Drómeno

PHOTO: PAUL JOSEPH BROWN

Dromeno consists of the Govetas family, father Christos, mother Ruth, children Bobby (20) and Eleni (24), along with family friend Nikos Maroussis. They are recognized and respected  throughout the US and in Greece as holders of musical tradition. Together they have explored the furthest reaches of traditional Greek musical expression, following hints and rumors, ending up in far-flung corners of Greece and beyond, where the music reaches back to an ancient beginning. Of all the hugely varied music that exists in Greece, a country roughly the size of Washington State, some of the deepest soul-music is found in the mountains of Ipiros, near Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek pantheon. The sinuous music winds along the 5-tone, pentatonic, scale, and reaches into primal emotional spaces of joy and grief.

“On Sept. 20, 1926, the Greek violinist Alexis Zoumbas recorded one of the most devastating bits of music I’ve ever encountered. The song, “Epirotiko Mirologi,” is a pentatonic lament — mirologi — that, for millenniums, has been sung beside fresh graves in Epirus, a historically contentious chunk of land on the Greek-Albanian border. The performance is a little over four minutes long, instrumental and largely improvised against the low anchoring drone of some unnamed accompanist dragging a bow across a double bass. Zoumbas was a technically proficient musician, even virtuosic, but his real gift was in effectively articulating disintegration. There is a palpable hysteria to his playing; each note trembles, as if he has recently suffered an emotional collapse of unknowable magnitude.”
- Amanda Petrusich
New York Times magazine

PHOTO: ANGELO BEKRIS

https://dromeno.bandcamp.com

https://www.dromenomusic.com