Many more references in mythology show that music was integral in the society of Ancient Greece. Of course, music was also present in Greek mythology Orpheus was a master musician, played the lyre, and was so entrancing that wild beasts could be tamed. During the Games of Antiquity, such as the Olympic Games and the Pythian Games, music was also of particular importance. In antiquity, it was strongly intertwined with the Ancient Greek theatre, but it was also present during religious ceremonies like marriages and funerals, as well as part of the epic poetry. "He spoke next to no English at all, and yet we were able to communicate musically and he was able to teach me.Greek music has played a pivotal role in the culture of the country since it first emerged. "He would play you slowly the phrase you were to learn and then you would play it, and if you had it not quite right, he would play it again," he said. The younger Grame, an accomplished musician who also plays the Scottish bagpipes, was fascinated to find that the music of the tsabouna was passed on aurally. His students have included 18-year-old Constantine Grame. A 30-minute videotape featuring him and his craft was made in 1989. The NEA also commissioned him to teach the tsabouna. In 1989, he received the Florida Folk Heritage Award and participated in the Florida Folklife Master-Apprentice program as a teaching folk artist. In later years, as his lungs grew weaker, he would use an air compressor to inflate the tsabouna so he could play, Grame said. Tsimouris performed regularly at Greek festivals and celebrations locally and in other states. The music of the tsabouna, which is meant for dancing, uses no written notation. The player blows air into the bag through the mouthpiece and hugs the bag while squeezing out sound. The tsabouna is made from a goatskin turned inside out with the neck, tail and two of the legs tied shut. "If you watched him tapping his feet while he played, you wondered how he kept the beat because the music was so highly ornamented," Monahan said. "You could just sit there and wonder at the man's virtuosity." "It was very, very complex, very difficult for an outsider to evaluate in any stylistic or theoretical way," Grame said. Tsimouris and published a paper on the sophistication of the music, which he said is characterized by intricate melodies and the "tremendous number of notes going all the time." "Well, I thought it was really important, so I did what I could to publicize it," said Grame, 71, who is married to Monahan. At the time, many people both in Tarpon Springs and in academia tended to dismiss the tsabouna as a peasant's instrument, he said. He came to Tarpon Springs to work in the sponging industry, and continued to play the tsabouna for family and friends, eventually receiving recognition for his increasing skill.Ībout 30 years ago, Theodore Grame, then an ethnomusicologist at Wesleyan University, was traveling and doing research in Tarpon Springs when someone recommended that he hear Mr. Tsimouris said through a translator that he learned to play the tsabouna at age 10 from his father while they watched their sheep in the fields on Kalymnos. "He was an anchor of the Greek cultural tradition in Tarpon Springs," said Kathleen Monahan, a longtime friend and the director of the city's department of cultural and civic services.
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