I have never asked myself, what is a song? Where does its power come from, the spring it brings, what is its future? These lines might seem a bit theoretical to anyone reading them. They sound like questions that wash you up on the shores of propaganda, or of a dry, fruitless analysis.

There are many explanations for the song as a sound, as an expression, as a world, but I will not wander down well-trodden paths. I will not analyze the feelings it stirs in the great lake of the human spirit. Nor will I analyze the notes, their power, or their ability to bring back joy, sorrow, or hatred to a person. My perspective is entirely unique, both in its theme and elaboration, as well as in the tragic reality of what I saw, touched, and felt, and the impressions they left on my being. Perhaps I will try to share these with you today. And to share this glass of joy or bitterness with you, I would first like to analyze what is called a song. Within this word—whose full meaning I do not truly know—a song. But through it, I understand, feel, and see a tangible world, a space where sounds fly, and along with them, the human spirit and life itself.

So, analyzing the song—a simple word, but one that holds an entire sky within it, a world. In its sky fly the sounds of pain, joy, love and bravery, of lyricism, of nature, and I could go on writing endless lines and still not be able to close the cover of this book of thoughts—not a musical one, but one that contains music, life, death, and immortality, as well as all the derivatives that flow from it.

Music, in my opinion, is a gold coin that appraises the entire world of the human being. It evaluates this being according to the face they have, the fortress of life they build, the weight they carry in society. Thus, music is a language that, depending on the occasion and the manner, strips or grants an individual or society the values they deserve. It evaluates the truth of historical events without interests, commissions, or behind-the-scenes machinations. Taken in political and economic life, music has long since cast off these obstacles; it has become a universal language that speaks to humanity in the language of the spirit. From a musical vibration, from a harmony of sounds, from a song, we can paint a portrait of a person, of a society. I do not want to stray from the purpose of my writing, but I could mention the famous works of Paganini, Vivaldi, Puccini, Beethoven, and so on.

I understand that I am tiring you, dear readers; it seems my lines lack the fluidity of sounds, but you must admit that to enter the gates of a fortress like the song, you have to fight, to be wounded in order to conquer the battlements and ultimately the fortress of the spiritual world. You have to sacrifice to study and uncover the historical path of a people, of a nation.

So, in short, history can be read and understood better through song than through historical facts, which historians write according to immediate or future interests, according to those who command them, or according to the desires of the commercial paymasters of history.

The spark for this piece was an unusual recent event. It reawakened my desire to return once again to the topic of music, about which I have spoken and written several times, and to which I believe I will return in the future. This happens because, whenever I consider this chapter closed, something occurs that makes me return to it with new facts. To plow untilled meadows, to swim in crystal-clear rivers of folklore, in joyous springs of notes that come from the depths of time and appear with the captivating face of a spirit, of a voice, which, whenever we think it is fading away, draws near and, bubbling up, brings sounds, expressions, fluency, and a variety of colors and facts that make you realize not a single drop from this distant spring should be allowed to flow away and be lost. They must be gathered carefully; their values, characteristics, age, and the color of the note, of the artistic, historical, and human thought must be analyzed. I believe that these drops, these notes, are the steps that lead us to the source and the fortress of the song. And not just of the song, but of history, of life’s tradition, on this long road it has traveled, transformed, or the qualities and virtues it has acquired.

Well, this is what I want to do. Through sounds, notes, and voices, to decipher the antiquity, history, and life of a nation that, at certain moments and in various forms, steps before me and says: “Here you go, we are your tormented, forgotten brothers. Burdened, we walk through the centuries with the saddlebags of song. In the satchel of sorrows, alongside the wounds of the struggle for survival, we also carry these notes, these sounds, these voices. They did not let us write our language, but here it is, we have brought it to you in song. There lies the history, the survival, the love, and the hope. Decipher them so they remain for the generations. History and life do not end here. With your arrival in these lands, it was reborn, it grew wings to fly lighter, freer, better.”

My late grandmother, Kostandina, when she saw me off twenty years ago, said these words to me as she opened the lattice gate of the house: “Fly, my dove, wherever you go, do not trample on your language and your bread.” Her husband spent twenty years away from the family table; her uncles and brother died in exile without her seeing them, their blessing and expression of love being a few dollars for Easter and Christmas.

