Mr Vassilis's Taksim
A brief glance at musical and music-based performance among Greek Australian communities in Melbourne, c. 1950-74.
Peter Parkhill
1
Kostas Vassilis along with his brother, migrated to Australia in the 1950s. The Vassilis brothers were born and raised in Florina in the region of Greek Macedonia, where their Bulgarian father performed regularly with a local band. At least twice weekly, and sometimes even more frequently as they remember, there was a dance in the town square where musicians played the instruments of the region; the cornet , or trumpet; the zurna, an open, double-reed shawm, and the davul, a large, double-sided drum. Kostas Vassilis plays the klarino, or clarinet, which he learnt from his father, who also played the zurna. His brother plays the guitar.
On arrival in Melbourne, the two were invited to perform at dances run by the Greek- Macedonian community. From conversations with members of this community it seems clear that the Vassilis brothers already had a reputation as musicians, and through the community's contact with relatives at home in Greece, people in Melbourne had been informed of their arrival.
The dances were held continuously from 1956 to 1970 at a number of halls in Fitzroy. According to Fiona Mackie's historical account of Greek Macedonian settlement in Melbourne, Fitzroy was the first step for migrants from this region. Next came Preston, the site of a large Macedonian Orthodox association. Subsequent to that movement, many shifted to Reservoir, which became the home suburb for both brothers.
Kostas Vassilis is the primo musician in his own band, which comprises klarino, played by himself, bouzouki, guitar, drums and electronic organ. In 1974, as part of a recorded survey of traditional musicians in Melbourne, I recorded Mr Vassilis' group for the Victorian State Public Library's Australian Manuscripts section. The venue for the recording was a Macedonian regional association club in Fitzroy.
In addition to performing at the club, and at other night-club venues which employed semi-professional Greek musicians, the band was also regularly called upon to perform at parties for the association's members for weddings, baptisms, and at the few religious festivals, or paneghiria, observed in Melbourne at the time.
It was during this recording session that Mr Vassilis performed a piece which he introduced as a taksim. He was accompanied in this performance by an electric guitar and bouzouki. While the piece he performed was unmeasured, the guitar and bouzouki supplied some drone figures and made excursions up and down the mode in which the piece was set, obeying a kind of pulse which varied in speed. These excursions were most usually melodic statements in the tonic and short responses to melodic statements at the tonic and at the fifth, though also at various points in between. The longest passages performed by the guitar and bouzouki were at cadential points in the solo-exposition of the klarino.
2
In 1975, this band played at a community gathering held in a hall in Fitzroy. The following description of part of the evening comes from notes I made at the time. I’ve included this in the paper to give some indication of the social context in which the music was played.
The room is long and wide with a high Victorian ceiling. Tables are set around the walls, and to the right of the entrance, in front of the kitchen, is a kind of bar, upon which a selection of food and drink is on display. Tucked against the wall, to one side of the stage, a table has been set for the musicians.
The music is already playing. Bouzouki, guitar, organ and drums play the melodies of popular songs and occasionally someone sings, the guitar player, or the bouzouki player, while the other joins in harmony: mostly thirds. The klarino, a pre-boehm-style clarinet , often a conventional instrument, modified to play microtonal intervals, will join them later.
People greet each other as they enter.
Some of the men wear suits, others wear formal trousers with sports jackets. Most wear ties, though some have open-neck shirts which splay, 1940s style, across the lapels of their coats. The women do not wear slacks. They are clothed in knee-length dresses or skirts and blouses. All have stockings and sensible shoes.
Over the sound of the band you can hear warm, excited conversation; laughter; children’s voices; cutlery against plates; glasses; the sounds of shoes on the wooden floor and the echo of the vast space that is the hall. To my ears certain patterns of language become recognisable. My poor Greek allows me only to recognise the simplest of conversations, but the sounds of the language rise and fall over all other sounds, and over the music: patterns of speech which emphasise opinion; descending or ascending codas; signals marking turn-taking in conversation, and signals marking interruptions – the speaker often appealing to the reasonableness of an ordinary member of society.
