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The Great Island
body wants to sing not only one or two songs but the whole repertoire (as well
as the askites, the products of momentary inspiration), they are compelled to
perform, only half or less of each poem; justifying themselves with the adage
‘His mother will die, who sings to the end.’ It should be noted that the curtailment
of these songs is assisted too by the attitude of the persons at these gatherings
who sing only for exhibition, so that others may not say ‘So-and-so doesn’t
know how’, and not from any real urge to sing. Again, whoever plays an
instrument, lute or lyra, does not sing, but plays almost continuously: for the
musicians remember that their payment depends on the dancing, and who-
ever dances pays. Finally the songs are curtailed by the common interchange of
tune. . . . 2
This is fascinating, both as an account of the conflict of wills at a
glendi, and as a suggestion, which is supported on other grounds, that
the songs as we have them are relics of longer songs. And this suggests
that the reasons why a folk song is what it is, and not another thing, are
not primarily aesthetic reasons. You could tell this from internal evidence;
many Cretan folk songs are bad, but some are even senseless,
and must be the remnants of something longer. Yet they continue to be
sung in their condensed form, in defiance of aesthetics.
Musically the rizitika are unlikely to please Frankish ears. There are
some thirty tunes, each of which is now attached to certain of the
songs. They are slow dirges in minor keys – some in the Dorian, some
in the Lydian mode. It is difficult for us to listen with pleasure to unaccompanied
song unless it is relieved by harmony, or delivered by
voices of great purity. I once heard a commercial, ‘unauthentic’ record
of a rizitiko sung by a woman to the accompaniment of, I think, the
santouri. It was most moving. But usually the rizitika are roughly sung.
They must be heard in context, at a glendi in the Cretan mountains,
where the roughness ceases to matter and the performance is a social
thing.
The rizitika take for their subject the themes usual to folk song, and
have also some peculiar ones. The index of Papagregorakis’s collection
lists 565 songs: 146 are patriotic, including 14 of what the Cretans call
‘allegorical’ songs, in which the Turks are disguised as rabbits and so
forth; 96 love songs of various sorts; 43 convivial songs; 38 shepherds’
songs; 36 dirges and songs about death, Charos and Hades; 31 songs
about mothers; 23 songs of the German occupation; 20 songs of the
house, the countryside and the hunt; 19 satirical or humourous songs;
17 religious songs; 16 songs of separation or xeniteia, which means exile;
3 baptismal songs; and the rest arc miscellaneous.
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