College of Liberal Arts

This paper will explore the influence of transition on the fiction of Jean-Claude Izzo, with specific reference to the Marseilles trilogy. The trilogy, comprised of Total Chaos (1995), Chourmo (1996) and Solea (1998) is one of Izzo’s most influential pieces of work. The theme of transition asserts itself on the narrative in a host of ways. As such, it is pertinent to assess the various formations that transition takes before considering it at any great depth. Over the course of this paper, personal transition, demographical transition, transition in response to trauma, and the transitions accompanying the process of self-forgiveness will be pursued. These concepts will be explored with specific reference to the theories of Sigmund Freud. Specifically, his theories of psychoanalysis. Underpinned by psychological theory, this investigation will provide greater insight into the critical commentary cultivated by Izzo. Themes such as racial prejudice, the snatching of youth, police corruption, personal justice, and the repercussions of trauma will be explored. This investigation utilises the psychoanalytic standpoint to engage directly with the text as a critical commentary on the work of Izzo is sparse.

Rebetiko is a form of Greek folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people who lived near ports or spent time in prison. It has been slowly disappearing since the mid-twentieth century, which resulted in rebetiko being inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Rebetiko has always been associated with bouzoukis and tremolo picking technique yet has been characterised as ‘the blues of Greece’. Just as blues musicians used acoustic guitars, rebetiko songwriters have composed and performed their music on bouzouki. In 2017, the folk guitar virtuoso Dimitris Mystakidis, released the album Amerika that includes songs written by Greek immigrants in the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century. He revives their forgotten tsibiti [pinched] guitar style and claims that this technique is influenced by bluesmen fingerpicking. Transcription and analysis of two of his songs demonstrates commonalities between fingerstyle blues and fingerstyle rebetiko and their differentiation from typical bouzouki technique. These analyses, accompanied by an interview with Mystakidis, aims to spotlight, after a century, the migrant sounds of Eastern Mediterranean musicians that were predominantly created and recorded in another continent.

Yiorgos Batis was a rebetiko songwriter and musician who was not very productive, but his songs have been very influential. Rebetiko is a style of folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people in prisons and ports of Greece. It has been slowly disappearing since the mid-twentieth century, which resulted in rebetiko being inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Rebetiko has always been associated with instruments of the bouzouki family, characterised as ‘the blues of Greece’, and Batis primarily played the baglamas in his songs. His song ‘O Boufetzis’ (‘The Buffet Runner’) has been covered by many artists and still remains popular. The rebetiko record collector and enthusiast Panos Savvopoulos perpetuates the myth that ‘O Boufetzis’ shares the same melody with the blues song ‘How Dry I Am’, and claims that this proves that blues and rebetiko are connected.

Daniel Koglin refers to the mixture of rebetiko with ‘older and contemporary “subcultural” or “undercultural” styles such as the blues’ (2016), pinpointing three albums by different artists, including the 1994 Theocomodia (Divine Comedy) by Georges Pilali. In this live album, the singer-songwriter, guitarist and satirical poet Pilali released the song ‘Teketzis’ (‘The Teké Runner’), which is his own interpretation of Batis’s song. Pilali was heavily inspired by the blues and he tried to connect the two worlds by impersonating a character that wandered in the Mississippi Delta during the 1900s by incorporating both blues and rebetiko slang in his stories. His version of ‘O Boufetzis’ was performed with the use of a resonator National steel guitar, where the fingerstyle and slide blues techniques dominate. Transcription and analysis of this arrangement, accompanied by an interview with Pilali, demonstrate the common ground between two traditions that have followed independent evolutionary paths.

Rebetiko is a style of folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people in prisons and ports of Greece. It has been slowly disappearing since the mid-twentieth century, which resulted in rebetiko being inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Rebetiko has always been associated with instruments of the bouzouki family, yet has been characterised as ‘the blues of Greece’. Due to economic reasons, many early musicians of these traditions collected things from the trash, the fields or even the prisons’ yards, like cans, tins, cigar boxes or turtle shells to build their own instruments and play.