The band is amplified. The musicians favour varying amounts of echo, so that one instrument or voice mike has more or less than another, and at different times: the sound is adjusted in one way or another all the time and by all members of the band. Sometimes, usually between pieces, the system howls with shrill feedback.
There are speeches. The tables are now filled with the plates which have come hot from the kitchen. And bottles of beer, wine, Johnny Walker and ouzo take their places among the jugs of water and plates of roast meats, little pies, dips, salads, cheese, olives and small baskets of bread.
During the speeches there is still an undercurrent of conversation, combined with the sounds of eating, drinking and people entering and leaving while more conversation drifts in from the foyer.
Adolescent laughter, shouts, mock screams, loud bandyings between teenage boys and girls: friendly and unfriendly words, echo from the outside.
While the speeches are made, the musicians sit down to their meal. Unlike the serving dishes on the guest tables, the musicians are served little selections of food on each of their plates. They are also given bottles of beer with glasses.
When the speeches conclude, the klarino player joins the band on the stage and the dancing begins.
And as people move onto the dance floor: couples; families; groups of friends, the sound of this hall changes.
Above the drone of the conversation is the explosive crashing of feet on wooden floors: this cracking rhythm cutting across the ordered patterns of the guitar, drums and bouzouki, and the melody, played by the klarino, interspersed with sung verses.
The hall itself is a tunnel of echoes, the sounds of the dancers, the rhythm, the melody, the song and the artificial echo from the sound system. There is intense animation, movements not only of the dancers, but of people’s effusive participation in conversation. There is a feeling that the hall’s whole purpose is this night: this dance.
The band watches the dancers; the dancers stare at their feet. Some young men take their places at the head of the line, where, one after the other, suspended from the hand of the dancer beside them, they leap up into the air, sometimes falling to a crouch from which they can spring into the circle of a flourishing turn.
In 1923, more than a million people moved back to Greece from parts of Turkey where their families had lived for centuries. Some of these people moved to Greek Macedonia, many of them Pontians: people who had lived on the shores of the Black Sea with their own dialect, special musical instruments and a tradition of vigorous dancing.
Later in the evening in the Fitzroy club, when many of the guests are back in their seats, two young men walk up to the stage and present a note to the klarino player. Inside the note is a tip.
The musician plays what he calls a Pontiacos: a Pontian dance. To Pontian people this dance is known as tik.
The two men get up to dance and the floor clears. The steps are vigorous, extravagant and energetic. Sometimes they join hands, sometimes leaping into the air or stepping-Cossack-like, in a crouching position across the floor. These men are so clearly comfortable with their movements as they stand in front of their tradition, which appears impervious to time.
As the dance finishes, the guests show their enthusiasm. This dance, like the presence of the Pontian immigrants, has become a part of their lives.
The klarino player asks a member of the audience to come to the stage. This man plays the Pontian lyra,
a three string fiddle which sits on his knee as he bows it from side to side.
The music changes. There is no accompaniment. The music is full of decoration, elision, alternating with long strokes of the bow – all intensely rhythmic, as if each stroke of the bow were the beat of a drum.
The ordered, punctuated, playing of the band has now been swapped for dense, complex sounds, ruled by an ever-present pulse yet changing in its expression of the melody at every strophe.
The music plays, the two men dance. The guests, the band, the talking, the movements from table to table – the entire hall seems to stop. The sound of the dancers’ feet on the wooden floor challenge, encourage the rhythms and contra rhythms of the lyra. Their feet crash on the off-beat – (and) bang bang bang; (and) bang bang bang; against the percussive bowing of the lyra – dumm-a-dum-dum/dumm-a-dum-dum while some members of the audience clap their hands.
And the dance comes to an end to shouting and applause. There is a feeling here that everyone is smiling within. These men are young. They danced so well.
The lyra player leaves the stage and the band returns. They play the kalamatianos, a round dance; a rural Greek social institution in which the dancers join hands, and, with carefully ordered steps, move in a circle.
This space, a public hall in Fitzroy, is again transformed by the music – transformed by the dance.
