Songs and music of Crete
The influences on traditional Cretan music are varied and reflect its
chequered historical roots. Like most traditional Greek music it is a
product of ancient Byzantine but following the Crusades when the island was
dominated by the Franks, Venetians and Genoese new instruments and styles of
music were introduced. As a consequence there are some types of music and
singing that are quite unique to the island of Crete.
The most well known Cretan songs are known as "mantinades" which is a poetic
style of song constructed from rhyming couplets of fifteen syllables and
sung in the Cretan dialect. This genre of singing was first recorded in
Crete at the end of the C14th/early C15th and seems to have been influenced
by Venetian and European poetry of the time. It is still popular today and
is widespread throughout Crete. Traditionally it is accompanied by the lyre
and the lute, and the singer improvises the lyrics to express the whole
gamut of human emotions. Mostly they are not written down, with the best
being learnt by heart and passed on over the generations. Some are short,
complete poems sung in a similar way to a limerick whereas another version
is where the singers compete with each other, answering each others lines in
complementary ways.
A second genre of singing, typical of Crete, is the rebel song, the "rizitika"
which is sung in western Crete without instrumental accompaniment. This type
of folk song narrates the disorderly history of the island and celebrates
the heroism and willingness to fight of the Cretan. It is believed that they
originated in the Byzantine era and developed during the domination by the
Venetians, the Ottomans and Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Unlike
the mantinades, rizitika are not improvised having instead symbolic coded
messages of liberation. They divide into two types: tragoudia tis tavlas,
sung at festivals and parties and without instruments and tragoudia tis
stratas, sung by travelling minstrels.
The dominant musical instrument in Cretan folk music is the lyre, either
three or four stringed and closely related to the medieval Byzantine lyra.
Unlike much of Greece where the lyre is accompanied by the violin, in Crete
the traditional instrumental accompaniment is the Cretan lute, which is
longer than usual as it is tuned one fourth lower than the normal lute.
Other typical instruments in Cretan music are the habioli, which is a wind
instruments traditionally played by shepherds either solo or with the
accompaniment of a goatskin bagpipe, the askomandoura. Finally, the
mandolin, popular all around the Mediterranean coast is played throughout
Crete and reflects the Venetian influences of the past. .