Galatia, which was in Anatolia, now in the area North Central Turkey (not Illinois) was an area so named as it was invaded by Gauls (or Celts - Keltoi) as they were invited in to fight in some civil war. The wikipedia thing is informative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatia
Anyone know of the music from there? Do any so-called "Celtic" elements persist?
Do they have jigs and reels and play bellows-blown pipes and have they sessions in pubs? What's the Guinness like out there?
I've not heard of Galatian pipes, but heard a Galician piper once- the pipes seemed primitive compared than Uilleann pipes.
Galicia is/was a a Celtic region od region of Spain. The music sounded similar to celtic- not like what one might think of as Spanish Music. But that may have been due to it being played on pipes.
I know that. Probably most people here know or have heard of Galician music. Personally I love it.
But I said Galatia. Like wot is in the Bible. St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians. In Turkey.
I'd like to read anything someone may discover about these people.
But bellows - blown bagpipes, as far as I'm aware, originated in France in the c17. These bagpipes ("musettes", I think they were called) had chromatic chanters, I suppose with keys, and shuttle-drones, i.e.,drones that could be lengthened or shortened by pulling them out of a cylindrical stock or pushing them back in: this way the note of each drone could be altered, to suit the key in which the piper wanted to play on the chanter.
I assume these instruments - a prodigious leap in the sophistication of the bagpipe - are the ancestors of all the bellows-blown pipes in Britain and Ireland. (I read somewhere that Shakespeare's reference to "woollen pipes" isn't about Uillean pipes; so I don't know of any bellows - blown pipes in UK / Ireland before the French were making them.)
I don't know if the French still play these particular bagpipes, or whether bellows - blown pipes were developed independently elsewhere. But I don't see them as an invention and constant denominator of the Celtic peoples.
I have a CD of music from Anatolia. It was included with a Songlines magazine- sometime in the year 2000.
It's cool, but sounds more eastern and Arabic, not like any Celtic music I've ever heard. So I took the time to make sure there was no confusion. After all, you were asking about Celtic elements in their music, including pipes. Given the context and, and the similarity between Galatian and Galician it seemed a good idea to check.
KML - I thought you were taking the urine re Galatia (surely you would never do such a thing...) - but right enough, it seems to exist. Given the location, perhaps the pipes they have there, are hubbly-bubblies (bet you've not heard that expression for a long time - not that I would know what it meant). So, they probably suck their pipes, rather than blow them...
If St Paul hadn't spent all that time writing, he could have learnt the fiddle or something, and introduced music. But as Mr Llig would tell you, some people are just too lazy.
Probably not strictly relevant, but Alexander the Great, when he conquered the then-known world in the 4th century BC, passed through part of what is now Afghanistan (not "too" far from Anatolia). Some of his troops are believed to have stayed there and intermarried with the local tribes. Even today, in a few remote villages in the mountains, there are a few thousand people who apparently still worship the Ancient Greek pantheon with dance and music which possibly may be a remnant of the religious practices of the Greeks, and speak a language apparently related to Ancient Greek.
What I have just said above is my (probably very hazy) memory of a documentary programme on British TV about Alexander the Great broadcast a few years ago.
Snakefingers - I wasn't sure if you were plugged into my request, hence I repeated it. Apologies if I came across as rude. It's just that we've already had discussions about "Gallego" (Galician) music before, as much as I really like it.
Ron - me extract the urine? Perish the thought! Well, to be honest, half and half. I am yet to be convinced that there really IS an underlying Celtic feel to eg Breton and Gallego music, in the same way as there are strong similarities between Irish and Scottish music. Remember, up until the 17th century The Gaelic-speaking Highlands of Scotland and Gaelic Ireland were regarded as one cultural continuum. So that link is still strong. But please convince me otherwise that the Bretons and Gallegos genuinely share this....so called....Celtic musical heritage. What I am convinced of is that it sells more records when it's called Celtic.
