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Alexis Zoumbas: A Lament for Epirus 1926-1928 (2014)

I can’t remember where or when I first heard the music of violinist Alexis Zoumbas, but I know it wasn’t long ago or far away from where I sit, writing this today, and that means thousand of miles and almost one hundred years removed from the recordings compiled for this LP.

The Epirus cited in its title is a rugged and inaccessible region in southeastern Europe, situated between the Ionian Sea and Pindus Mountains, and shared by present-day Greece and Albania.

Historically isolated and inhabited chiefly by shepherds (much of whose folk music was played on flutes to manage their herds), Epirus is also famed for thwarting countless invading armies over the centuries -- or infamous, if you were a member of those armies, I suppose.

In any case, Alexis Zoumbas was born in the city of Ioannina, in 1883, showed innate virtuosity on the fiddle from an early age, married, had two children, and then left them to emigrate to America in 1910.

Once there, the talented violinist found work backing popular Greek singers, but also managed to immortalize some of Epirus’ unique folk music on a few of his own 78 RPM records -- the most celebrated among them being the “Epirotiko Mirologi.”

This style of lament was traditionally sung at funerals and by the deceased’s graveside for five years, at which point the bones were bathed in wine and moved to the village ossuary; it features Zoumbas’ astonishingly nimble, chilling violin backed by an unknown musician, somberly dragging his bow across a bass to provide a droning, hypnotic backdrop. 

Most of the ensuing tunes, including “Tsamiko Makedonias,” “Alimbeis” and “Syrtos Sta Dyo,” accompanied traditional dances at yearly festivals in Epirus, and usually counted with expanded instrumentation from a clarinet, percussion instruments like the def, and the lute-like laouto.

But the final track, “Tzamara Arvanitiko” (“Albanian Shepherd’s Tune”), more resembles the mournful and improvisational qualities of the mirologi, with Zoumbas sawing away over sparse laouto strums, until his fiddle literally sings like a bird -- you just gotta hear it to believe it.

According to this LP’s detailed liner notes, these bookends reflect emotions of acute longing and homesickness that Greeks call “xenitia” (we Brazilians have a Portuguese word for it, too: “saudade”), and which brought Alexis Zoumbas back to Epirus in 1928, to celebrate one of his daughters’ wedding.

Tragically, she and Alexis’ two grandsons, his wife, and possibly his other daughter would all perish during World War II, by which time Zoumbas had resumed his work in New York City, then moved to Chicago, then Detroit, where he expired in 1946, at the age of 63.

Today, his music is obviously a well-kept secret here in America, attended to mostly by amateur historians/collectors and curious interlopers like me, but apparently the name Alexis Zoumbas remains well-known back in is Epirus homeland, where much of his extended family’s descendents still reside.

p.s. -- For further reading, check out this 2014 New York Times article.

Santorini. Skaros