Our group is back to doing Greek-focused rites for spring equinox, which is great fun, because it means I get to honor Dionysos, the happy god of wine, fertility, and general frivolity. And sure, that stuff is fun, but I've always thought there was more of a point to it, namely that your personal truth, the things you really really want and believe, can be found only after you've stripped away a lot of social graces, habits, and nicities that you've learned over your lifetime to hide yourself for the sake of convenience or livelihood.
So, in celebration of that, I decided this time on a relatively simple Greek folk dance, the kalamatianó, which is in the lovely chaotic rhythm of 7/8. The idea of these odd rhythms common in Greek and Slavic traditional music is that you mix "long" and "short" beats, and the kalamatianó is a pattern of long-short-short. To emphasize the rhythm, I've focused on using the piano with its nice percussive sounds and strong bass range. And to add a bit of strangeness to the feel of it, this is in Phygrian mode, which is similar to the standard minor scale but uses a flattened second note.
All works are copyright by yours truly, but may be distributed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0. That means, in short, you can use them yourself and your grove, and play the song to your heart's content both in private and in public, but must give credit where credit is due, and if you're planning on selling something involving this song we need to talk about that first.
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