Music is everywhere in Greece: in tavernas, village festivals, on taxi radios, in church services. Its roots are ancient, but it has absorbed Byzantine, Ottoman, Balkan and Western influences, producing very different genres.
Antiquity
For the ancient Greeks music (mousike, "art of the Muses") was inseparable from poetry and dance. The main instruments were the stringed lyre and kithara and the aulos, a double reed pipe. According to Plato and Aristotle the modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian) affected the soul differently. Few fragments with musical notation survive, such as the Seikilos epitaph, a short song carved on a 1st-century AD gravestone. Thanks partly to Pythagoras we know how the Greeks linked music and mathematics.
Byzantine chant
Orthodox churches still ring with Byzantine chant: monophonic, unaccompanied, based on eight modes (echoi) and its own notation. It is one of Europe's oldest continuous musical traditions.
Folk music
Folk music (dimotika) varies hugely from region to region and accompanies the dances:
| Region | Features | Instruments |
|---|---|---|
| Epirus | Polyphonic songs and laments, haunting clarinet | Clarinet, violin, laouto |
| Crete | Mantinades (improvised couplets), fast rhythms | Cretan lyra, laouto |
| Aegean islands (nisiotika) | Cheerful tunes, sea ballads | Violin, santouri, tsambouna (bagpipe) |
| Macedonia and Thrace | Complex rhythms, Balkan influences | Gaida (bagpipe), zurna, drums |
| Pontus | Music of the Black Sea Greeks | Kemenche (Pontic lyra) |
Rebetiko, entechno, laiko
In the early 20th century rebetiko, the "Greek blues", was born in ports and poor districts, with the bouzouki as its chief instrument. From the 1960s classically trained composers such as Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hadjidakis joined rebetiko with the great poetry of Seferis, Elytis and Ritsos, creating entechno, "art song". Theodorakis's score for Zorba the Greek and Hadjidakis's for Never on Sunday made the bouzouki known worldwide. Laiko, more commercial urban popular music, still rules the big music halls, the bouzoukia, where audiences throw flowers at singers.
Greek musicians abroad
Vangelis, a pioneer of electronic music, won an Oscar for Chariots of Fire; Nana Mouskouri has sold hundreds of millions of records; Demis Roussos and Aphrodite's Child conquered Europe in the 1970s; Yanni has filled theatres worldwide. In classical music, besides Maria Callas, there are conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos and composer Iannis Xenakis, architect and mathematician.
Today
The contemporary scene mixes laiko, pop, rap and electronica. Greece has taken part in Eurovision since 1974 and won in 2005 with Helena Paparizou. On the islands in summer, the panigyria, saints' day festivals, remain the best place to hear live traditional music until dawn.
See also the sirtaki and festivals and traditions.