So all I'm doing is taking this to its logical conclusion. IF there really IS some underlying Celtic pattern to "Celtic" music, surely it would be in evidence in the music from this very ancient of Celtic provinces, Galatia?
BTW, Oh yeah, Trevor, I saw that about Alexander. So, the fact that these ancient customs are preserved in one way or another in these remote areas, surely any "Celtic" elements in Galatian music would be similarly preserved?
The pipes and the Guinness bits are of course me having an over-fertile imagination.
I might have seen that one. I don't remember the bit about the Galatians, but do remember Iranian ballad-singers singing laments, still current, about their empire being trashed by Alexander - historical memory seems extraordinarily long in that part of the world. And I'm not sure why Alexander wept about there being no more worlds to conquer when the Eastern horizon was obviously beckoning, unless it was because he was blind drunk a lot of the time.
There are, of course, certain similarities between the music of the Balkan region and that of Scotland, Ireland and Galicia, and the bagpipes (albeit mouth blown) play a large part in it. That region is not all that far from Galatia, on the grand scheme of things - and the Celts, whoever they were, would probably have have passed through there on their way to and from Asia Minor. It might also be of significance that, on the Iberian peninsula, the word 'Gaita' is the generic term for bagpipes, whilst in Bulgaria, there is a specific variety of bagpipes called the 'Gayda'.
I wonder how much of regional folk tradition in Asia Minor has escaped the homogenisation/Arabicisation of the Islamic world.
Ewwuchh. Is that why bodhrans smell funny when people wet them?
As for some of you wanting to find out more, so would I, especially their music. I had a look around and came up with a couple more interesting articles - nothing musical though:
Sorry spoon, missed your post. In answer to your last speculation, could be anyone's guess, but I wonder too. Loads, I suspect.
Incidentally, there's a Romanian city called Galati - which is on the Danube. That river takes its name from Danu the Celtic Deity. Is Galati's name a coincidence?
O, BTW David I meant to add that Turkic people are not Arab in origin but Central Asian, who spread westward: http://www.fact-index.com/t/tu/turkic_people.html
but are of course Islamic - the Arab Empire was very tolerant to minorities hence the flourishing of Jewish enclaves in eg Spain but I don't know if the Ottomans (Turks) were. Anyone know? Might help us find out if the music persisted.
OK, Hugo, I'll go along with your hijack - do you speak Galician? If so, what does "O Asubio do Padriño" (by Citania), or "O Berro Seco" (by Milladoiro) mean? Do you know? Thanks.
"Turkic people are not Arab in origin but Central Asian"
Yes. But The spread of Islam has carried with it many elements of Arabic culture, including music. The turkish language was, at one time, written in the Arabic script.
Incidentally, modern Turkey takes in parts of the territories of the Kurdish and Armenian peoples, both of whom are Indo-European .
I think the Ottomans varied in their treatment of minorities from place to place, circumstance to circumstance, and epoch to epoch. I've read the most about Greece and Israel because they're the two places round there that I've actually been to.
Orthodox Greeks, Serbs etc. were, at any rate to start with, free to practise their religion under their own religious leaders. They were exempt from military service. Sounds OK, but there was a flipside: They were not allowed to ride horses; they paid a special poll tax as "dhimmis" (non-Muslims); one in five young boys was haled off to be a janissary (a highly indoctrinated shock-trooper), and at least one admittedly non-Turkish local ruler (Ali Pasha) raided his area for girls for his harem ; and Greek religious leaders, living in Istanbul, were answerable for their people's behaviour and could easily be imprisoned or killed if the people revolted.
The Greek clergy kept elementary schooling going, but it sometimes fell to a pretty low level. As time passed, the Ottoman empire got more bogged down and corrupt; revolts caused reprisals, including against clerics and church buildings; some took to the hills. There were Greek families who got prosperous in Constantinople and the odd island, but most of Greece was a run-down backwater.
