Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music
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- $38.99
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- $38.99
Publisher Description
A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2018
In the tradition of Patrick Leigh Fermor and Geoff Dyer, a Grammy-winning producer discovers a powerful and ancient folk music tradition.
In a gramophone shop in Istanbul, renowned record collector Christopher C. King uncovered some of the strangest—and most hypnotic—sounds he had ever heard. The 78s were immensely moving, seeming to tap into a primal well of emotion inaccessible through contemporary music. The songs, King learned, were from Epirus, an area straddling southern Albania and northwestern Greece and boasting a folk tradition extending back to the pre-Homeric era. To hear this music is to hear the past.
Lament from Epirus is an unforgettable journey into a musical obsession, which traces a unique genre back to the roots of song itself. As King hunts for two long-lost virtuosos—one of whom may have committed a murder—he also tells the story of the Roma people who pioneered Epirotic folk music and their descendants who continue the tradition today.
King discovers clues to his most profound questions about the function of music in the history of humanity: What is the relationship between music and language? Why do we organize sound as music? Is music superfluous, a mere form of entertainment, or could it be a tool for survival? King’s journey becomes an investigation into song and dance’s role as a means of spiritual healing—and what that may reveal about music’s evolutionary origins.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An obscure European musical tradition rebukes the sterility of modern culture according to this bombastic appreciation-cum-jeremiad. King, a musicologist and record collector, travels to Epirus, a region straddling northwestern Greece and southern Albania, to savor its unique folk music, which combines droning backgrounds with almost atonal violin and clarinet noodlings, in a style that aficionados concede can feel like "ear torture" to the unaccustomed. The music's nonconformity is a virtue, King contends, making it a paragon of localism and authenticity comparable only to Mississippi Delta blues for its rootedness in its terroir and defiance of bland commercial aesthetics. King soaks up the Epirotic folkways, dancing at sometimes-raunchy village festivals and quaffing anise-flavored moonshine. He relates stories of Ottoman atrocities and legends of the area's musicians, meanwhile arguing that folk music performs a crucial social "healing" function. King's evocations of Epirus and Epirotic music its haunting forlornness, "the heavy despair of the clarinet and the sad avian mimicry of the violin" are vivid and engaging. Unfortunately, his sour attacks on all other music from classical ("lofty but groundless") to big band ("vacuous, mediocre and sucking") to pop ("vacuous tripe" shading to "sinister noise") can make his praise of folk culture feel like snobbery. Nevertheless, folk music historians and enthusiasts will find much of interest in this well-researched book. Photos.
