Excerpts from

Dancing on the Off Beat

Travels in Greece

by

JOAN CAROL FRIEDBERG

"In the mountains in the Zagorohoria north of Ioaninna, semi-nomadic Sarakatsani shepherds gather every year in a lofty mountain meadow and dance to the cries of a clarinet, whose slippery notes awaken the loneliness of the human soul.

I was headed for Skamneli, a village so small that it doesn't appear on most maps. From reading John Campbell's Honour Family and Patronage, a thorough study of these clans, I knew that the meadow where the Sarakatsani hold their annual gathering was somewhere just beyond Skamneli. Though this reference was nearly 50 years old, the location had apparently not changed.

When I had driven so far up the mountain that it seemed to be impossible that any further sign of civilization would be found, a road sign that read "Skamneli" appeared before me, and I continued slowly past stone houses, stopping in the center of the village.

It was now the middle of the afternoon, and not a soul was in sight. This was not surprising, because in Greece, mid-afternoon is nap time. There were no signs of a gathering, although the heat of the sun was too intense to endure, so I could not know for sure if they might emerge later. I spotted a "Rooms for Rent" sign and knocked on the door. A woman answered and invited me in to escape from the sun."

At a concert of polyphonic songs in Delvinaki...

"The sounds emanating from some of the singers were strange, esoteric, and inaccessible to anyone anticipating a Western concept of music. They were raw, guttural, animal wails that tore at your very innards. These sounds stretch our notions of the possibilities of human expression, by their primitive utterings and the odd juxtapositions of the sounds as well.

Underneath all of the layers of calls and chirps and "hey-heys" were the words of stories, epic tales of tragedies. These songs were their ballads. They were not just tunes for singing in the shower or exercises to challenge music theory. They were outpourings of emotion."

In the mountain village of Kerasovo...

"Later that evening, after a nap and a late dinner, I retreated to my room, opened the shutters again and stepped out onto the balcony to enjoy the nighttime view. From this mountain perch, the night sky was black, and it seemed that you could see every star in it. We were hundreds of miles from any light pollution. The air was so still. It had a pristine quiet except for the faint strains of a clarinet. I suddenly realized that the music was resonating from the plateia. Could it be?"

"The man with the cherubic face who I had seen in Konitsa was holding a microphone to his mouth and bleating out a song like a goat with a tremelo. He was short, a bit plump, with only sparse patches of hair on his head, but as he sang, his face radiated with a devilish grin. "

Florina...

"I checked into a small hotel a few blocks away from the main square. In the morning, I awoke with a realization of my own madness. Here I was in a town where I knew no one. I had no particular plan, and no idea of how to find what I was looking for.

Whenever I have found myself in this sort of dilemma, my solution has been to sit down over a cup of coffee and think things through. So I headed toward the square.

When I reached the square, still in morning's shadow, I saw only hundreds of empty, colored plastic chairs. One cafe was open. The sign said Cafeteria Krinos. I stepped inside. It was more like a bar than a cafe, and the air was stale and smelled of old wood and liquor. Two gruff looking, middle-aged men sat at a table and stared at me as I ordered a tourkikos. I took my coffee outside and sat down at an empty table under a tree.

When I had finished the coffee, I still had no idea what I would do. I carried my empty cup back inside the cafe, since no waiters were working yet. As I entered, the men stared at me again, and one finally spoke.

'Apo POU eisthe?' 'From where are you?' he was asking me, with a strong emphasis on the word "where." It almost seemed to me as if he were saying sarcastically, 'Where in the world do you come from?' This made me laugh, and then the two men also laughed, for no reason.

'I'm from America,' I answered in Greek. Wanting to follow up with something congenial, I tried saying a colloquial version of 'How are you,' (ti kaneis, meaning 'what's doing') but when I put the phrase in the formal, polite form, it came out more like, 'What do you do?' To my surprise, one man answered, 'I am a musician. I play clarinet.'

'Really?' I said in English. 'I play laouto,' I said in Greek, pointing to myself to make sure he understood. He was surprised. He introduced himself. He was George Zezos, and his friend, Ilias Vasiliadis, was also a clarinet player. George offered to buy me a drink, which I declined; but when he insisted, I opted for another tourkikos, and the three of us headed outside to one of the tables."

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