In early c19 Greek expats brought back nationalistic ideas and a messy War of Independence liberated the south of the country. What the Greeks still had was their language, a very recognisable streamlining of the ancient one with a scatter of Latin and Turkish loan-words. Some wanted to improve on this and bring back Ancient Greek as a national language: so-called "Purified Greek" was devised, and imposed on generations of schoolkids and civil servants. But it can sound rather pompous and absurd, and doesn't flow with the rhythms of the modern spoken language - whose Greek credentials are evident enough. So (I think) it's been dropped.
Musically, the Greeks came out of the "Tourkokratia" with, among other things, some liturgy, probably not much changed from the Byzantine period; a body of rebel songs ("Kleftika"); some odd brass band music - the Ottomans introduced brass bands, though there are not many now; and no doubt the oud and other such stringed things. Over four centuries of occupation, though, it's inconceivable that Greeks and Turks should never have associated at leisure somewhere and played each others' tunes / learned some of each others' languages. Forms like the "Taxim" (a preamble to a rhythmic tune, that runs up and down its modal range) and the "Aman" (a song with long elaborate wailing notes) I think are Turkish or Arabic, but they are certainly there in Greek trad.
Two particularly characteristic instruments of modern Greek music, the clarinet and the bouzouki, came along after the Turkish occupation. The clarinet came from the West and, just like the simple-system flute in Ireland, fitted the local trad music like a glove. The bouzouki may have come in with Greek refugees from Turkey in the 1920s, from when it became prominent in Rebetika (urban subculture music) and popular music generally.
Whatever instruments have been played by the Greeks from Byzantine times to the present, one constant influence on their use will have been the Greek language itself. Most Greek folk music, including dance music, is sung; and to accommodate the rhythms of the language, things like the bouzouki and the oud would probably have had to be played in different time signatures, etc., to those used with them in Turkey or Arabia. To survive in this tradition, instruments from outside it have had, as it were, to go native.
As much as I'd like believe otherwise, I don't think there's much chance of finding convincing connections back to any particular regional music from a thousand or more years ago. And I agree with Danny (KML) that Breton and Galician music don't sound strongly related to Irish and Scottish. Breton music, in particular, reminds me more of generic European medieval music. I like it, but I doubt if I would've made any Celtic connection if it hadn't been advertised in advance.
Sure. And as far as I see Breton instruments can be dated from the Med. or later, and not from the dawn of time; and yet, the music and dance seem quite strongly differentiated from other French music. I suspect that the Breton language / singing must have a lot to do with this.
About the Greeks again - I don't think the Turks ever set about trying to eradicate or replace their language, so it survived the Ottomans and attempted new developments, poetry and song being among them. But whether to take it back to Ancient Greek or let it follow its own way as a modern language, was a cultural and political battleground for a long time.
Isn't there a theory that some of the canon of Galician music was introduced by Irish soldiers stationed in a garrison in Galicia dring the 17th century? Muineiras are the same time signature as jigs.
".....Breton and Galician music don't sound strongly related to Irish and Scottish"
To my ear there is a strong resemblance between *some* Galician music and Irish and Scottish music. This may well be, as Conan suggests, due to contact with the Irish much more recently than the ancient Celtivc invasions of the Iberian peninsula. It is unlikely that Galatia would have had much contact with the Celtic-speaking peoples of the Western extremities of Europe beyond the Middle Ages, since, by then, the legendary nomadic, warlike Celts no longer existed as a clearly defined people, being largely settled and assimilated with other peoples. We only have to look at the changes that have taken place in European Art Music (which happens to be well documented) over a millenium, from Mediaeval plainsong, through the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods to Schoenberg and Stockhausen, to realise that whatever music was sung or played by the ancient Celts 2000 years ago is unlikely to be identifiable as the same music as the jigs and reels we play today. If, indeed, the Celts did take their music with them to Galatia, with the very different neighbouring influences in that region, it is unlikely to have developed in a similar direction to the 'Celtic' music of Western Europe.