Daniel Koglin refers to the mixture of rebetiko with ‘older and contemporary “subcultural” or “undercultural” styles such as the blues’ (2016) and pinpoints three albums by different artists, including the 1994 Theocomodia (Divine Comedy) by the singer-songwriter, guitarist and satirical poet Georges Pilali. Pilali was inspired by the blues and tried to connect the two worlds by mixing the instruments of the two genres. He covered rebetiko songs with the use of resonator steel guitar and techniques such as fingerpicking and slide, whereas he performed blues standard songs with the use of bouzoukis and baglamades. Presentation of the similarities of these handmade instruments, accompanied by two original songs in which the two genres are fused and such instruments are recorded, demonstrates the common ground between these two distinct traditions that grew far apart.

Rebetiko is a style of folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people in prisons and ports of Greece and has been slowly disappearing since the middle of the twentieth century. One of its fundamental elements is the use of characteristic Eastern scales or modes. Despite having their roots in Turkish makam and Byzantine echos, dromoi (rebetiko modes) have been played on fretted instruments and therefore transformed to twelve-tone equal-tempered variations. Folk guitar was mainly used for accompaniment purposes and musicians would mostly play major and minor triads and diminished seventh chords.

Rebetiko was banned for several decades, and only became accessible after 1974. Having historically been passed from one generation of musicians to the next in the form of an oral tradition, there are many inconsistencies in onomatology and disputes between author/musicians. For example, although dromoi have been well documented, their number and construction are not agreed upon. Dromoi with the same name may even differ in pitch content or chord construction from one author to another. From fourteen available books and methods published within the last two decades, this paper compares the harmonic discrepancies between five Greek authors who discuss both the dromoi and their corresponding chords. There is also disagreement about the categorisation of chords as primary or secondary. In response to these inconsistencies, I will propose a contemporary reharmonisation of each dromos with the aim of introducing extended chords to songwriters and contemporary composers.

Rebetiko is a style of folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people in prisons and ports of Greece. It has been slowly disappearing since the middle of the twentieth century, which resulted in rebetiko being inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Rebetiko was developed in parallel with the blues and has been characterised as ‘the blues of Greece’. But how and when did the Greek style of rebetiko meet the Afro-American blues? Despite journalists, critics and musicians identifying Pavlos Sidiropoulos as the songwriter that married blues with rebetiko, there has not been sufficient research and analysis to confirm that.

Daniel Koglin refers to the mixture of rebetiko with ‘older and contemporary “subcultural” or “undercultural” styles such as the blues’ (2016) in relation to three albums from different artists, including the 1991 Ta Blues tou Prigkipa (The Blues of the Prince) by Pavlos Sidiropoulos. All songs of this album, accompanied by alternative versions that can be found in his 2003 posthumous release Me tin Kithara tou (With his Guitar), are transcribed and analysed to demonstrate the common ground between blues and rebetiko. Lists of scales and modes (using both their western and eastern music theory names), time signatures and rhythms, song structures and chord progressions, in combination with their frequency are extracted from the analyses to highlight the main characteristics that made Sidiropoulos’ songwriting distinctive.

Rebetiko is a style of folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people in prisons and ports of Greece and has been slowly disappearing since the mid-twentieth century. One of its fundamental elements is the use of characteristic Eastern scales or modes which have been played on fretted instruments and therefore transformed to twelve-tone equal-tempered variations.

Compared with recent literature, in which various dromoi (rebetiko modes) are registered and explained from an Eastern perspective, this analysis is based on recorded dromoi, listed from the point of view of contemporary Western music and modal jazz harmony to match contemporary musicians’ needs. In particular, Haralampos Payatis and Giorgos Krionas list dromoi starting on D, which appears as their tonic (Krionas, 2003; Payatis, 1992), due to the ease of use in instruments of the bouzouki family. Similarly, Michael Hewitt’s and Francesco Balena’s books of scale collections present dromoi with C as their starting point (Balena, 2014; Hewitt, 2013). However, since dromoi were built by connecting tetrachords and pentachords that are formed on almost any degree between G3 and G5, other authors, such as Georgios Floudas and Dimitris Mystakidis, provide distinct tonic(s) for each dromos (Floudas, 2009; Mystakidis, 2013). In his 2019 book Heptatonics, Nicholas Stylianou includes a small table of 19 dromoi accompanied by their corresponding Western scales, without providing any further explanation about his choices and approach.

