The Song beyond the Song Aesthetics and Social Interaction in Greek Folksong

Abstract

body of meaning that is accessible to the outsider.1 Either a plot, however nominal, or the clarity of the situation, such as death, becomes the means for thematic organization and the conveyance of meaning. Though layers of additional meaning are created, for example, in performance or through metaphors and allusions with traditional, regional associations, there is, nonetheless, a degree of apparent accessibility in the content of the song that allows even an audience unfamiliar with folk poetry to apply, to some degree, the western aesthetics of written poetry to the interpretation of it. There is, however, a considerable corpus of folksongs and range of performance styles in most local repertories that appear to lack any of these devices for making sense common to other more familiar types of poetry: beginnings, middles or endings, smooth transitions from theme to theme, even minimal plot, etc. It is performance, rather than song type, which renders this body of folk poetry incomprehensible by western aesthetics. Whereas written collections of folksongs (Aravandinos 1880; Fauriel 1824; Petropoulos 1959; Politis 1914; etc.) present us with apparently complete versions of songs, performance often yields songs which appear fragmentary. Performance and social context reveal a body of meaning connected with the usage of songs, particularly when these are components of a larger performance event. In the past few years, a significant number of performance studies in folkloristics has provided us with useful models and methodologies for understanding oral events (see, e.g., Ben-Amos and Goldstein 1975; Bauman 1977; Paredes and Bauman 1972). An important source of folk aesthetics can be extracted from folk criticism-the criticism of the tradition bearers themselves. On the other hand, Albert Lord in his book The Singer of Tales demonstrates the existence of a