• Village – Kerasia Village
• Music – Biography of Michalis Tsouganakis
• Musical Instruments - The Cretan Lyra

Kerasia Village

Kerásia is a small proud Cretan village in Iraklion prefecture, surrounded by other villages Venerato, Avgeniki, Dafnes, and Siva.

The dimos local government is Paliani Παλιανή, named after the nunnery on the outskirts of Venerato.

There are different ideas as to how Kerásia gets it name. There are also two spellings. Kerassia and Kerásia. Some believe it comes from the word for cherry tree – which is the same word. Others say it comes from the Greek verb kerno which means ‘to offer’.

After living here, we firmly believe it comes from the second meaning, as the hospitality in the village is incredible. People are always offering. Giving, sharing. The generosity of Kerásini is beautiful and touching and absolutely natural. Anyway, our papou, who comes from Kerásia, says the second meaning is the real meaning.

There are quite a few villages in Greece called Kerásia, and there is a very popular beach village in Corfu called Kerassia, so don’t confuse them.

Kerasia sits at the foothills of Mt Psiloritis, in a gently sloping valley. It is a small agricultural village busy producing sultanas, grapes and olive oil. The olive groves and vineyards are interspersed with each family’s perivoli orchard or garden, with mandarinia, lemonia, walnuts karidia, lots of other fruit and vegetables. Yards with pigs and goats are dotted about.

With about 40 families, some of Kerasia’s houses are closed up, their owners in Iraklion or further such as Germany, USA or Australia. This creates odd pauses in the village as you walk through the narrow streets, strange crumbled buildings and forgotten corners. This is slowly changing as people return from the diaspora.

The village sits just up from the national road and with close access to both Iraklio and the thriving cornucopia of Messara, it has been on the trade routes of the island for many years. The first notation of the village dates back to 1583.

Kerásia has two churches, Agios Giorgos in the lower village near the kafenion, and Agios Síllas Άγιος Σύλλας higher on the hill. These are both well loved churches, worth a visit and are fully-functioning alive churches.

Discussions start slowly, at times you can walk in and believe no one is talking to each other. Sometimes the room is full of smoke and shouting. Sometimes there are card games; sometimes the TV is turned up very loud. Each village kafenion will be different. We encourage you to seek out your village kafenion and sit awhile. Get to know the way of thingsand always, always respect the old people in your village. They will teach you more than you will know.

When you enter a home or kafenion in the village, you will be offered a coffee kafé or a raki, in Cretan known as tsikoudia. Accept. Enjoy. In Kerasia you will be treated with the most wonderful hospitality.

Life is sweet in Kerásia village.

Biography of Cretan Musician – Michalis Tsouganakis

Mihalis Tzouganakis was born to Sfakian parents away from Crete in , the island they loved so much. Mihalis was born in the city of Bergen in Belgium, where he lived among many immigrant families with his seven bothers and sisters. He grew up in a very traditional Cretan family environment, where he was immersed in the music, cuisine and culture of Crete. His childhood was spent among the immigrants of Greek, Moroccan, Egyptian, Italian & Polish descent, further enriching his exotic heart.

At the young age of two years old, he was mesmerized by the laouto that hung on his older brother’s wall. He was adamant to learn to play the laouto, and with the help of his brother, who would hold the laouto, young Mihalis would pluck the strings, falling in love with the sweet and melancholy voice of the laouto.

By the age of four he was able to captivate listeners with the music he would sing and play on the laouto.

At the age of nine the family return to their beloved Kriti, where Tsouganakis began playing with local musicians and performing at festivals and celebrations. Audiences were awed by this young boy’s intensity when he played and sang, and around the age of eleven, he was approached by Giannis Sergakis and Vangelis Zaharioudakis who invited him to play with them professionally.

It was at this age that he had the opportunity to enter the recording studio for the first time with Vangelis Zaharioudakis.

Only a few years later, some of Crete’s greatest masters of the lyra wished to perform with Tsouganakis, at the age of thirteen. With the great Leonidas Klados, Tsouganakis had the blessing of writing the lyrics and playing Leonidas’ compositions alongside him. For five years they were to play and tour together throughout Crete and Athens.

Shortly after he began performing with the gifted Kostas Moundakis, a lyraris who has created some of Crete’s most touching songs; blessing the island with his passionate voice and lyra. Tsouganakis and Moundakis travelled as far as Canada with their tours together. Over the years they played together frequently, Tsouganakis even recording with Moundakis in 1990 on what would be Moundakis’ last recording.

Tsouganakis’ passion for music led him to play the laouto, lyra, mandolin, outi, sazi, boulgari and cumbus. He took formal singing lessons at the Conservatorium of Athens for two years.

With his band Tsouganakis has recorded his own albums and played all over the world. He has performed Greece, Germany, America, Belgium and Canada. During his travels he also played with different bands abroad.

Over the course of his career Tsouganakis has played with many respected musicians, and has had the opportunity to create some truly magical music. Such as his collaboration with Nikos Mamagkakis where they create Ta Tragoudia Tis Palia Polis The Songs Of The Old City, singing the beautiful words of Rethymnian poet Giorgos Kalomenopoulos.

Tsouganakis has made a priceless contribution to the world of Cretan music with his touching compositions. Not only does his virtuosic playing cut to the soul, but his sweet and deeply passionate singing brings you to feel his sad and beautiful mantinades.

Tsouganakis combined the modern approach in letting a song dictate its own voice, unbound to the confines of traditional music, yet his music is infused with the depth, pace and emotion of the Rizitika.

Mihalis Tzouganakis is a true artist, a blessing to the soul of Cretan music.

