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This chapter surveys the evidence for ancient Greek accentuation, beginning with the interest in accents shown by ancient authors preceding or standing outside the main grammatical tradition relating to accentuation. The ancient grammarians themselves provide the basis for most other sources of evidence, and are treated in particular detail (especially Herodian). The other sources surveyed are accent marks in papyri; fragments of ancient Greek music displaying correlations between word accents and musical melody; accentuation of medieval manuscripts; and the evidence for early medieval accentuation provided by prose rhythm and poetic metre.

Members of the diaspora brought with them to America a taste for all the extrapolations of music in Greece. During the early twentieth century, a flood of immigration combined with commercial record production generated unparalleled documentation of ethnic music. Ethnic recordings are invaluable documents of community musical practices and preferences in America. They also represented the daily lives of Greek immigrants and the perils that afflicted them. This chapter examines the major events and social issues affecting Greeks in America within the context of various time periods (1880-1918, 1918-1933, 1933-1945, 1945-1960, 1960-1975, 1975-1990, 1990-2015), as well as the major trends in musical genre, style, venues, artists, and technology.

It has often been said that Western European intellectual life in the Middle Ages rested on two bases—the heritage of Antiquity and the traditions and practices of the Christian church. The bifurcate nature of medieval intellectual history is nowhere better exemplified than in the formation of a theory of melodic classification into tones or modes and the concomitant establishment of a tone-system or scalar matrix for medieval music. Whereas in some areas the two main sources of influence stood in conflict with each other, the formation of a theory of both mode and tone-system in the medieval Latin West represents not so much a conflict as a construct of ideas from both Antiquity and the Christian church. This chapter begins with a brief look at two fundamental aspects of ancient Greek music that are particularly relevant to this study, and then turns to the ways the knowledge of Greek music was transmitted to the Middle Ages.

In “Encountering Greek American Soundscapes,” respected dance scholar and choreographer Anthony Shay investigates the context of Greek musical performances based on his experiences as a young folk dancer in California from the 1950s to 1970s. After first tracing immigration history and exploring the circumstances in which people listened to music, sang, played musical instruments, and danced in Greece, he then delineates the types of music in several different American contexts, as well as who plays or sings each genre and, who forms the audience. Among the contexts that he notes are church picnics, as well as Greek taverns and clubs such as Athenian Gardens and Greek Village.

There is probably no more prolific writer on Greek American culture and history than anthropologist Steve Frangos. His essays span many realms of culture, but the body of work regarding early Greek American recordings is particularly strong. His essay on “George Katsaros: The Last Café-Aman Performer” examines early Greek musical forms and transformations as documented by the recording industry. By using the career of iconic musician Katsaros as an example, he finds a reflection of the collective Greek American experience and illustrates that Greek music must be viewed through the lens of modern music history in order to determine whether certain genres are created traditions.

The amanes became emblematic of a style of music that was both admired for its emotional intensity and rejected for its association with the oriental and feminine side of the modern Greek psyche Gail Holst-Warhaft tackles a genre that has rarely been discussed in English language essays. She deftly delineates the earliest known appearances of the emotionally intense amanes and its ties to other Greek musical traditions. She also examines the performance of the Asia Minor style in the U.S., including associated vocalists, musicians, recordings, and recording companies.

From 1946 through 1954, Grecophon Record Company of Gary, Indiana issued the seldom recorded traditional Greek island music, or nisiotika, that had its American roots in Tarpon Springs Florida. Founded by Skevofylax (Steve) Zembillas, originally from Kalymnos, Greece, this small independent label eventually released a wide range of Greek music by popular Greek musicians and vocalists of the period.

Through information about specific recordings and musicians, Joseph Graziosi’s essay on “Turkish Music in the Greek American Experience” delineates how many immigrants from the former Ottoman Empire embraced Turkish music and song as a familiar aspect of their home culture. This again challenges theories promoted by some twentieth century scholars who portrayed Greek music as highly differentiated from that of surrounding musical cultures—and perhaps harkening back to a glorious ancient past. Many of those theories assume the continuing purity of Greek musical forms, genres, or contexts—yet when we honestly examine any musical lineage, it is clear that everything changes and evolves in response to a variety of influences.