A few more dances: a tsamiko, the line dance in 6/4 from the Peloponnisos; some Greek Macedonian dances; the syrtos; and then some popular songs from the bouzouki and guitar players. When Mr Vassilis returns to the stage he begins with his improvised solo: the piece he calls a taksim.
3.
What I have just described is a routine part of life among Greek-Australian families who came to live in Melbourne, mostly during the 1960s. By using the word, routine, I want to stress that this gathering is in no way out of the ordinary. It is a part of the everyday, in which everyone present acts according to shared knowledge and consensus. These actions are in no way driven by self conscious adherence to sets of rules. In this gathering, no-one feels out of place [except perhaps for the teenagers, for whom it is, at least superficially, uncool.
Among Greek Australians, the dance is a part of almost all social gatherings: weddings; baptisms; name days; parties or functions organised by community organisations, regional brotherhoods, the church, national associations and even relatively small, private parties, perhaps focused on a family.
The supplier of music for the dancing at these gatherings, par excellence, is the reception band.
This group of semi-professional musicians is founded on the model of the rural Greek koumpania, a small band of individuals who may or may not always play together, featuring one or two primo, or soloist, singer-players, and players of various accompanying instruments. Primo musicians usually play the klarino or the violin and, as in Mr Vassilis’s band, the accompanying instruments range from the bouzouki, the guitar, accordion or electronic organ and synthesiser to the tsazz (jazz), or drum kit. Although for some functions the band might include a female vocalist, the inclusion of women as instrumentalists in this line-up is rare.
Melbourne in the 1960s was home to people from many different regions, cities and islands of Greece. The reception band, as it has come to be known, had, and still has, several important features.
First, it requires a protean repertoire: that is, the ability to play dances, dance songs and instrumental pieces from various urban and regional traditions in order to satisfy their clients: the people who hired them for special occasions such as church-based outings or paneghiria; national day celebrations; weddings; regional association parties or regular gigs at clubs and hotels.
Central to this requirement is the request system. This operates in many cultures where members of the audience – in fact guests, as they are viewed, request dances, songs or instrumental performances from the musicians. There is a saying recorded in a piece of Arabic writing from the eighth century, which complains of a certain type of person, ‘He came uninvited and stayed to order the music’. In Melbourne during the 60s and 70s, this system involved tipping; often in the form of a written request enclosing a banknote – usually not less than ten dollars. And as a corollary, bands were often hired on the understanding that they would receive the greater part of their remuneration in tips.
The band’s repertoire includes pieces from all regions of Greece, including the Greek Diaspora in Turkey (pre 1923). Since the request system is so important a part of the gatherings for which the band plays, musicians need to ‘keep-up’ with new songs and even styles featured on recordings imported from Greece. In no way does the music remain static. The improvisation spoken of here is the province of the soloist, and while short improvised parts may act as preludes, postludes or interludes to dance melodies or dance songs, a long, uninterrupted improvisation would not be played more than once or twice in an evening.
If someone who doesn’t know (the modal/melodic basis or the improvised form itself), plays, the audience doesn’t want to listen. They get really bored and they don’t know why. If you just know little bits you just repeat and repeat. But if you know … people are very quiet and they listen. Sometimes you can make them cry.
(Sydney musician, 1976. Parkhill Collection, National Library of Australia Oral History Collection, 2525/0004).
Expertise in all of these instrumental and vocal forms during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, was most usually passed from one musician to another through oral tradition and vynil records, and since oral musical tradition is a strong part of Greek-Australian culture, these traditions are themselves very strong.
As part of general practice, most musicians knew, or knew of, other musicians in Melbourne, and even other states. It was the case that on occasions where a member of a band was unable to play, or where another musician was required, band members recall having no trouble finding someone suitable.
It was also pointed out to me that many musicians were so experienced in a large number of diverse regional and urban traditions that they required little or no rehearsal. Since everyone had a day job, almost all rehearsal took place at the venue before the performance, and was mainly concerned with clarifying anticipated problems. These sessions were very brief.
Some examples of this experience and strong interest in diverse musical traditions in Greece follow.
A klarino player from the Peloponnisos who was so determined to create the sound of musicians from his region, stripped the keys from an old clarinet to imitate the sound of a pre-Boehm instrument commonly played in the villages.
