Music can express how we feel, how we perceive life, and what we think. When we listen to a piece of music, we respond to certain characteristics that provide value to our musical sensibilities. This artistic value is aesthetic, but also, entails a sense of freedom. Music aesthetics refer to the source, type, development, intention, performance, perception, and significance of a musical composition. The composer‘s musical structure, culture, and desire for expression are all included into the aesthetics of a musical piece. The aesthetics of different kinds of music have certain characteristics; we’ll focus on music aesthetics of Rebetiko, as expressed by a visual artist.
Rebetiko
Whatever is Tango for Argentina, Blues for USA, Flamenco for Spain, the same is Rebetiko for Greece; memorable urban folk music.
In specific, Rebetiko is a synthesis of European musical elements, the music of the various areas of the Greek mainland and islands, Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical chant, as well as and the modal traditions of Ottoman art and café music. It’s no surprise that in 2017 Rebetiko was added in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
The word ‘rebetis’ is construed to mean a person who embodies aspects of character, dress, behaviour, morals and ethics associated with a particular subculture, so they follow specific aesthetic rules. Is Rebetiko so nice to be included in this blog? Yes it is, because it expresses the soul in a pure, authentic way; just think of the simple notes of the song, or the doric dance of a person.
The meeting of Rebetiko with an Italian director
The reason of this interview is the work of an Italian director, Thomas Künstler, who created short animations about Rebetiko. If you watch his art pieces in www.thomaskunstler.com, you’ll see that it takes lots of patience and attention to detail, to slowly start building the music aesthetics of Rebetiko; it’s the same when we build our aesthetic world – we act as directors of our lives. What follows is an interesting interview with Thomas;
Dear Thomas, thank you for your willingness to take part to this interview and congratulations about your art work. What was the motive for you to start dealing with animation? What do you think are the basic animation aesthetics?
Kalispera Marilena and thanks for this opportunity. I would say that I simply started doing animation, just like that; when I was 14 years old, It started as a “game”, a creative way for a young teenager to spend his time between a football game and a play-station game. So, there was not “a motivation”; I just followed my passion and kept on doing what it was making me feel good.
Now, I am 29 years old and that means that I’ve spent more than half of my life already creating stop motion puppets and animating them. Animation is something deeply rooted in me, an essential part of my self. There is no such thing as a basic animation aesthetic, the aesthetic is something personal and you can find hundreds of different styles and techniques therefore it’s impossible to break down these features. Just think; what do Mikey Mouse, Pocahontas, The Minions, Wes Anderson’s characters or my Rebetiko figures have in common? pretty much anything. They are all just animation!
What made you focus on Rebetiko culture? What do you think are the music aesthetics of Rebetiko?
Definitely, at first place I got into Rebetiko, because I liked the music. In a specific period of my life, Rebetiko’s songs were best translating my feelings into music, that’s why I found it inspiring. Of course, by getting more and more into this music genre, I started researching more about its history and the environment in which it was born. I must say that visually / aesthetically I found it very strong. Even though there are not so many pictures of the rebetiko era, there are songs leaving us a good image of that time. Then you just add a bit of fantasy and nostalgia and there you go. It is a puzzle of different elements that combined give us an impressionistic wider picture. I think that rebetiko has a strong visual / aesthetic potential that has not been expressed as much as it deserves in the arts.
How do the senses affect your work? How do you combine them? Could you please provide an example about a scene?
My work is the combination of almost all the senses.
Hearing: music is always the initial inspiration for a story’s tone and feeling.
Touch: I do my puppets handmade and I spend countless hours shaping and modelling every doll you see on the screen.
Sight: We are talking about Animation Filmmaking right? It’s pointless to say that without this sense we wouldn’t be here talking about rebetiko.
Taste: well… no, I don’t eat the puppets after filming.
A scene example: After creating the puppets and the set, the director of photography and I position the camera. Once the lights are set, the animation process starts; I move the puppet and take one photo at a time, and so on. In order to make one second of animation, it takes about 25 photos.
Can Rebetiko music aesthetics be contemporary? Can it express people living today?
Of course it can, the songs speak about universal themes, which always matter; love – hate, joy – sadness, anger – dissolution. I mean, if you go somewhere and listen to Vamvakaris’s song that says that he is sad, because a woman doesn’t love him back; he walks at night, because he can’t sleep thinking about the same woman; or he has a good time playing music with his friends. I find this more real than ever. Of course, we are talking about songs written more or less 100 years ago, the society was different then, but it’s not so far, at the end of the day it’s the epoch of our great grandparents living in places that still exist today, right?
Any future plans?
Currently I’m working on a new short stop motion animation film set in Ioannina in the times of Ali Pasha Tepeleni. It’s called “Roz Vouno”.