Verity

[DracoM]

So good to have Verity i/c LJ.

[Globaltruth]

On Tuesday Verity featured a chat with Christopher C King, a Grammy-winning engineer, producer and author. He is also described as an auricular raconteur and sonic archeologist. hmm.

Normally his area of interest is pre-war rural American music (with an emphasis on Cajun) but whilst in Istanbul he discovered some of the strangest—and most hypnotic—sounds he had ever heard.
He spoke of how these 78s moved him profoundly, and his feeling that they tapped into emotions normally inaccessible to contemporary music.
These songs were made by musicians from Epirus, a geographically inaccessible area straddling southern Albania and northwestern Greece and embodying a folk tradition he believes extends back to pre-Homeric times.
He has written a book "Lament from Epirus" which details this musical obsession.
He spoke mainly of two long-lost virtuosos, Kitsos Harisiadis and Alexis Zoumbas. and of his investigation into song and dances role as a means of spiritual healing.


Alexis Zoumbas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ9FUgJCZkc&list=PLj_GPt0tVAlxUgJ1KB_jIz83-UQz5DrXU

Kitsos Harisiadis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61EMv_7gtI0

And, today on r4, forum favourite Sam Lee [now, it seems, re-invented as an ethnomusicologist...] drags himself to Epirus to do pretty much the same show as Christopher C King did last year on LJ.
Part of a Sam Lee series

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004mcw

[kernelbogey]

Chanced to hear Verity on LJ last night - what a great voice she has: great choices, too.