Interesting articles on Galatians etc. in Wikipedia. They were "Eastern Gauls" (doesn't give point of origin) who crashed into Greece and Asia Minor from c3 B.C. They were warriors taking part in Greek wars, but welcoming the Romans, under whom they occupied quite a large bit of central Turkey. St. Paul wrote to his church there in Greek, but it seems their own language was spoken there still, c300 A.D. Thereafter they seem to go out of history and are assumed to have adopted Greek or Turkish or both. (Though if one actually went there, who knows, one might find continuing traditions and interest in those people.)
I noted in passing that Julius Caesar referred to the majority of the Gauls in Gaul as "Celts", saying that this was what they called themselves.
Maybe someone should invent a celtometer to measure the celticity of these various musical forms within the celtic diaspora then do some stats to work out the error coefficients based upon reliabilities by a comparison of Clare music vs Galway music, or two equally similar cohorts.
I know the above's a joke, but it calls to mind the Nazis' attempts to evaluate degrees of ethnic or cultural purity or degeneracy - and not only the Nazis, in late c19 / early c20.
There's an anecdote about a Nazi school inspector or someone who picked out a blond schoolboy and haled him to the front of the class, showing him off as a perfect Aryan. The boy had the sense to keep a straight face and play along. He was Jewish.
I've just heard that the above story is true; it happened in a school class attended by a very old friend of my mother, who came to Britain as a refugee from Germany in the Thirties.
Another take on this is Bob Quinn's "Atlantean" books and films which trace a possible North African/Mediterranean origin of the Irish people based on the premise that going back several thousand years there was a strong maritime link between Ireland and the Mediterranean.
One of the most striking images is the comparison between Sean-Nós singing in Connemara and the solo singing traditions of the Middle East.
This could also explain the darker features common in the people of Connemara. http://www.tcd.ie/Library/Shop/product.php?productID=1167 http://www.phoblacht.net/som19040511g.html
Maybe the coincidence of the word "gaita" for the Galician pipes with "gaida", the word for local bagpipes in Poland, Czech / Slovakia and SE Balkans (acc. Wikipedia), has to do with Gothic invasion and settlement in both SW and SE Europe late in the Roman Empire. It may come from the Gothic word for "goat". Admittedly the Eastern Goths don't seem to have settled down in the Eastern countries where bagpipes are called "gaida" (the Western Goths did settle in Galicia).
Goths? don't see many of them at sessions. Nor punks or rudies.
nicholas, do you know what the Gothic word for goat is? Didn't the Visigoths settle further south in the Iberian peninsula? I'll have tto go and look....
cferrie, there may be something in your thesis, but all that celtic anthropology stuff is way up in the air. Geneticists now look at modern populations based on "clans" with a number of matriarchs: http://www.oxfordancestors.com/your-maternal.html
Music of Galatia
Music of Galatia
Galatia, which was in Anatolia, now in the area North Central Turkey (not Illinois) was an area so named as it was invaded by Gauls (or Celts - Keltoi) as they were invited in to fight in some civil war. The wikipedia thing is informative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatia
Anyone know of the music from there? Do any so-called "Celtic" elements persist?
Do they have jigs and reels and play bellows-blown pipes and have they sessions in pubs? What's the Guinness like out there?
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
I've not heard of Galatian pipes, but heard a Galician piper once- the pipes seemed primitive compared than Uilleann pipes.
Galicia is/was a a Celtic region od region of Spain. The music sounded similar to celtic- not like what one might think of as Spanish Music. But that may have been due to it being played on pipes.
Here's a few links:
http://usuarios.lycos.es/Celtic_Galiza/index.html
Here's a link: http://www.vermontel.net/~weepiper/galician.html
And another: http://www.clip.dia.fi.upm.es/~boris/gaita/
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Snakefingers
Re: Music of Galatia
I know that. Probably most people here know or have heard of Galician music. Personally I love it.
But I said Galatia. Like wot is in the Bible. St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians. In Turkey.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
I'd like to read anything someone may discover about these people.
