Bright Week Weddings... and a Funeral

I was awakened late last night by the raucous sound of a dozen or so voices roughly singing in tandem outside my window. Hypnos must have had me in a particularly tight net; I'm generally an extremely light sleeper and wake up every hour or so during the night, but this time it took me about thirty seconds to understand where I was, the approximate hour, and what was happening. The fog gradually cleared; I realized that I was in my bed, it was about 3 am or so, and there was a group of extremely drunk men somewhere out in the street - most likely in front of the tavern, which is just two doors down from us - repeating more or less in unison the couplets sung by a single reveler, who could just be heard over the instruments (lyra and laouto) accompanying him. This took me by surprise particularly because a celebration at the local tavern was the last thing I would have expected this evening - there had been a funeral in the village during the day and normally that means no music, dancing, singing, or public revelry of any sort by anyone for a certain period (for the family of the deceased it holds for quite some time, sometimes many months or even years if they are of particularly traditional mentality).

Though it was unusually loud, the singers weren't so drunk that it was terribly unpleasant, and I was just starting to get used to it and debating whether or not to close the window when there was a sudden burst of automatic rifle fire, which echoed tremendously off the mountains to the east and came rushing back across the otherwise silent valley. It was followed by shouts of encouragement, and soon by another two or three bursts, at which point I shut the window and eventually fell back asleep with a pillow over my head, silently cursing the lax security at Albanian arms depots (one of the main reasons why Cretan villagers have more Kalashnikovs than the Greek special forces).

Upon waking this morning, I learned that it was the local army unit which was celebrating at the tavern, which meant that their weapons probably weren't bought on the black market from shifty Balkan arms dealers, although you never know. A bit later I was informed that the deceased was none other than the first cousin of the tavern owner, who, along with his son, nephew, and son-in-law, constitute the traditional orchestra for all the musical events held there. This gave me quite a pause, since this is a small rural community where most everyone over the age of sixty still wears traditional clothing, people consciously retain their local dialect and accent, are generally very conscious and proud of doing things the way they've always been done and constantly invoke the traditions of their forefathers to justify everything from cattle rustling to bearing illegal arms. So I would expect the tradition of mourning to be observed by the deceased's family, at least. In fact, I remember when an elderly neighbor died last summer and I was advised by my landlord not to play music in the front part of the house, since it could be heard by someone passing by on the street and it would be considered disrespectful. "Even though you're a foreigner and nobody expects you to observe these rules," he said, "it would be appreciated by us locals, out of respect."

And yet, a few hours after their cousin is laid in the ground, the bereaved family fulfills their contractual obligation with an important client, despite the transgression of not only the unwritten social rules that it implies, but the religious ones as well. In fact, when I think about I realize that the deceased passed away several days ago, and there have been nightly festivities at the tavern since then - this is, after all, prime wedding and baptism season, Easter having been celebrated just last weekend. Of course, I'm not one to judge, and I certainly don't mean to; I just find it terribly interesting and indicative of how much things have changed here, even in this self-proclaimed stronghold of traditional culture and values. I know for a fact, from countless first- and second-hand anecdotes, that a generation ago weddings and baptisms were routinely rescheduled because of deaths, and many musicians went for years without playing in public because of mourning obligations. In some places this still holds; my friend Pericles, a teacher living on the particularly traditional island of Karpathos, has told me many times of months-long periods without music because of collective mourning in a community where nearly everyone is somehow related.

Of course, I believe strongly in the cathartic power of music, and will be the first to urge people (in advance, of course) to sing, dance, and celebrate life at my own funeral, whenever it be and whatever the circumstances. I sincerely hope that my neighbors found some measure of comfort and hope in the face of their loss by providing music, food, and drink for an evening to a company of young men, many of whom are no doubt far from home for the first time in their lives, and are in the midst of the intense boredom and ennui that is Greek military service.

As much as it saddens me to say it, though, I sincerely doubt that my friends at the tavern went ahead with this and the other scheduled events of the week for these or other therapeutic or altruistic reasons. It seems that the Euro has assumed first place in the hierarchy of priorities even here in this sleepy village, where local shepherds take out loans to buy a third car, every ten-year-old has the latest mobile telephone-internet-camera-GPS gadget, and people are slowly but surely falling victim to the "Western" disease of work and stress as a way of life.

Oh well. It's theirs for the taking.