Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music

An obscure European musical tradition rebukes the sterility of modern culture according to this bombastic appreciation-cum-jeremiad. King, a musicologist and record collector, travels to Epirus, a region straddling northwestern Greece and southern Albania, to savor its unique folk music, which combines droning backgrounds with almost atonal violin and clarinet noodlings, in a style that aficionados concede can feel like “ear torture” to the unaccustomed. The music’s nonconformity is a virtue, King contends, making it a paragon of localism and authenticity comparable only to Mississippi Delta blues for its rootedness in its terroir and defiance of bland commercial aesthetics. King soaks up the Epirotic folkways, dancing at sometimes-raunchy village festivals and quaffing anise-flavored moonshine. He relates stories of Ottoman atrocities and legends of the area’s musicians, meanwhile arguing that folk music performs a crucial social “healing” function. King’s evocations of Epirus and Epirotic music—its haunting forlornness, “the heavy despair of the clarinet and the sad avian mimicry of the violin”—are vivid and engaging. Unfortunately, his sour attacks on all other music—from classical (“lofty but groundless”) to big band (“vacuous, mediocre and sucking”) to pop (“vacuous tripe” shading to “sinister noise”)—can make his praise of folk culture feel like snobbery. Nevertheless, folk music historians and enthusiasts will find much of interest in this well-researched book. Photos. (May)