefanidis, and then an example by Artaki Candan, which is the person whom
Stefanidis copies. Note how, with both of them, their intervals have no
relation to the theoretical interpretations of Simon Kará or Huseyin Sadrettin
Arel.
Provisional
Trans. Ed Emery
October
2004