Rebetiko was banned for several decades, hence it passed from one generation of underground musicians to the next in the form of an oral tradition. As a result, there are inconsistencies in onomatology and certain dromoi have been identified by only one or two authors. These issues are acknowledged and, on that account, the primary factor for deciding the final dromoi names is based on how frequently they appear in the bibliography. This paper’s collections of dromoi have also been classified according to their type into major, minor and diminished modes. Moreover, a modified model of George Russell’s concept of tonal organisation is used as a basis for categorising the dromoi from the brightest to the darkest. This grouping is accomplished by taking into account Ron Miller’s construction of modes (1996), Vincent Persichetti’s arrangement of modes (2002), Adam Neely’s online discussion about Dorian being the one true scale (2010) and excerpts from an interview with Pete Churchill in 2018. Finally, the idea of mirrored scales is applied to dromoi in order to identify which of them have a known inversion, which are palindromic, or to generate new patterns. The results are then paired with their Western equivalencies to demonstrate the common ground between the two worlds.

This paper will open the field for a discussion. Rebetiko being inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017, provides a good opportunity for re-evaluating rebetiko’s “exotic” modal scales, with the aim of introducing them to songwriters and contemporary composers in order to enhance and expand their creative palettes.

Rebetiko is a style of folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people in prisons and ports of Greece. It has always been associated with instruments of the bouzouki family yet has been characterised as 'the blues of Greece'. For economic reasons, early musicians of these traditions collected cans, tins, cigar boxes or turtle shells from the trash, the fields, and prison yards to build their own instruments. Inspired by these musicians, the singersongwriter Georges Pilali attempted to connect the two worlds by mixing their sounds. He covered rebetiko songs by fingerpicking and playing slide on resonator guitar, whereas he performed blues standards on bouzoukobaglamadhes. The similarities of these handmade instruments, accompanied by analysis of two original songs by the author that combine their individual styles, demonstrate the common ground between these two distinct cultures that grew far apart for over a century.

Zeibékiko is a Greek folk dance, usually in 9/4, that was initially encountered at the end of the seventeenth century in cities of Asia Minor. It is closely associated with rebetiko music and its commercially-evolved form, laikó music. Rebetiko is a style of folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people in prisons and ports of Greece. It has been slowly disappearing since the mid-twentieth century, which resulted in rebetiko being inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Rebetiko has always been associated with instruments of the bouzouki family and tremolo picking technique, yet has been characterised as ‘the blues of Greece’.

In 2011, the American jazz guitarist and composer Jonathan Kreisberg released the jazz album Shadowless that includes the song ‘Zembékiko’. According to his liner notes, this track is based on traditional Greek melodies, although in his live performances he explains that it was a Markos Vamvakaris zeibékiko song. Transcription and analysis of Kreisberg’s version demonstrates his Western jazz approach, while other folk songs that share the same or similar melody have been identified. Focusing on modes and dromoi (rebetiko modes), this analysis, accompanied by excerpts from an interview with Jonathan Kreisberg, aims to reconstitute this vibrant music that has been threatened by politicians and dictators from its birth to the middle of the twentieth century and currently by its subproducts that dominate radio in Greece.

This thesis concerns the relationship between the dancer, the camera, and the screen viewer in the making and watching of screendance. It documents a personal journey of exploration that has my own creative practice, located within the wider field of screendance, as a central thread. The research identifies a divide, with respect to control and authorship, which exists between the performer on one side of the lens and filmmakers on the other. It explores, through practice, production methodologies that challenge and narrow this divide. It finds that the small scale, single-take, single mobile camera dancing/filming event can help close the divide between dancer, camera. The research also finds that there are significantly few screendance works that are made as single-take films. As a tangent to this finding, it also finds that screendance works, like in mainstream films, are trending towards increasingly short shot lengths. In addition to the information that I bring together from f...

This thesis concerns the relationship between the dancer, the camera, and the screen viewer in the making and watching of screendance. It documents a personal journey of exploration that has my own creative practice, located within the wider field of screendance, as a central thread.
The research identifies a divide, with respect to control and authorship, which exists between the performer on one side of the lens and filmmakers on the other. It explores, through practice, production methodologies that challenge and narrow this divide. It finds that the small scale, single-take, single mobile camera dancing/filming event can help close the divide between dancer, camera. The research also finds that there are significantly few screendance works that are made as single-take films. As a tangent to this finding, it also finds that screendance works, like in mainstream films, are trending towards increasingly short shot lengths.
In addition to the information that I bring together from films, theorists, and interviews, the thesis draws on nineteen short films that I have made as part of this research and concludes with the production of The Glasshouse (2016), a screendance that summarises a number of the core findings of The Dancer and the Looking Glass.