Φίλοι, από μνήμης έχω την αίσθηση ότι ο Παπαιωάννου ΔΕΝ έχει συνθέσει κανένα τραγούδι σαμπάχ, και ότι δεν έχει ηχογραφήσει και κανένα ταξίμι σε σαμπάχ. Είναι έτσι; Μακάρι να κάνω λάθος, είμαι πολύ περίεργος να δω πως χειρίζεται αυτόν τον δρόμο στο μπουζούκι αν υπάρχει κάτι.Το ίδιο θα ήθελα να ρωτήσω και για τον Μπαγιαντέρα και τον Χατζηχρήστο.
Σας ευχαριστώ εκ των προτέρων
AI-generated summary
Η συζήτηση επικεντρώνεται στον δρόμο σαμπάχ και τη χρήση του από Έλληνες συνθέτες, όπως οι Παπαϊωάννου, Μπαγιαντέρας και Χατζηχρήστος. Κάποια μέλη πιστεύουν ότι ο Παπαϊωάννου δεν έχει συνθέσει κομμάτια σε σαμπάχ, ενδεχομένως λόγω της μουσικής λογοκρισίας της εποχής που απέφευγε “ανατολίτικους” ήχους. Ο Τσιτσάνης φαίνεται να έχει ένα τραγούδι σε σαμπάχ (“Σ’ ένα τεκέ σκαρώσανε”), αλλά στη συνέχεια απομακρύνθηκε από αυτό το ύφος. Το σαμπάχ χαρακτηρίζεται ως δύσκολο και “εξωτικό” σε σχέση με άλλους μουσικούς δρόμους, ενώ κάποιοι συνθέτες όπως ο Παπαδόπουλος και ο Ξαρχάκος επανέφεραν το σαμπάχ αργότερα. Υπάρχει συζήτηση για το αν η μουσική του Παπαϊωάννου είχε επιρροές από άλλα τραγούδια, όπως το “Χριστίνα”. Οι συμμετέχοντες συζητούν για τη δυνατότητα του δρόμου σαμπάχ να ενταχθεί στη δυτική μουσική και κατά πόσο συντέλεσε στη μειωμένη χρήση του. Κάποιοι αναφέρονται στην πιθανότητα ορισμένα τραγούδια να περιέχουν κρυφές επιρροές του σαμπάχ παρά την απουσία άμεσων αποδεικτικών στοιχείων.
Και εγώ έτσι νομίζω. Είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα παρατήρηση, δεδομένου ότι ο Παπαϊωάννου αρχίζει και εμφανίζεται μετά την λογοκρισία του Μεταξά. Δεν θυμάμαι να έχει και ο Τσιτσάνης Σαμπάχ.
Μιλώντας διαισθητικά έχω την εντύπωση ότι το σαμπάχ πρέπει να είχε ταυτιστεί με εκείνα τα ακούσματα τα “παλιακά” ή “ανατολίτικα” και οι συνθέτες που δεν ήθελαν να έχουν προβλήματα με τη λογοκρισία αλλά και να υπηρετούν ένα “ελληνικό” λαϊκό τραγούδι το απέφευγαν είτε ενσυνείδητα είτε ασυνείδητα.
Υ.Γ. Ενδιαφέρον είναι ότι συνθέτες σαν τον Παπαδόπουλο (Κοκκινια 1955) και τον Ξαρχάκο (Μάτια βουρκωμένα, χορός του Σακαινα), το επαναφέρουν με πολύ δροσερό τρόπο δείχνοντας με τις δημιουργίες τους ότι μάλλον το μακάμι αυτό παραμερίστηκε άδικα.
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Θαρρώ το πρώτο του (Σ’ ένα τεκέ σκαρώσανε).
Σωστός!!
… … …
[Δεν έχω να πω τίποτε γι’ αυτό το θέμα, αλλά αν άλλος έχει, θα ήθελα πάρα πολύ ν’ ακούσω. Γι’ αυτό το ζωντανεύω, τώρα με την αφορμή της αυτόματης ανακίνησης. Τι πιο ενδιαφέρον από την προτίμηση συνθετών από τις διάφορες ιστορικές φάσεις του ρεμπέτικου προς τον ένα ή τον άλλο δρόμο;]
κι εγώ αυτήν την εντύπωση έχω. τα μόνα σαμπάχ που επιβιώσανε ήταν το αϊβαλιώτικο και οι κακότεχνες παραλαγές του (σταυροκουμπωτό κλπ).
εν τω μεταξύ, το πρώτο τραγούδι του τσιτσάνη ήταν μες την μόδα της εποχής: σαμπαχαδάκι και αμανές, ο μπαγάσας ό,τι ήθελε έγραφε! μετά το πήγε αλλού φυσικά, στο προσωπικό του ύφος και στο πρώιμο λαϊκό.
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You learn something every day; today I learned two things: that “ironic” and “ironist” are two different things (in terms of meaning, beyond the grammar), and that “Five Greeks in Hades”, which I now wonder why I never sat down to work out before, is not sabah: it’s ussak, with a different feel because of all the playing underneath and the slow chromatic movement above (and if someone had told me before I worked it out, “It’s not sabah; you have one more chance,” I would have said “hijaz”).
