Nisiotika: Music, Dances, and bitter-sweet songs of the Aegean Islands

[Bilingual English with Greek] Nisiotika is a book about the living tradition of Greek island music. Nisiotika derives from the Greek word for island, nisi, and has come to describe in particular the music and songs that are played and sung at festivals and celebrations on the islands of the Aegean. It is music to be danced to, and, as revealed in this book, in traditional celebrations with live music it is the dancers who call the tune.The songs tell of the sea and people whose lives are bound up with often dangerous sea trades, of love and of pretty girls, sometimes of historical events, but also of sadness and separation, of women who wait in fear for their husbands and sons to return from long voyages or faraway lands. . The most common instrumental accompaniment to them is the violin, often played together with a laouto (folk lute), but the tsambouna (bagpipes) and the santouri (hammered dulcimer) are also very popular.Nisiotika only became pan-Hellenic music after the islanders emigrated, initially to the US and then later to Athens. It was then that their songs were recorded and a wider audience for their music was created.The text is richly illustrated with photographs and includes a collection of the songs in Greek with English translation en face.292p. illus. [NEW- will b shipped from Greece WILL BE SHIPPED ROM greet