At the same time, he satisfied his love of rebetika, the urban popular music of Athens and Piraeus in the first decades of the twentieth century by collecting 78 rpm discs and playing them on an old wind-up gramophone.
An Oud player originally from the Black Sea, who also plays the Pontian Lyra, a small upright fiddle, plays the guitar in his reception band because instruments from his region are unpopular with a general audience.
The sociologist, Edward Shils, speaks of tradition as the past in the present, attenuated by the present . People who share this tradition do so unselfconsciously, as part of the everyday, as common sense.
The anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, views commonsense as ‘one large realm of the given and undeniable’ For him it is ‘a relatively organised body of of considered thought’ and that ‘its tenets are immediate deliverances of experience, not deliberated reflections upon it’. Importantly, he observes that it has ‘ no logical structure’ and ‘its content is widely heterogeneous, not only across societies [or cultures], but within them’
The French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu speaks of this world of ‘common sense’, ‘mutually intelligible’, ‘shared practices’ as habitus. Bourdieu vigorously explains this term from a host of different perspectives:
One of the fundamental effects of … habitus is the production of a commonsense world endowed with the objectivity secured by consensus on the meaning of practices and the world …;
The source of … a series of moves which are objectively organised as strategies without being the product of a genuine strategic intention …;
… the durably installed … generative principle of regulated improvisations…;
collectively orchestrated … without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor…;
structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures…;
a way of being … a habitual state…;
… immediately intelligible and forseeable, and hence taken for granted …;
… a past which survives in the present …;
a subjective but not individual system of internalised structures, schemes of perception, conception and action common to members of the same group or class …;
(Bourdieu, 1977, pp 16-17)
In Australia, during the 1990s, it was fashionable to discuss imported musical traditions using terms such as ‘re-duplication’ or reinvention, for example:
Many migrants have developed a strong interest in their traditional music since being in Australia …;
… the expatriate often develops a commitment to the traditional music as it was at the time of him/her leaving the country …;
(Crowe, V., 1998: Introduction)
Taking into account the above mentioned social theory, the interviews with the musicians and the actions of the individuals involved, it seems clear, at least to me, that this is not the case; though I could argue that by the mid-1970s, Greek Australian musicians were close to practicing a distinctive Australian reception band tradition.
4.
According to the works of Wright (1978), and Farmer (1929), the term, taqsim, has its origins in the Arab world, and it is at least as old as the eighth century, during which time the mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, al-Farabi, set down his codification of the Arab modal traditions. Of course, since the music existed in oral tradition, it seems clear that the term pre-dates al-Farabi's work; probably to a considerable degree. The taqsim, then, in its Arabic and Turkish forms, is an improvisation on one or more of the modes, or maqamat, singular, maqam. These are perhaps best described as repositories of modal formulae for composition during performance, though most usually termed simply, "modes". Although the term, taqsim, is used to denote a specific movement in an ordered suite of classic forms in the art music and popular music of the Arab world and of Turkey, (Signell, 1986), it has taken on a meaning of its own in the "folk" and popular traditions of the middle-east (Wright, 1978, Signell,1986, passim.
While the Arabic and Persian traditions no longer have a common system of nomenclature and theory,8 the musical traditions of Turkey follow those of the Arabic tradition quite closely and were adopted formally during the eighteenth century by the emperor Selim III (Signell, 1986).
In the earliest codifications of the Arab musical system, those of al-Farabi and Safi-al-Din 8th and 13th centuries respectively (Wright,1978, and Farmer, 1929), and in subsequent accounts, the maqamat have been presented as discrete tetrachordal or pentachordal structures, varying in their ascending and descending forms, and possessing upper and lower tetrachords or pentachords which use the note at which they join the basic tetrachord or pentachord scale as a pivot note in modulation, or as a supertonic.
Associated with each individual mode is a corpus of melodic units, repeated and repeatable patterns which provide for each maqam a recognisable identity. These offer models as to how such a particular tonal unit or mode might function, they also constitute tonal formulae, some of which are immediately recognisable by musicians and their audiences, and therefore very useful in providing modulatory bridges. It would be a mistake to think of these as merely "filler-phases", however, and their proper selection and placement in a piece is crucial to the composition process.