We had previously discussed some Asia Minor songs in sabah which, in their Cypriot and Cretan versions, had been ‘diatonicised’ into minor. You might say that’s beside the point, but perhaps these particular composers don’t consciously avoid sabah because of censorship; it simply sounds more foreign to them, and isn’t part of their compositional ‘vocabulary’.
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Yes, reasonable.
Of course, “foreign to the ear”… Papaioannou himself was a first-generation refugee child. Presumably, he grew up in refugee settlements with a relatively homogeneous population. Here, the much younger Giorgis Papazoglou is a bona fide successor to the refugee (= pre-refugee) oral tradition, so surely Papaioannou would have had at least a basic familiarity with these sounds? For whatever reasons, though, they did not form part of his compositional vocabulary.
(Markos grew up, among other things, with the syrta and ballos dances of the Syros tsambouna. They were very familiar to him, certainly, but they were not part of his personal vocabulary.)
And the same goes for Tsitsanis: he knew enough sabaḥ to come up with “They cooked it up in a tekke”, but he did not choose to—or simply did not happen to—keep it in his arsenal. It just did not express him, for goodness’ sake! That said, in his early days he was still trying to find what did express him.
So, despite a few minor reservations, I basically agree with emc.
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Yes, but why was saba sidelined so much more than Hijaz? Its restrictive nature must also have played a role in an era moving ever further away from traditionalism and ever deeper into individualised composition, as well as the fact that its structure allows for fewer harmonies.
Exactly!
Is this, say, based on the “Sináhi”, or is it simply saba?
Oh yes.
Here, of course, it could simply be a coincidence due to the small sample size.
Is „Ένας μάγκας στο Βοτανικό“ not attributed to Markos, or am I remembering incorrectly? Not that I’m trying to overturn any theory—I’m looking for exceptions.
It’s possible that something like that happened, but Sabah is a devilishly difficult mode to perform. Even Turkish musicians who play together in ensembles often can’t agree on where the fourth degree should fall. Two teachers showed it to me, each with his own preference, and even now I don’t think I’d feel comfortable playing it on my own.
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The Sabah is not simply a scale that does not fit into Western models. In that respect, it is no different from the Hijaz. It directly challenges Western models through the absence of a pure fourth—something that is inconceivable. It shares this only with the Kartsigâr, which has no pure fifth, and which in relatively more recent compositions must be even rarer than the Sabah.
The Nigriz-Niavent also have no pure fourth. I do not know how frequently they appear—perhaps relatively more often than the other two—but there has also been some groundwork laid by Romania and Hungary here, so their exoticism has been somewhat tamed.
I shall leave aside the fact that the pure Sabah does not even have a pure octave, because in any case this is something that is rarely manifested even in old traditional songs, rebetiko songs or otherwise.
The absence of pure intervals at these degrees of such central importance—the fourth and the fifth—is also why they do not accommodate much harmonisation. But it is also why they sound so intensely exotic. More so than the Hijaz. People without any special familiarity and without a somewhat cultivated ear do not even hear the Sabah; they think it has the fourth where it ought to be.
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To Western, or at least diatonic, ears, Sabah sounds much stranger and more exotic than Hijaz. Every heavy-metal fan plays Hijaz; any composer wanting to add an orientalist colour will use Hijaz, and even the Spanish play a kind of Hijaz in flamenco. Take A harmonic minor, start from E, and you get Hijaz as a mode of Western music (Phrygian dominant).
Sabah has the altered fourth. That is something much more “unnatural” and alien than any corresponding features of Hijaz.
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I think that in “Nτόμπρα και σταράτα”, Papaioannou’s biography, or in “Ρεμπέτικη Ιστορία”, the biographies of Genitsaris, Stellakis, Lelakis and Mathesis, Chatzidoulis mentions in a footnote that Giovan Tsaous played on one of Papaioannou’s songs, but Papaioannou couldn’t remember which one—he only remembered that it was in sabah…
That phrase sparked my curiosity, and I started the thread in 2012.
I still haven’t found anything.
…
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I agree with those who spoke before me: Hijaz, owing to its affinity with the harmonic minor, made its way easily into the new style. The same goes for Huzam, which was perceived as a “modified major”; even Kartsigar survived as a turn in Usak or minor songs (and not only in those by Stelios Vamvakaris).
By contrast, Sabah was not as easy to handle, nor could they easily break away from the Aivaliotiko form. So it gradually faded, with a few exceptions over the decades.
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Do you perhaps remember the taxim in “Taxim Zeibekiko”? (But is it actually credited to Markos?)
And there probably shouldn’t be any Piraeus-style piece at all in the later repertoire, and I don’t know whether there’s any other Hijazkiar apart from “The One from Egypt”—ah, the one with the wide plaits.
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Hicazkâr survived, misunderstood as a branch of Hicaz, although it retained its defining characteristic: beginning from the octave.
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Do you have an example at hand?
Besides the “Atakti” you mentioned, check out “Ti m’ofeloun oi anoixeis”, which is essentially the same song but with better lyrics, as well as “Paraponiariko mou” by Hatzichristos. On the other hand, there are pieces that combine houzam with hicazkiar, such as “Pos perasan ta chronia” by Papaioannou and “Fere mas kapela krasi” by Kaplanis.
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