Next to Her Mentor Simon Karas

Close to Simon Karas I learned many things, not just Byzantine music. Although I used to sing as a child, I did not know anything about traditional music, not even what it was. Karas initiated me to traditional music and its different forms. All this was taking place during the occupation when the Germans controlled Greece. The radio station at Zappeio¹ was in their hands. Despite that, Karas persisted to make radio programs of traditional songs with his choir. We would enter the studio, and just as the red light would go on, we would be on air. With or without mistakes, we were ready to go on air.

In parallel to the choir with which he made this program (it was called 'Greek echoes'), some of us, including myself, were tutored separately in Byzantine music. After each lesson in ecclesiastical music, where we would learn hymns in different tunes and modes, he would also teach us two or three songs in that same tune.

Association for the Dissemination of National Music

Delphi, 1951

Source: Association for the Dissemination of National Music

Karas was extremely strict during class. But at all other times he was very sweet, very tender and soft, he would make funny jokes and always liked to create a festive mood. Since it was during the occupation, but we were thirsting for amusement and he also wanted to keep us close to him, he would arrange carnival celebrations in the big hall of the Association. Everyone would bring whatever they could, a few beans, a little bread, some olives or a little wine. And despite what you could call the misery of it, Greek spirit was all over the place; we would dance and sing and make jokes.

My teacher would do research during the summers, without any recording equipment. I am not sure if you know that radio in Greece started in 1936, and that Simon Karas, who was one of its first executives, established the ‘Traditional Music Department’. So when I met him, he used to spend his summer leave combing Greece. And I remember, when he would return from each trip, he used to bring songs noted down by hand, with Byzantine musical notations in the margins, and his pockets would be full of the stubs of wooden Faber pencils. And every time he would take handfuls of these little pencils stubs out of his pockets.

Now I realise how difficult my teacher’s task was. Because he used to go to the old people -as I did later on- so he could be as close as possible to the authenticity of the songs. Because old people are not willing to allow their habits to change, and neither of course the way they sing and dance. 'Because', they will tell you, 'that is how we know it, how it was taught to us'. And he did very well. But it is extremely difficult to write down and annotate a song whilst someone is singing. It had to be done verse by verse. So the singer, be it a man or a woman, would have to sing one verse and then repeat it, so he could note it down. But in traditional music it is not easy to discern the notes precisely.

People, who can not sing traditional songs properly, sing them totally dry and denuded of any musical decoration. That is easy, and you can note down the music very easily. But when a singer sings in an authentic way, with full twists and decorations, it is extremely difficult to note the song down. So he would collect these songs and bring them back to the Association, were he would teach them to us, and then we would make the radio programs.

¹Zappeion Megaro is a conference and exhibition centre, situated near the Parliament, and built late in 1880 in an impressive neoclassical order.

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