An Odyssey into Europe's oldest surviving folk music

A time-traveler, a person from the twenty-first century, stands on a cliff overlooking a mountain pass in southern Europe, in northwestern Greece, a few thousand years after the end of the last Ice Age, having traveled back in time by way of some technology unknown to us. This traveler is observing human beings while they interact with one another in this challenging, remote environment.

Lament From Epirus from Drew Christie on Vimeo.

Something is happening among these proto-Europeans. One person places a long wooden shaft, holes bored along the side, to his lips, producing sound. Other sounds exit the mouths of the surrounding people. The collective sound appears fragmented to the listener-the time-traveler-standing above. At times the voices and the flute notes appear smooth, mellifluous, but then disjointed and abrupt. During this flood of sound, members of this group move in cryptic yet intentional ways. When this lush cacophony ceases, so too do the movements of the people.

What is going on down there? [...]

List of illustrations

• Prologue: Curious black discs and dead ends
• A Street of Gramophones
• The Black Earth of Epirus
• "You Know, Greeks Don't Even Like This Music"
• That's Going to Leave a Mark
• Zoumbas's Lament
• Kitsos's Shepherd Song
• Satyr Dance
• Some Kind of a Tool
• Epilogue: On Fossils, Memory
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Discography
• Illustration Credits
• Index

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