Greece Culture: Music and Dance: Kappadokia/Cappadocia

This region in inland Anatolia (present day Turkey), is best known for its surreal, volcanically produced rock cones used for human habitation over the course of centuries. Hittites were probably the first settlers in this region in ancient times. In early Christian and Byzantine times some of the cones were used as monasteries, monks' cells and churches. Greeks and Turks live harmoniously together in this area until 1924, after the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne forced them to leave the new Turkish nation, to be resettled in Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace. Unlike the Pontic Greeks to the north, who spoke a dialect of Greek, many refugees from Kappadokia spoke Greek only in the church liturgy, Turkish having become their main language, and suffered from this difference in addition to the hardships of being transplanted into an entirely new territory. Much of their traditions were lost with the uprooting from their villages, as their celebrations had centered around the village church, and without it, had little reason for being (though performed for a time on the appropriate date). Particular feast days had been celebrated from village to village, in some for Ai Vasili (first of January), in other Ai Yiorgi (St. George's Day), etc. Popular dances in many Kappadokian villages were karsilamadhes (plural of karsilamas), which (as the name implies, karsi being a Turkish word meaning 'opposite') are couple dances. The dancers traditionally accompanied themselves with wooden spoons, though these days, sometimes with little glasses held between two fingers of each hand and clinked together, when wooden spoons aren't available. The couples traditionally were of the same sex, as men and women did not dance together in these communities, though sometimes at a family party a man might dance with his wife or sister, though without close contact of any kind. These dances were performed during the entire course of celebrations. The rhythmic meter used for this dance by Kappadokians differs from that usually associated with this dance (9/8), dancing it instead in 2/4, with two quick steps followed by a slow. Between Easter and Ascension day, ancient slow circle dances were performed by this people.

Most of the dances were not accompanied by musical instruments but to songs sung by those 'playing' the wooden spoons, or, at paneyiria, to the rhythm of the defi, a drum which the women generally knew how to play. In some villages musicians, playing flute and violin were brought from other villages to play for celebrations. The Kappodokians also performed syrto type dances. In present times they and their descendants still dance the karsilamas (which they call the Konyali, with the wooden spoons or small glasses for accompaniment, and also (more often these days) with musical instruments. As everywhere in Greece, Kappadokians also dance the pan-hellenic dances.