Λέσβος Αιολίς

The isles of Greece! The isles of Greece
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
-Byron

Έρος δ' ετίναξέ μοί φρένας ώς άνεμος κατ’όρος δρύσιν εμπέτων.

Lust shakes me up like a mountain wind falling on the oaks.
-Sappho

It’s said that Orpheus’ head and lyre washed ashore on Lesbos after he was torn apart by a mob of crazed Thracian women. The moral of the story is, when your dead girlfriend’s shade is forced to return to Hades because you turned around to see her even though the gods warned you not to look until you were both safely out of the underworld, don’t go for a walk by yourself.

The Thracian mob failed to silence Orpheus’ lyre, though; his severed head and lyre brought with them to Lesbos the gift of music. The island that gave birth to the lyric poetry of Sappho is home to a vibrant literary and artistic tradition stretching back centuries. Greece is a very musical country with a rich and varied musical tradition, and Lesbos—or Mytilene as the island is also known—is one of the brightest stars in Greece’s musical firmament.

Prior to its liberation from the Ottomans and its subsequent marriage to Greece in 1913, Lesbos’ primary orientation was eastward toward Constantinople and Smyrna, rather than westward toward Greece. This connection to the cosmopolitan cities along the Aegean coast of Asia Minor is reflected in the island’s music, whose eastern influences could be felt long before the music of mainland Greece was “orientalized” as a result of the huge influx of more than a million refugees from Anatolia following the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922-23.

Recommended Listening:
Lesbos Aiolis: Songs and Dances of Lesbos
The Guardians of Hellenism, Vol. 1—Chios, Mytilene, Samos, Ikaria
Songs of Mytilene and Smyrna (Hellenic Music Archives)