The Guitar Invaded Crete

THE DAY THE GUITAR INVADED CRETE

by Harvey Reid

It is probably safe for you to visualize the opening scene of this story with me and my best friend Lou rumbling down an impossibly bumpy gravel road in rural Crete in a very dusty rental Pinto, under a blinding Mediterranean sun. Crete is the largest and most mountainous of the Greek Islands, the home of some very sturdy and colorful people who live a simple lifestyle that hasn't changed much over the centuries, especially in the hills. They live in stone or concrete shacks, pump water with windmills, subsisting mostly off gardens, goats and olive trees. The old-timers still use donkeys for transportation, since the land is so rugged, and they actually wear those knee-high boots and baggy Cretan trousers tucked into them because of the thorny underbrush and rocks. My friend Lou is a full-blooded Greek-American who wanted to see his roots, and since we have been best friends since high school, I went along for lack of a better place to go. Crete is the only island with a big enough highway system to warrant renting a car, so this was our big chance to explore and see the Greek people in their natural habitat. I am a tireless explorer, and a 15-year veteran full-time acoustic guitar player who thought he would bring his guitar along to pass the time, write some music, and maybe meet some people. (Actually, the complex motivations really just boil down to the fact that I never go anywhere without a guitar.)

We were not really trying that hard to reach out to the Greek peasants- we were just rubber-necking at the scenery, feasting in the various villages, and trying to read the horrible Greek maps. They spell the town names differently on each map, and we decided that you need three maps to navigate. The capital city in Crete is called alternately Iraklio, Iraklion, Heracleon, HYPAKLIO, and a few other things, even on street signs. (Crete is called KPHTH most of the time there.) The English, Germans, and Americans apparently all have their own translations of the Greek alphabet. There are roads and towns on one official full-color tourist bureau map that do not even exist on another. After we got burned a few times, our rule was: if two of the three maps show it is there, it is probably safe to try to go there. While getting lost trying to find a town that was supposed to exist, we rounded a bend and were suddenly stopped cold in the middle of a tiny village, while a large herd of goats blocked the road. We happened to be right in front of the only tavern in town, and it also turned out that the owner of the tavern was outside, was the only one in town who spoke English, and he insisted that we come in. We parked the Pinto, fought through the animals, and tentatively went inside to find a group of men in a dark, dirt-floor concrete hut playing backgammon, drinking and listening to a boom Box cassette player. It was definitely a movie set.

The most memorable guy was a priest with a huge black robe, a tooth missing, a giant bushy gray beard and a twinkle in his eye that would shame Santa Claus, and there were about 8 other men in their baggy trousers also with twinkles in their eyes, big bushy handlebar moustaches, and the most wrinkled, craggy hands and faces you could possibly imagine. They gave us the once over and the welcome routine, and the tavern owner started shoving feta cheese, tomatoes, eggplant and huge 1/2 liter beers in front of us as he found out our names and our story. The young Greeks are pretty hostile to Americans right now, but the old people remember the Nazis, and are very friendly. Unfortunately, the young Greeks are the only ones who know much English, and our Greek was worse than spotty. They relaxed when Lou pronounced his parent's names, and he spent ten very funny minutes trying to ask the priest if he played chess. Everybody in Greece plays backgammon, but they had never heard of chess, and Lou even drew pictures of the chessmen and checkerboard and pantomimed everything and got nowhere. He is a good chess player, and we thought that might break the ice. No luck. Well, after more food and beer than we could possibly eat I told them I was a guitar player, and Lou happily told them that I had my guitar in the car. Well, they had to hear some music, and you have to imagine me walking into this movie with a steel string cutaway dreadnaught guitar like they had probably never seen, wondering what in the world to do. Mr. Bojangles or some Willie Nelson clearly would not work. Fortunately, the beers helped, and I moved very slowly, taking the guitar out of the case, and tuning it, watching everybody to see if I could get any ideas of what might impress them. I ruled out anything with words right away, concentrating on instrumental music only. A very crucial element in the story is missing, and we need to digress for a minute while we put the VCR on pause and remain focused on this American tourista tuning his guitar in the remote Greek village...

