Articles
As the first in our series of occasional articles on musical topics we are very pleased to host this piece by Turkish musicologist Ulas Özdemir. Ulas writes and researches in Istanbul. He works for the excellent record company, Kalan (www.kalan.com), with whom he has produced original recordings as well as documentary and archive work. He also writes for Rol magazine.
Mantinades in Cretan Oral Genres and Song
Venla Sykäri
Department of Folklore studies
University of Helsinki, Finland
The following paper is an excerpt of the Master’s thesis “Mantinades in Crete. A tradition of rhyming couplets as a poetic language” completed in April 2003 at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The research is based on fieldwork mainly in central Crete and studies at the University of Rethymnon during the academic years 1999/2000 and 2000/2001. The thesis focuses on the rhyming couplets, mantinades, as a special, dedicated language of oral performance - a register - following the theoretical guidelines given by John Miles Foley’s Theory of ”Immanent Art” and Charles Briggs’ Ethnopoetics. This second part, originally pages 37-77 (from the total 103), introduces the tradition and its place among the Cretan folk poetry genres, music and dance.
The writer has a long acquaintanceship with central and western Crete, starting from hiking tours to the countryside years ago. Folklore studies at the University of Helsinki were thus accompanied by studies of Modern Greek language and philology, and the spring term 1997 as a Socrates exchange-student in Rethymnon united these interests when the mandinades tradition of mantinades presented itself as an object of study. Besides the co-operation with Cretans themselves and the guidance among the oral poetry theory and practice given by a specialist, Professor Lauri Harvilahti at the University of Helsinki, important help and advice have been given by Professor Alexis Politis (University of Crete) and Chris Williams. Further fieldwork and a doctoral thesis on mantinades in Crete are planned for the coming years.