Greek and Irish Music - woe is me, you and everybody
I have a CD collection of the Fureys’ greatest hits. They are an Irish group who have entertained and enlightened listeners for a generation or more. If you are familiar with, or like Irish music, the Fureys are similar to the Chieftains but if anything even more mournful. But then the Irish have a lot to be mournful about. It is one of the strange things about music and human psychology that when you are sad, listening to sad music can cheer you up. I suppose it is a kind of catharsis, as the sadness is focused by the music and you get it out of your system.
As I was listening to the Fureys, I was reminded of my own Greek heritage. There is something about Irish and Greek music (even Jewish Klezmer music, if it comes to that) which especially unites them. Traditionally, the Irish and the Greeks had very little to do with each other, their lands being at either end of the European continent, yet their music is so similar. I do not mean the pop, happy-times, nonsense we often hear played, but the real deal: ethnic music that comes from the deepest part of a culture.
The similarity is not structural, although they often share simple arrangements and an almost austere sound, but the themes and mood created are what they have in common. Stories of war and death, lost loves, poverty, emigration and an endless roaming, revenge, being kicked around remorselessly by the fates, a litany of pushing that boulder up the slope only to have it tumble back down again, every time you nearly reach the top. In Greek music, especially Rebetika, you get the Irish experience served up from another perspective. Why is this?
An almost parallel history has produced similar outcomes. Both cultures are heirs to a proud heritage (Celtic; classical Greece); they have been dominated and oppressed for long periods by powerful neighbours (the English; the Ottoman Turks), against whom they fought many bloody conflicts and finally won independence; they experienced mass emigrations as their peoples tried to leave ‘the troubles’ behind; are both fiercely political and clannish; their literatures have enriched the world (Yeats, Joyce; Kazantzakis, Seferis); and of course, they have a fatalistic streak, reflected in their mythology and music.
I now note, with horror, another similarity: Both Ireland and Greece are economically bankrupt and being bailed out by the EU. I wonder what the future will bring. Probably more troubles and sad music.