But bellows - blown bagpipes, as far as I'm aware, originated in France in the c17. These bagpipes ("musettes", I think they were called) had chromatic chanters, I suppose with keys, and shuttle-drones, i.e.,drones that could be lengthened or shortened by pulling them out of a cylindrical stock or pushing them back in: this way the note of each drone could be altered, to suit the key in which the piper wanted to play on the chanter.
I assume these instruments - a prodigious leap in the sophistication of the bagpipe - are the ancestors of all the bellows-blown pipes in Britain and Ireland. (I read somewhere that Shakespeare's reference to "woollen pipes" isn't about Uillean pipes; so I don't know of any bellows - blown pipes in UK / Ireland before the French were making them.)
I don't know if the French still play these particular bagpipes, or whether bellows - blown pipes were developed independently elsewhere. But I don't see them as an invention and constant denominator of the Celtic peoples.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Music of Galatia
KML, I did notice that you wrote Galatia.
I have a CD of music from Anatolia. It was included with a Songlines magazine- sometime in the year 2000.
It's cool, but sounds more eastern and Arabic, not like any Celtic music I've ever heard. So I took the time to make sure there was no confusion. After all, you were asking about Celtic elements in their music, including pipes. Given the context and, and the similarity between Galatian and Galician it seemed a good idea to check.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Snakefingers
Re: Music of Galatia
KML - I thought you were taking the urine re Galatia (surely you would never do such a thing...) - but right enough, it seems to exist. Given the location, perhaps the pipes they have there, are hubbly-bubblies (bet you've not heard that expression for a long time - not that I would know what it meant). So, they probably suck their pipes, rather than blow them...
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by On Sabbatical
Re: Music of Galatia
If St Paul hadn't spent all that time writing, he could have learnt the fiddle or something, and introduced music. But as Mr Llig would tell you, some people are just too lazy.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Music of Galatia
Probably not strictly relevant, but Alexander the Great, when he conquered the then-known world in the 4th century BC, passed through part of what is now Afghanistan (not "too" far from Anatolia). Some of his troops are believed to have stayed there and intermarried with the local tribes. Even today, in a few remote villages in the mountains, there are a few thousand people who apparently still worship the Ancient Greek pantheon with dance and music which possibly may be a remnant of the religious practices of the Greeks, and speak a language apparently related to Ancient Greek.
What I have just said above is my (probably very hazy) memory of a documentary programme on British TV about Alexander the Great broadcast a few years ago.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Music of Galatia
Snakefingers - I wasn't sure if you were plugged into my request, hence I repeated it. Apologies if I came across as rude. It's just that we've already had discussions about "Gallego" (Galician) music before, as much as I really like it.
Ron - me extract the urine? Perish the thought! Well, to be honest, half and half. I am yet to be convinced that there really IS an underlying Celtic feel to eg Breton and Gallego music, in the same way as there are strong similarities between Irish and Scottish music. Remember, up until the 17th century The Gaelic-speaking Highlands of Scotland and Gaelic Ireland were regarded as one cultural continuum. So that link is still strong. But please convince me otherwise that the Bretons and Gallegos genuinely share this....so called....Celtic musical heritage. What I am convinced of is that it sells more records when it's called Celtic.
So all I'm doing is taking this to its logical conclusion. IF there really IS some underlying Celtic pattern to "Celtic" music, surely it would be in evidence in the music from this very ancient of Celtic provinces, Galatia?
BTW, Oh yeah, Trevor, I saw that about Alexander. So, the fact that these ancient customs are preserved in one way or another in these remote areas, surely any "Celtic" elements in Galatian music would be similarly preserved?
The pipes and the Guinness bits are of course me having an over-fertile imagination.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
I might have seen that one. I don't remember the bit about the Galatians, but do remember Iranian ballad-singers singing laments, still current, about their empire being trashed by Alexander - historical memory seems extraordinarily long in that part of the world. And I'm not sure why Alexander wept about there being no more worlds to conquer when the Eastern horizon was obviously beckoning, unless it was because he was blind drunk a lot of the time.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Music of Galatia
Hey, don't toss the urine yet, KML it's great stuff for curing leather, for drums and bellows and the like, as was and is done in Anatolia...
