Chromaticism is a phenomenon which is shared by different musical cultures. In the Balkans it is evident both in ecclesiastical and traditional music. In antiquity it was attested by ancient Greek writers and was described in theory. It is also apparent in different forms in ancient Greek musical fragments. Nevertheless it is disputed whether it represents a theoretical form (genus) or reflects a musical practice and its formation. Apart from any theoretical analysis of ancient Greek testimony, ethnomusicology can contribute to an explanation by classification and interpretation of various forms in which chromaticism is found in the Balkans. In Northwestern Greece many different forms can offer us various melodic paths that, if followed by vocal or instrumental musical practice, result in special chromatic melodic movements. Such movements reveal the genesis of tense chromatic and actually reveal some implications about the differences between the two chromatic shades (tense and soft) in traditional and ecclesiastical music
Having as a starting point a typical phrase-"all our songs once were laments"-repeated to the researcher during fieldwork, this study aims to explore the multiple ways in which lament practices become part of other musical practices in community life or change their functionalities and how they contribute to music making. Though the meaning of this typical phrase seems to be inexplicable, nonetheless as a general feeling it is shared by most of the people in the field. Starting from the Epirot instrumental 'moiroloi', extensive field research reveals that many vocal practices considered by former researchers to be imitations of instrumental musical practices, are in fact, definite lament vocal practices-cries, embodied and reformed in different ways in other musical contexts and serving in this way different social purposes. Furthermore, multiple functionalities of lament practices in social life reveal their transformations into songs and the ways they contribute to music making in oral tradition while at the same time confirming the flexibility of the border between lament and song established by previous researchers.
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