"the sounding sea"...

"i know a pine tree bowed over close by the sea. noonday bestows on its tired trunk a shade measured out like our life and in the evening wind, passing through its needles, takes up a curious song, like the souls that have abolished death... once i spent a night beneath this tree. at dawn i was a new man, as if they had hewn me that very hour from the quarry."
george seferis

text, images and sound from a beautiful exhibition catalog titled music in the aegean, published in greece in 1987.

"compared with the oceans of the world the aegean is a mere deep blue, often turbulent, pond...but ranged beside the civilizations of the world, the aegean is a colussus. within its bounds lie traces of man's earliest gropings after culture..."
g.v. kavadias

fortunately that culture is preserved in the folk music of the region, and double fortunately it's further preserved on this nice little 7" tucked into the back of the catalog.

"the cicadas playing second fiddle till they become transparent at the moment when a rowing boat went by full of suffering, laden with songs and lights that flicker like mountain-tops."
odysseus elytis

...most of the recordings are from the early 80's, with one being from 1965. all are clearly excerpts, but the little fragments and shifts make it seem all the more like a little film or radio show... i've spliced side one and two together; and if you listen closely, near 8:40 or so you can hear a dog barking in the background...

click here to listen