THE ROLE OF THE GREEK SANTUR IN GREEK TRADITIONAL MUSIC
Keywords:
Greek santur, Greek traditional music, Greek santur players, traditional companiesAbstract
In the present study, an attempt is made to present the role of the Greek santouri in Greek traditional music. The santur has become a key instrument in traditional companies and at the same time has been used in artistic folk compositions as well as in documentaries, theater and cinematographic works. The Greek santur is an instrument that, due to its morphological arrangement and playing technique, has the ability, depending on its role in the orchestra, to accompany a song or be used to play the melody. The spread of the instrument is mainly due to the Asia Minor Greeks who arrived in Greece with the exchange of populations in 1923. However, the santur was widely used on the mainland and island Greece before ΄22.Then an attempt is made to analyze the role of the instrument through some indicative pieces with the aim of highlighting some special characteristics of Greek traditional music. Greek traditional music contains a range of regions of Greece but also of the regions where the Greek culture was redeveloped (Asia Minor, Pontus, Alexandria, Constantinople, Lower Italy, Northern Epirus) but
also in the current Greek communities in the USA, United Kingdom, Australia, etc. Τhe main purpose of this study is in which regions of Greece the santur is existed, which was its role in the orchestra and which testimonies prove its existence. Therefore,the songs were selected on the one hand based on criteria derived from a literature search and on the other hand based on personal assessment. Although such sample analyzes and comparisons of works are not sufficient to give a complete picture of the characteristics of the role of the santur in Greek traditional music, they were considered necessary to give the reader an image of how the santur was used in orchestras depending on the region. nevertheless, From the results of the research we understand that the santur, despite being a basic instrument mainly in the island companies, also appears in other sound-geological landscapes, a fact that proves the changing and flexible nature of the instrument both in terms of timbre and in terms of technical capabilities of the instrument. Τhe methodology used for data collection was qualitative and based on the methodological tools of ethnographic research. More specifically, the methodological tools that were chosen were the observation and the structured interviews with santur players were excluded.
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