I also would love to hear more about Galatia ~ anyone have any recordings they know of?
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Music of Galatia
There are, of course, certain similarities between the music of the Balkan region and that of Scotland, Ireland and Galicia, and the bagpipes (albeit mouth blown) play a large part in it. That region is not all that far from Galatia, on the grand scheme of things - and the Celts, whoever they were, would probably have have passed through there on their way to and from Asia Minor. It might also be of significance that, on the Iberian peninsula, the word 'Gaita' is the generic term for bagpipes, whilst in Bulgaria, there is a specific variety of bagpipes called the 'Gayda'.
I wonder how much of regional folk tradition in Asia Minor has escaped the homogenisation/Arabicisation of the Islamic world.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Music of Galatia
Ewwuchh. Is that why bodhrans smell funny when people wet them?
As for some of you wanting to find out more, so would I, especially their music. I had a look around and came up with a couple more interesting articles - nothing musical though:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Galatia
http://www.celticleague.org/history_8-02.html
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
And you thought that was water some of them carry in those little sprayers...
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Music of Galatia
Me too on the search ~ Anatolia, yes, Galatian music 0...
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Music of Galatia
Sorry spoon, missed your post. In answer to your last speculation, could be anyone's guess, but I wonder too. Loads, I suspect.
Incidentally, there's a Romanian city called Galati - which is on the Danube. That river takes its name from Danu the Celtic Deity. Is Galati's name a coincidence?
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
O, BTW David I meant to add that Turkic people are not Arab in origin but Central Asian, who spread westward:
http://www.fact-index.com/t/tu/turkic_people.html
but are of course Islamic - the Arab Empire was very tolerant to minorities hence the flourishing of Jewish enclaves in eg Spain but I don't know if the Ottomans (Turks) were. Anyone know? Might help us find out if the music persisted.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
Galiacian music - llan de cubel
I used love those albums.
Gave em all away tho
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Music of Galatia
sory for the highjack, just thinking away....
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Music of Galatia
OK, Hugo, I'll go along with your hijack - do you speak Galician? If so, what does "O Asubio do Padriño" (by Citania), or "O Berro Seco" (by Milladoiro) mean? Do you know? Thanks.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
"Turkic people are not Arab in origin but Central Asian"
Yes. But The spread of Islam has carried with it many elements of Arabic culture, including music. The turkish language was, at one time, written in the Arabic script.
Incidentally, modern Turkey takes in parts of the territories of the Kurdish and Armenian peoples, both of whom are Indo-European .
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Music of Galatia
This is a link to Leigh Cline's Scimatar Records. Leigh explores possible celtic influences in the Pontic music
http://www.scimitarmusic.com/
http://www.scimitarmusic.com/galatia/
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by McMandolin
Re: Music of Galatia
Wot? The Galatians had electric guitars, synths and drumkits way back then?
What a remarkably advanced civilisation they must have had.
David - fair points.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
I think the Ottomans varied in their treatment of minorities from place to place, circumstance to circumstance, and epoch to epoch. I've read the most about Greece and Israel because they're the two places round there that I've actually been to.
Orthodox Greeks, Serbs etc. were, at any rate to start with, free to practise their religion under their own religious leaders. They were exempt from military service. Sounds OK, but there was a flipside: They were not allowed to ride horses; they paid a special poll tax as "dhimmis" (non-Muslims); one in five young boys was haled off to be a janissary (a highly indoctrinated shock-trooper), and at least one admittedly non-Turkish local ruler (Ali Pasha) raided his area for girls for his harem ; and Greek religious leaders, living in Istanbul, were answerable for their people's behaviour and could easily be imprisoned or killed if the people revolted.
The Greek clergy kept elementary schooling going, but it sometimes fell to a pretty low level. As time passed, the Ottoman empire got more bogged down and corrupt; revolts caused reprisals, including against clerics and church buildings; some took to the hills. There were Greek families who got prosperous in Constantinople and the odd island, but most of Greece was a run-down backwater.
