Music routes pentatonia in pogoni info

Pogoni is an acritic municipality on the Greek-Albanian borders, in the prefecture of Ioannina. Pogoni is famous for polyphonic music both organic and vocal, music that is based on the pentatonic scale. Polyphonic song is recognized by Unesco as a monument of Intangible cultural Heritage. Performed for centuries, the Epirus polyphonic song is performed by a group of singers with two to four distinctive roles among them, and touches on almost every aspect of life, such as childhood, marriage, death, historical events and pastoral life.

Fairs -called “panigiri”- are held around Pogoni once or twice every year. These traditional parties used to happen to celebrate a wedding or someone’s name day. Nowadays, it is an opportunity for people that have moved to a town in Greece or abroad to return to the place they come from and celebrate with each other

Pogoni is also known for the untouched natural habbitats, its authentic landscape and the traditional architecture. In most villages the houses and old community’s buildings are built from stone, a material originated from the pogonian mountains. The rivers and the lakes scatered around the municipality of Pogoni -some of them a Natura 2000 habitat- create a special and unique environment.

This area, though, is gradually deserted and every year the economically active population decreases. Correspondingly, the intangible cultural heritage – including the musical tradition – is disappearing.  In the aftermath of WWII and the ensuing Greek Civil War, the element gradually became sporadic after the inhabitants of Epirus started migrating to large urban centers in Greece and abroad. Eventually, very few experienced performers remained in the villages.

Tradition is not perceived as a museum exhibit and a moment frozen in time. It is directly related to the daily life of people and the concept of community, as an inherent element of collective life and memory. Finally, a festival layed out during the time from May to October was the project proposition.

The aim of our diplomacy was to create conditions for the preservation of cultural heritage, a reverse movement in the decline of cultural tradition, focusing on four villages that stand out for their musical tradition: Pogoniani, Dolo, Ktismata and Parakalamos. Our proposal is divided into three parallel activities, with the corresponding spaces that will house them: polyphonic music learning workshops – in an area with stone threshing floors in Dolo, a summer school – in an old boarding school in Pogoniani and a two-month music residency -in the old primary school in Dolo.

MUSIC RESIDENCY

Dolo

Dolo as we mentioned earlier, is the only declared traditional settlement in Pogoni. The village square, as shown in the plans of the intersection, consists of three levels, each of which acts as an extender of the building located on it. The lower level is that of the church, in which the annual meeting of the village takes place. The middle level is that of the community cafe, in which tables and seats enter, and the upper level is the expansion of the school ,which when it was operating, until 1980 was used as a courtyard of the primary school. This courtyard, today, does not accommodate any use and remains almost exclusively vacant.

The use we recommend for the school building is the accommodation of the people who will participate in the polyphonic music workshops in May and the two-month musical hospitality in September and October. On the school floor, in the big room they will sleep, while the little one will be used as a workroom. On the ground floor there will be a living room on the left and a kitchen on the right. Regarding the configuration of the outdoor space, we put it as a given that the community cafe will continue to have the existing use, and that in the space outside the church, around Kastania, the dances will take place. We point this out because in the first use we give in May, the program we propose, adapts to the already existing festival of the Village, St. Christopher, with the actions of the workshops taking place one day before and one day after it.

Dolo as we mentioned earlier, is the only declared traditional settlement in Pogoni. The village square, as shown in the plans of the intersection, consists of three levels, each of which acts as an extender of the building located on it. The lower level is that of the church, in which the annual meeting of the village takes place. The middle level is that of the community cafe, in which tables and seats enter, and the upper level is the expansion of the school ,which when it was operating, until 1980 was used as a courtyard of the primary school. This courtyard, today, does not accommodate any use and remains almost exclusively vacant.

The use we recommend for the school building is the accommodation of the people who will participate in the polyphonic music workshops in May and the two-month musical hospitality in September and October. On the school floor, in the big room they will sleep, while the little one will be used as a workroom. On the ground floor there will be a living room on the left and a kitchen on the right. Regarding the configuration of the outdoor space, we put it as a given that the community cafe will continue to have the existing use, and that in the space outside the church, around Kastania, the dances will take place. We point this out because in the first use we give in May, the program we propose, adapts to the already existing festival of the Village, St. Christopher, with the actions of the workshops taking place one day before and one day after it.

POLYPHONIC MUSIC LEARNING WORKSHOP

Alonia/Thresing floors in Dolo

The intervention logic in the landscape is amplification and highlighting, with the understanding that we did not intervene in any intense way in the elements that already existed there.

The workshops are divided into three types of activities: the polyphonic singing workshop, the violin and tambourine learning workshop and the clarinet learning workshop. The workshop as a whole should start and end at a welcoming and separating point. So this point is the central threshing floor, which is the only one restored, well preserved and the highest, so it is easy for both welcome and farewell to have the best visual escape (due to height) to the ravine.

In terms of architectural vocabulary, the three concepts: dispersion, concentration and circularity are traced  in the design logic that was applied to this landscape.

The dispersion is traced either symbolically through the materiality that can be seen e.g. in this paving, which is dense and then deconstructed, in order to be able to make the gradual transition from the dense stone-built and paved settlement to the free and unstructured landscape. Either by the very zoning of the threshing-floors and huts which are as if some one had scattered them on this slope.

The second concept of concentration, appears in this composition in the sense of concentration of functions: in the central threshing floor are concentrated the functions of welcome and farewell or concentration in the points at which the built thickens and traces from the previous structures. They are points at which there is movement, there is attitude, and there is strong texture and writing upon the carpet of this part.

The third concept is circularity. The very use of threshing floors, based on the analysis of how polyphonic was sung in the old days, on the concept of circularity in the sense of community and equal participation, we chose to put in the threshing floors- which are central elements of the part – the workshops.

In them they will sing, they will play instruments and in the central threshing floor they will also dance, with no teacher-student hierarchy, to share their knowledge and experiences, and this thing can work in contradiction with the way polyphonic is currently being taught in cities. The cyclicity is also found in the circular arches which in a way deconstruct the intense stone circles that are the threshing floors.