- Ancient Greece music, dance, lyric, and poetry was integral part of life
- Music covered music, dance, lyrics, and poetry
- Many instruments to play in religious ceremonies, festivals, funerals, weddings, and sports
- Music was seen as gift of gods
- Hermes created lyre
- Athena created flute
- Panpipes was given to Pan
- In mythology, Muses personified different parts of music to entertain the gods
- Lyre was considered the instrument of Greece
- Greeks started studying music theory from 6th Century BC
- Acoustic, harmonic, and melody studies
- Earliest text on music is the Harmonic Elements of Aristoxenos from 4th century BC
- Song of Seikilos around in a tombstone from 2nd century BC is a written piece of music that still survives
- Musicians had an elevated level in society
- Byzantine Empire time music became more religion based
- Ottoman Empire eastern sounds became integral to Greek music
- Folk music (Dimotika) connects ancient poetry and music. There are two styles
- Akritic Style express struggles of border guards in Byzantine Empire
- Kleftic style created by kleftes, or heroes who fought against the Ottomans and sang about love, exile, freedom and death ****
- Kantada romantic music influenced by Italy from 19th century Kefalonia
- Nisiotika folk songs from Greek islands with unique dancing and a lot of instruments
- Rebetiko spread through Greek refugees from Asia Minor in Thessalokini and Piraeus in Athens to express poverty, hunger, betrayal
- Had Byzantine and Smryrna influences
- Elafro about romance and intense feelings
- Operetta was founded in the 1930s based on French and Italian dramatic music
- Laiko evolved from Rebetiko during WWII
- Music genre of Urban folk music
- Entehno orchestral music with Greek elements from the end of 1950
- During dictatorship (1967-1974) Rebetiko was forbidden
- 5000 BCE first autos (wind instrument) carved from bone
- 2000 BCE First examples of the lyre
- 700 BCE Study of music begins of in Ancient Greece
- 350 BCE Aristoxenos writes theory of music
- After Constantinople collapse in 1453, 400 year of dark ages and slavery which negatively impacted Greek music
- From 1100 to 1200 onwards there were basically no change in Byzantine music
- Monophonic w/o instrumental accompaniment
- Greek folk song (all music created before the 1821 War)
- Akritic started between 800-900 A.D expressing struggles of akrites (frontier guards) of Byzantine period
- Klephtic between late Byzantine period (1400s) to start of War of Independence in 1821
- historical songs, love songs, distress songs etc
- Popular Song era (after 1821 war)
- Athenian Cantatha (Kantada) end of 1800s
- Haptanesian cantatha came after union of Ionian islands in 1823
- Featured folk melodies but were accompanied by western instruments
- Rebetiko music emerged in urban centers with those on the outskirts of society
- often sad and with one voice
- Get popular between 1940-1950
- Feature bouzouki, baglama, and guitar
- Mainstream Greek music is called “modern laika ” or “laiko pop” (early 1980s)
- Mixes folk music with western music
- Skyladiko which ads synths and other instruments in a kind of techno style (1980s)