In early c19 Greek expats brought back nationalistic ideas and a messy War of Independence liberated the south of the country. What the Greeks still had was their language, a very recognisable streamlining of the ancient one with a scatter of Latin and Turkish loan-words. Some wanted to improve on this and bring back Ancient Greek as a national language: so-called "Purified Greek" was devised, and imposed on generations of schoolkids and civil servants. But it can sound rather pompous and absurd, and doesn't flow with the rhythms of the modern spoken language - whose Greek credentials are evident enough. So (I think) it's been dropped.
Musically, the Greeks came out of the "Tourkokratia" with, among other things, some liturgy, probably not much changed from the Byzantine period; a body of rebel songs ("Kleftika"); some odd brass band music - the Ottomans introduced brass bands, though there are not many now; and no doubt the oud and other such stringed things. Over four centuries of occupation, though, it's inconceivable that Greeks and Turks should never have associated at leisure somewhere and played each others' tunes / learned some of each others' languages. Forms like the "Taxim" (a preamble to a rhythmic tune, that runs up and down its modal range) and the "Aman" (a song with long elaborate wailing notes) I think are Turkish or Arabic, but they are certainly there in Greek trad.
Two particularly characteristic instruments of modern Greek music, the clarinet and the bouzouki, came along after the Turkish occupation. The clarinet came from the West and, just like the simple-system flute in Ireland, fitted the local trad music like a glove. The bouzouki may have come in with Greek refugees from Turkey in the 1920s, from when it became prominent in Rebetika (urban subculture music) and popular music generally.
Whatever instruments have been played by the Greeks from Byzantine times to the present, one constant influence on their use will have been the Greek language itself. Most Greek folk music, including dance music, is sung; and to accommodate the rhythms of the language, things like the bouzouki and the oud would probably have had to be played in different time signatures, etc., to those used with them in Turkey or Arabia. To survive in this tradition, instruments from outside it have had, as it were, to go native.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Music of Galatia
Thanks for that nicholas, very interesting - I did ask about the Ottoman Empire.
I've got some music by Mikis Theodorakis somewhere. Great stuff also.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
As much as I'd like believe otherwise, I don't think there's much chance of finding convincing connections back to any particular regional music from a thousand or more years ago. And I agree with Danny (KML) that Breton and Galician music don't sound strongly related to Irish and Scottish. Breton music, in particular, reminds me more of generic European medieval music. I like it, but I doubt if I would've made any Celtic connection if it hadn't been advertised in advance.
# Posted on January 19th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Music of Galatia
Sure. And as far as I see Breton instruments can be dated from the Med. or later, and not from the dawn of time; and yet, the music and dance seem quite strongly differentiated from other French music. I suspect that the Breton language / singing must have a lot to do with this.
About the Greeks again - I don't think the Turks ever set about trying to eradicate or replace their language, so it survived the Ottomans and attempted new developments, poetry and song being among them. But whether to take it back to Ancient Greek or let it follow its own way as a modern language, was a cultural and political battleground for a long time.
# Posted on January 19th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Music of Galatia
Key...No idea.
Sory!
# Posted on January 19th 2007 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Music of Galatia
Isn't there a theory that some of the canon of Galician music was introduced by Irish soldiers stationed in a garrison in Galicia dring the 17th century? Muineiras are the same time signature as jigs.