5.
Mr Vassilis's taksim, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, was accompanied by an electric guitar. This instrument provided a style of drone accompaniment, though tempered with a number of economical but nonetheless busy configurations in the bass, while supplying counter statements to the taksim at cadential points. In this, the guitar imitates the formulaic terminating phrases played by solo instruments at the conclusion of a strophe in a dance melody; a kalamatianos, for example.
The performance, with initial and later references to a dance melody in 6/4 time, probably a Greek tsamikos, consists of a set of improvisations and variations, or perhaps more accurately, expanded expositions of a basic melodic statement or theme, presented at the beginning of the piece. In addition, it might be said that the overall movement for expansion is upwards, proceeding often in arc-like movements which invariably return to the tonic, a.
The tonal centre of this piece, as mentioned above, is clearly the a. The first phrase of each strophe has a leading note function which serves as an introduction to a figure typical of both the Greek skaros and mirologhi and its Macedonian and Bulgarian equivalents and parts of the taqsim and returns to rest on the tonic. This leads to an alternating note figure which, in turn leads to a drone. Such a figure, operating between the tonic and the note above, is a common enough feature of the aforementioned demotic forms.
Following this opening in Mr Vassilis’s piece, the stepwise ascending and descending figures then bring the piece to a brief pause, then, the relationship between two structurally important tones is exploited for the remainder of the phrase. A sustained note on the fifth is followed by a decorative paired semiquaver figure leading to a brief pattern which comes to rest on the third, following a brief, ornamental glide. Following the rest which marks the end of the introductory phrase, marked by a coda performed on the guitar as in strophe 1, the second strophe continues in a gradual overall descent executed through a number of closely-executed arc-like ascent-descent figures which lead to a flourish towards the end of the statement.
Similar arc-like figures return the piece to the a, which is sustained to mark the end of the strophe, though instead of allowing the guitar to fill part of the space between those strophic expressions of the theme, the klarino executes a formulaic coda which comes to rest to rest again on the a. And so on.
It is clear that some elements of Vassilis' taksim are at least related to the eastern model. How many and which are less easy to place, although the piece is not strictly governed by the makam system.
My opinion is that this relation, including the name taqsim , may well have come to visit Mr Vassilis in Melbourne.
What follows is a table comparing the two forms.
Mr Vassilis’s Improvistation. Taqsim.
Based on variations on a single melodic Mode-based improvisations, using
pattern, reproduced in each strophe. traditional formulae to make excursions to other modes.
Rooted in the history of melodic improvisations Rooted in middle-eastern art music
in what might be called folk traditions of traditions, formally learned.
Greece, Macedonia and Bulgaria.
In the reception band realization, the piece When played on traditional
is accompanied by guitar and bouzouki solo instruments such as the ‘ud,
using drones and repeat figures at cadences. the taqsim is in dialogue with silence.
I conclude, then, that Mr Vassilis' taksim is, in effect, much closer to the klephtiko, moiraloghia or skaros forms, but that in calling it a taksim, he ties it into the urban popular music traditions of rebetika and laikon, and claims a modal basis for the improvisation, as opposed to the set of melodic, or thematic, variations he actually plays.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bourdieu, P., 1977, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Translation by Richard Nice), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Crowe, V., ‘The European, Asian and Latin American Migrant Experience: A Process of Cultural Enrichment’, in Australia: Exploring the Musical Heritage, Sydney, Australia Music Centre.
Farmer, H G., 1929, A History of Arabian Music to the XIIth Century, London, Luzac.
Mackie, F., 1984, in Bottomley, G., and De Lepervanche, M. (Eds), Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia, Sudney, George Allen and Unwin.
Shils, E., 1981, Tradition, London, Faber.
Signell, K., 1986, Makam: Modal Practice in Turkish Art Music, New York, Da Capo Press.
Wright, O M., 1978, The Modal System of Arab and Persian Music: AD 1250 – 1300, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
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