First you have to know my philosophy of guitar a little bit, and my global attitudes. I've played guitar for 20 years now, and I have been in square dance, country, bluegrass, rockabilly, punk, folk, blues and rock groups, and I pride myself on being versatile, and being able to reach anybody. I can play some Bach, George Jones, Chuck Berry, Celtic fiddle tunes, and a little of everything in-between. I've made some highly-regarded acoustic guitar recordings, and won the National Fingerpicking Guitar competition in addition to some others. Not to brag- it's just that here was the skilled idealist, planning to reach out with his guitar and communicate across cultural lines. I was reminded of a rap I used to have about skill, where I claim that even if you heard an instrument you had never heard of, you could somehow tell if the performer was skilled or not, and that there are mysterious forces of communication that come through from real artists, irrespective of the instrument or style. It is actually a very interesting thought, worthy of serious discussion among musicians, and I correctly perceived myself in an actual position to test it experimentally. I just knew I could knock 'em dead.

They invited me to play. I had their attention. I made eye contact. I know a bit about Greek figured I would be able to dazzle them with my dexterity, especially when I played fingerstyle, and that they would be impressed at least even if I could not move them deeply. They had been so polite and intrigued so far, and were gathered around staring intently and muttering Greek things to each other as I put on a thumbpick. It was one of those great moments when real life gets as much suspense as the movies, and there was real-life drama. I was jazzed up. I was ready.

Well, to not keep you hanging any longer, I took a breath and opened up with a Baroque kind of thing I wrote that has nice counterpoint bass lines and a lot of melody notes, and I thought it might sound like European church music to them a little, and not like American idioms they might be unfamiliar with... What happened? Did their twinkly eyes twinkle more? Did they clap?

Welllllllllll..... I think it is safe to say that in over 3000 gigs in every venue from schools, churches, weddings, concerts, street corners, clubs, pool parties- I don't think I ever lost an audience's attention any faster. Within 15 seconds they were back in their chairs, talking away and playing backgammon, so I stopped the song short, and hiding my growing panic, I threw every punch I had. Leo Kottke's "Last Steam Engine Train" drives like a freight train- surely they would respond to that power. Nope. Not a glance. A driving slide guitar blues. Nope. Bouncy ragtime. Nope. Some lightning jigs. Nope. I played loud and clear and strong, and not only did they not listen, they started to give me dirty looks like I was bothering them. I took a final deep breath, and launched my last missile- Spanish guitar.

Well, they turned their heads for a second when I hit that E- Am chord change a couple times, since Greek music uses that a lot, too. I got a rush of excitement, and I thought I had 'em as I hit a giant Flamenco riff, that I honestly played really well. Well, as soon as they realized it wasn't Greek music, I was dead. They instantly went back to talking and backgammon, so I stopped for a second to take off my fingerpicks and try to flatpick them something, knowing that all good Greek bouzouki players use a flatpick. Before I could say "olive oil" they had slapped the soundtrack to Zorba the Greek on the boom box at high volume, and were dancing, whooping and pointing to it as if to say "Hey Jack, this is music." Lou and I looked at each other, reminded that we had heard that same damn "Zorba's Dance" in every Greek taverna and store for a month and a half, and we had wondered as we grew to hate it whether the Greeks really liked it or if they just wanted tourists to hear it. It was that made-for the movies, tacky third-world commercialism orchestration, and for them to play it at me then, of all tunes, was definitely salt in the wounds.

It reminded me of a gig I had played in Virginia, when a drunken rebel had proclaimed loudly "If it ain't Skynard, it ain't shit!" The realization hit me as I defeatedly slipped the guitar back in the case, trying to save face and hide my failure. All my dreams of global communication were shattered. They hated me. The stuff I played them must have sounded weird and whiny and all wrong. All they knew and could be expected to know was their own music, and they had no possible way of relating my music to their culture. I became acutely aware of how stupid I was for thinking I could impress them. And I became aware of how I had tried to inflict relatively new, obscure guitar music from the fringes of a culture halfway around the world away on people who were directly connected to a 2000 year old cultural and musical tradition. Oh what a foolish imperialist I was! Ever since then I have had a persisting mental image of a Greek peasant with a bouzouki parachuting into the wilds of West Texas, stumbling into a honky tonk and trying to play Greek bouzouki music for the cowboys. Not only would they perceive him as an alien and would hate his whining, strange music and put on some Tammy Wynette or Hank Williams Jr. to drown him out, but if he didn't look out they might even kick his ass. At least the Greeks made no overtures in that direction, and when we paid the bill and tipped them an American dollar, they were still quite friendly as they waved us goodbye. I promise you won't hear my rap again about how music is so special and magical, reaching from heart to human heart across any cultural boundary. It can happen, but don't count on it.

©1987 by Harvey Reid

Harvey Reid has been a full-time acoustic guitar player, songwriter, traditional musician, and free-lance minstrel since 1974. He has recently released his 11th solo recording on Woodpecker Records. He lives in Southern Maine.