Lianotragouda - Eighteen Little Songs of the Bitter Homeland

by Gail Holst

Eighteen Little Songs of the Bitter Homeland are settings of verses of Yannis Ritsos which the poet sent to Theodorakis with the specific intention that he should set them to music. They are not explicitly political and by the time they were composed, in 1973, conditions had relaxed enough to allow them to be recorded in Greece. Theodorakis recorded his own version with Farantouri, Pandis, Aphrodite Manou and Kostoulis, but the popular singer Dalaras helped to make the songs known in Greece. The songs are set in a variety of traditional forms, echoing Ritsos's use of traditional folk verse forms and his images of the Greek countryside. There are elements of traditional dirge, Cretan rizitika, rembetika, orthodox liturgy. Among the finest of the Eighteen Little Songs is 'The Long Wait'...

So, with the waiting, our nights have lengthened
Until the song has taken root and grown like a tree.
And those in prison, oh Mother, and those far away in exile
They let out a sigh and a poplar springs into leaf.

There are four rembetika based songs in the cycle, 'Requiem', 'Elegy', "The Building' and 'Here the Light'.
'Here the Light' was already a hit song when Theodorakis returned to Athens. The words had a clear message of defiance to the dictatorship from the poet who had been kept in exile on the island of Samos...

Rust can't harm this marble
Nor can chains shackle the Greek or the air.
Here the light, the shore,
Golden, blue tongues,
Deer cut into the rocks, eating iron.

The song begins with a typical bouzouki modal introduction before changing into a swinging hasapiko for the lyrics. It is an example of how Theodorakis uses familiar material and injects personal, consciously-surprising musical elements into it. Greeks who are strong rembetika fans often object to such liberties, but the fact is that Theodorakis has amply demonstrated his ability to produce songs in pure 'laiko' style, and his experiments with traditional form are not evidence of ignorance of disrespect, but rather of the composer's attempt to extend common musical forms.

The two finest songs of the Eighteen Little Songs are the last two of the cycle, 'The Avowed' and 'Don't Weep for the Greek Spirit'. Both songs are sung by Theodorakis himself on the recording, and the second became so personally identified with him that he would sing it at the close of every concert. It is based on the melismatic singing style of so much of Greek folk and religious music, in this case the rizitiko of the Cretan mountains. The excited response of a Greek audience to extended melisma is always surprising to me. There is so much of it in their traditional music, and yet it always seems to have a fresh and powerful effect on them. Certainly it is the opening bars of 'Don’t Weep for the Greek Spirit' which attracts the audience:

Don't weep for the Greek spirit
There where it goes to stoop
With the dagger at the bone, the strap at the neck.

The rest of the song is a swinging march which was repeated in concerts again and again until the audience joined in the not so simple chorus of:

Look at it flying again, becoming manly and strong
And spearing the beast with the harpoon of the sun.

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