# Posted on January 19th 2007 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Music of Galatia
".....Breton and Galician music don't sound strongly related to Irish and Scottish"
To my ear there is a strong resemblance between *some* Galician music and Irish and Scottish music. This may well be, as Conan suggests, due to contact with the Irish much more recently than the ancient Celtivc invasions of the Iberian peninsula. It is unlikely that Galatia would have had much contact with the Celtic-speaking peoples of the Western extremities of Europe beyond the Middle Ages, since, by then, the legendary nomadic, warlike Celts no longer existed as a clearly defined people, being largely settled and assimilated with other peoples. We only have to look at the changes that have taken place in European Art Music (which happens to be well documented) over a millenium, from Mediaeval plainsong, through the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods to Schoenberg and Stockhausen, to realise that whatever music was sung or played by the ancient Celts 2000 years ago is unlikely to be identifiable as the same music as the jigs and reels we play today. If, indeed, the Celts did take their music with them to Galatia, with the very different neighbouring influences in that region, it is unlikely to have developed in a similar direction to the 'Celtic' music of Western Europe.
# Posted on January 19th 2007 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Music of Galatia
Interesting articles on Galatians etc. in Wikipedia. They were "Eastern Gauls" (doesn't give point of origin) who crashed into Greece and Asia Minor from c3 B.C. They were warriors taking part in Greek wars, but welcoming the Romans, under whom they occupied quite a large bit of central Turkey. St. Paul wrote to his church there in Greek, but it seems their own language was spoken there still, c300 A.D. Thereafter they seem to go out of history and are assumed to have adopted Greek or Turkish or both. (Though if one actually went there, who knows, one might find continuing traditions and interest in those people.)
I noted in passing that Julius Caesar referred to the majority of the Gauls in Gaul as "Celts", saying that this was what they called themselves.
# Posted on January 19th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Music of Galatia
Maybe someone should invent a celtometer to measure the celticity of these various musical forms within the celtic diaspora then do some stats to work out the error coefficients based upon reliabilities by a comparison of Clare music vs Galway music, or two equally similar cohorts.
# Posted on January 19th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
I know the above's a joke, but it calls to mind the Nazis' attempts to evaluate degrees of ethnic or cultural purity or degeneracy - and not only the Nazis, in late c19 / early c20.
There's an anecdote about a Nazi school inspector or someone who picked out a blond schoolboy and haled him to the front of the class, showing him off as a perfect Aryan. The boy had the sense to keep a straight face and play along. He was Jewish.
# Posted on January 20th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Music of Galatia
I've just heard that the above story is true; it happened in a school class attended by a very old friend of my mother, who came to Britain as a refugee from Germany in the Thirties.
# Posted on January 20th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Music of Galatia
Another take on this is Bob Quinn's "Atlantean" books and films which trace a possible North African/Mediterranean origin of the Irish people based on the premise that going back several thousand years there was a strong maritime link between Ireland and the Mediterranean.
One of the most striking images is the comparison between Sean-Nós singing in Connemara and the solo singing traditions of the Middle East.
This could also explain the darker features common in the people of Connemara.
http://www.tcd.ie/Library/Shop/product.php?productID=1167
http://www.phoblacht.net/som19040511g.html
# Posted on January 21st 2007 by cferrie
Re: Music of Galatia
Maybe the coincidence of the word "gaita" for the Galician pipes with "gaida", the word for local bagpipes in Poland, Czech / Slovakia and SE Balkans (acc. Wikipedia), has to do with Gothic invasion and settlement in both SW and SE Europe late in the Roman Empire. It may come from the Gothic word for "goat". Admittedly the Eastern Goths don't seem to have settled down in the Eastern countries where bagpipes are called "gaida" (the Western Goths did settle in Galicia).
# Posted on January 22nd 2007 by nicholas
Re: Music of Galatia
Goths? don't see many of them at sessions. Nor punks or rudies.
nicholas, do you know what the Gothic word for goat is? Didn't the Visigoths settle further south in the Iberian peninsula? I'll have tto go and look....
cferrie, there may be something in your thesis, but all that celtic anthropology stuff is way up in the air. Geneticists now look at modern populations based on "clans" with a number of matriarchs:
http://www.oxfordancestors.com/your-maternal.html
# Posted on January 22nd 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
Looks like they were near enough there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Visigoth_Kingdom.jpg
# Posted on January 22nd 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Music of Galatia
But not in Galicia; I got that wrong.
# Posted on January 23rd 2007 by nicholas