Long America’s premier port and urban center, New York City has always been a fulcrum of musical expression. In “Survival of Greek Folk Music in New York,” esteemed ethnomusicologist and musician Sotirios (Sam) Chianis sets the stage by ably delineating the many forms of Greek regional music from the islands and the mainland. He then traces the long history of music, musicians, venues, and instrument makers in New York. Among his topics are the men’s coffee houses, local Greek record companies and record producers, Greek newspapers, the Greek Musicians’ Union, musical instrument makers, and the rise of bouzouki-based music.

Nicholas "Nicos" Tseperis came to the US in 1956, after having established himself as a highly celebrated singer with performances in Istanbul, Athens, and France. As a recording artist and performer, he was regarded as one of the great troubadours of Greek music. In the New York area, he continued performing with a pantheon of famous Greek musicians and vocalists in the 1950s and 1960s. He bought Nina Records, one of the primary labels issuing Greek music, and continued recording and producing records for years. Tseperis also recorded and starred on satirical records, and produced Greek children’s records.

In “Greek Piano Rolls in the U.S.,” collector Meletios Pouliopoulos presents ground-breaking research on Greek piano roll recordings of the 1920s and 1930s. Player pianos were popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and piano roll companies, like record distributers, issued significant quantities of Greek piano rolls to target the ethnic market. Pouliopoulos conducted interviews and explored existing catalogs to unearth the forgotten history of ethnic, and particularly Greek, music produced on piano rolls by the QRS Company of Buffalo, NY and Alector. He also correlates the production of rolls to both sheet music publications and phonograph recordings of the time, as well as to the production of music by particular artists or in some genres rarely heard today.

Marika Papagika was one of the best known Greek female vocalists and recording artists in the United States.She and her husband also owned a New York café aman that attracted a mixed ethnic audience. She is particularly known for her rebetika recordings on American and small Greek American record labels, however, she sange songs in a variety of genres including kleftika, café aman, and Smyrneika.

In addition to the artists, there are others whose lives are anchored in the world of Greek American music. Born in Thessaloniki, as a teenager Kay Skordilis was a vivacious New York club kid whose social life centered around Greek music and its stars. She has spent most of her adult life married to two prominent artists, Spiros Skordilis and Thodoros Kavourakis, and as a valued friend to innumerable other musicians and vocalists over the last half-century.

Roderick Conway Morris penned a comprehensive review of the early development and interrelationship of the café aman and rebetika urban musical forms in "Greek Café Music." His detailed exposition on the development of such components as social context, instrumentation, musical composition and performance styles, accompanying dances and dancers, song themes, and commercial recordings takes us from origins in Asia Minor to elaborations in America. Of particular interest is his attention to café aman, about which relatively little has been written.

Amalia Baka was a Greek Romaniate Jew from Ioannina who settled in New York in 1912 and later converted to Orthodoxy.She became a famous singer, recording artist, and songwriter who gave live performances in Greek and Turkish clubs, café amans, restaurants, and resorts. Her recorded music also encompassed Greek and other Balkan music traditions, and she often sang with her daughter, Diamond.

Giorgos Makrigiannis or Nisyrios (“the Nisyrian”) was the dominant influence on the modern Dodecanese violin style and the musician who largely determined the course that their local traditions have taken over the last century—a course that was largely plotted in the United States. In 1916 Makrigiannis settled in New York. He performed throughout the Greek and Ottoman diasporas in the United States; and he taught an entire generation of Greek American violinists. But Makrigiannis' most lasting impact on Greek music in the twentieth century was as a recording artist.

Giannis Tatasopoulos, considered the finest bouzouki player of his generation in America, developed a unique style distinguished by remarkable dexterity, phrasing, and instrumental tone. He also was a leader in the exploration of different musical genres with the bouzouki, as well as a composer, songwriter, and vocalist. Born in Athens of parents from Constantinople and southern Albania, he studied and played with most of the great Greek bouzouki players of the 1940s and 1950s before settling in the U.S. in the 1950s.

HarilaosPiperakis was one of Crete's finest lyra players. As a young man he emigrated to the United States to begin a career as a performer, arranger, bandleader, and recording artist that lasted over seventy years. He recorded several songs dealing with American themes or chronicling the Greek immigrant experience in the country. Piperakis left behind a remarkable legacy whose importance in the history of Cretan, Greek, and Near Eastern music grows greater with each passing year

A Pontian Greek, IliasKementzides was born in Russia and later moved to the Thessaloniki area. He learned to play the Pontian lyra from his uncle, and he began playing professionally while farming.He settled in the US in 1974, where he became a highly respected musician. He received the National Heritage Fellowship in 1989