The Cretan Lyra

The lyra creates a musical tapestry, with its invigorating and entrancing voice, lifting your spirits and your body to it’s feet to dance in time with the kefi that only once experienced can be understood.

The Cretan Lyra is an enigmatic and truly unique instrument that survives a controversial 600 years of existence with little alteration to it’s form, with it’s emotion filled and trance inducing voice that has won the hearts of even the hardiest of Cretan adartes. So much so, that this small and compact instrument has become the instrument of choice to bring life to the passionate and powerful Cretan mantinada.

The Cretan Lyra is a physically simple yet stunning 3 stringed violin-like instrument that is pear shaped with a lightly curved top and an arched back.

The soundboard has two small semi-circular sound holes. It is played with a bow, which in the earlier years was strung with hawk bells to greater emphasize the rhythm. The use of hawk-bells is sadly rarely seen today, used mainly by players from the remoter villages who play with a more retrospective style, or the rizitika.

The lyra is unique in a number of ways. Firstly it is played vertically with the foot of the instrument placed on the top of the thigh. The truly unique aspect of the lyra is the fact that the strings are not stopped (pressed) from above like the violin or most stringed instruments, but the nail of the players hand is placed up against the side of the string.

This gives the voice of the lyra a distinctly different sound to other similar instruments, hauntingly resonant and almost gutteral. A good way to spot a lyra player is to see if they have longer fingernails on their left hand; much like spotting a classical or flamenco guitarist by the long nails on their right hand.

The modern lyra is tuned A D G from thinnest string to thickest. The top or soundboard kapaki is made of katrani cedar wood. This component most influences the sound of the instrument.

There is a strong tradition to use cedar that is as much as 300 years old for the soundboard. The back is made from walnut, mournia, kelembeki or asfendamos. The sound of the back only has a marginal effect on the instrument’s sound. The choice of wood is normally aesthetic, and usually carved with beautiful images of local birds such as the eagle or the two-headed Byzantine eagle. The strings used are of flat wound construction made of a chrome-metal.

With the onset of accompaniment by the laouto, there was no longer a need for a drone note. The new tuning broadened the voice of the lyra. A quick way to differentiate the lyraki from the lyra, is to look at the head stock of the instrument.

The lyraki has a flat and wide headstock, with the lyra having a scrolled headstock like the violin. Some say this scrolled headstock of the violin family was influenced by the Mongolian morin huur, which often had a headstock carved in the likeness of a horse.

The origins of the lyra are quite obscure and riddled with many views. We will cover the most historically proven origins, whilst shedding some light on some interesting myths and stories. The word “lyra” has come to us as we know from the ancient Greek harp-like instrument that was to have been invented by the Olympian god Hermes. This angel voiced instrument was made from the body of a large tortoise shell which he covered with animal hide and antelope horns, and was played with a plectrum. We can see from ancient pottery illustrations that these instruments are not directly related.

The lyra we know today is ultimately quite a modern instrument in comparison, being only a few hundred years old, though still older than the classical violin.

Many variants of bowed stringed instruments exist all over the world. We have the Mongolian morin huur, the Chinese erhu, the Middle Eastern rebab and the Indian esraj, all of which are played in the upright position. Many believe the lyra’s roots are from the Middle East, though it may be more accurate to relate it’s origins from India, where similar Middle Eastern instruments have their origins.

Some of the earliest examples of bowed stringed instruments had 2 or 3 strings, even the earliest versions of the violin had 3 strings. There is a strong view that the bow was invented by the Mongols utilizing the hair from their horse’s tails to string the bow. Their morin huur has been in existence since at least 1000 AD, being listed in a Chinese encyclopedia in 1105 AD. The earliest references to the lyra, or lyraki as it would have been, are from illustrations in Constantinople. On the 10th century Byzantine ivory chest and the illustrated manuscripts of the 11th century, we have images of the lyraki. If these carvings and illustrations are correct, this would date the lyra older than even the morin huur.

The lyra could have made its way to Crete in a number of ways. It could have been brought by the departing Greeks from Constantinople. As Crete had become part of the Byzantine Empire by at least 395 AD and under the rule of Rome/Constantinople. Also, when Crete was occupied by expelled Saracen Arabs from Andalusia in 824 AD, the third and what would be final attempt to reclaim Crete by the Byzantine Empire, was led by Nikiforos Phokas. He, with an army of some say as large as 100,000 men, finally captured Chandax (Heraklion) on the 7th March 961 AD.

The lyra may have come with this battalion, but if not, would definitely have come with the large populations ordered to populate Crete from Constantinople in 1080 AD by the then Emperor Alexios Komnenos in an attempt to re-populate and re-Christianise Crete, whose Christian population had drastically been reduced due to Cretans being traded as slaves by the Arabs during their 147 years of rule.

What we do know is that when the Venetians came to Crete in 1210, the lyraki was already present on the island. There are schools of thought that the lyra came from the Arabic rebab or similar instruments. Yet we have not found reference of the lyra or lyraki under any other name from the east, except for the Arabic manatza roum and kamantza roum which translates to Roman (western), or Byzantine instrument. Also, under Turkish occupation, it was observed that seldom did the Turks play the instrument, leaving it to the native Cretans.

Just like the modern baglama, which is a mini bouzouki-like instrument created by the Greek adartes during the times of their fight for freedom from Turkish occupation; the lyra is a compact instrument that would have been an easy instrument to transport over long distances in less than ideal circumstances. This compact instrument would have been a favorite one among travellers, making the journey that much sweeter and easier to endure, for though the body may he sore and the heart worn by despair, the soul is freed like on the wings of an eagle when your sweet or sorrowing lays are accompanied by this instruments voice, which rises up and becomes one with the howling winds of Psiloriti.

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