What is happening to me like this after twenty years, nostalgia? Age slips away and my hair has turned white, my heart has softened, we have become more sensitive and sentimental. Day labor bites at my body every day, while the moth of longing and the absence of friends and comrades gnaws at my soul.

Winter, it is raining, the wind is blowing. Heavy clouds sail in the sky of my thoughts. Here and there a light of hope flashes. The sea is right in front of me. Waves crashing on the shores, shattering, foaming, and returning to the great basin to crash again. The rocks dressed in white fustanellas like warriors. Thoughts, like the waves, return to the depths of my chest.

The sea beats them against the shores and the hidden corners of feelings; I sit with the white wave of paper before me. It waits to be blackened; I wait for the turbulence of the clouds of thought to clear.

My wife comes over and speaks to me:

“It’s Saturday today, don’t forget!”

“Why?”

“For the wedding.”

“Are we invited to a wedding?”

“Didn’t I tell you? Our hotels are full. There’s a wedding with people who have come from Salamis and Spata. The girl’s parents were born around here, from Longar (a wind instrument from Vlorë, but in our case, the name of the village); they are Arvanites. They told me it’s going to be a big wedding.”

“Where is the wedding taking place?”

“At the fortress.”

The mill of my brain ground on for a few moments. I could hear the clapper dropping the ivory grains of thought onto the millstones and turning them into white flour. I was truly a miller grinding my past desires alone in my millstones, but the sack of flour had ended up very small; the rent had eaten it along the way. Rent, the children’s studies, the big moves, chasing after the song. I love those blasted things so much. They look to me like a flock of doves, and I follow them. I am a hunter of its sounds and expressions. This wedding came as a comfort at first for the moment, and then as the catalyst for the piece you are reading.

***

That Saturday, something happened that I had neither seen nor heard during my stay in Greece. Cold December days. Through the alleys of the fortress and the tourist village blew a cold wind, accompanied by the untuned music of the waves against the rocks of the seashore. At first, the familiar bell of Barba Jorgo’s two-horse carriage was heard. In winter, he never hitched up the carriage because there were no tourists. The horses were dressed in red, silken caparisons and a white ribbon on their foreheads. Behind it came a line of horses. The clatter of their hooves took you back centuries, a somewhat forgotten rhythm. Upon them were the riders, they too out of written centuries, dressed in red waistcoats embroidered with golden braid, with wide sashes from which hung ornate pistols. Below, the fustanellas spread over the saddles and the broad rumps of the horses. Further down, the white socks, the shoes striped with black, and the red pom-poms like small lit fires. As they rode, their red flame scattered the beauty of color and celebration to the onlookers. The wedding guests resembled a long caravan that drew your attention and made you follow their movements with curiosity.

At the fortress gate they stopped, dismounted their horses, and met the others waiting for them at the gate. Warm conversation, handshakes. A little later, after a religious ceremony in the large square of the Church of Saint Nicholas, the wedding began. And in the furthest corners of the castle, the call of a clarinet was heard, singing in high major notes. For a moment, it seemed to me like an invitation to take part in this special joy. The arriving group of wedding guests, as in an ancient tradition, ask for the bride. The other guests hand her over. The groom escorts her from her parents’ side. This is enough to create the right atmosphere. Dozens of fustanellas open like dozens of white roses, dressing the square in a second veil besides the bride’s. They, the fustanellas, beat their wings before the eyes of the witnesses who have filled the stairs and walls of the fortress. The joyous sounds of the orchestra push away the clouds; the sea falls silent, holding its breath for a moment to hear what has happened. In the moment of complete silence, two singers, a boy and a girl, strike up a song. Their voices rock for a moment in the air heavy with joyous emotions, and fly into the depths of the sea as if to carry there the news of this rare wedding in its traditional manner and selection. Its words immediately create astonishment. All those present (except the invited guests) look at one another.

For a moment I stand bewildered, I call upon my memory and listen to its lyrics:

Stand up, oh bride, let us see you,

Are you exactly as they say?

Oh bride, what the matchmaker told us,

Are you like that, or will they mock us?

If you are truly as they said,

The boy will lose his heart to you.

After two lines of the song, the orchestra harmoniously plays the song’s melody. On the one hand, to prepare the listeners for its continuation, and on the other, to give the singers a chance to see and hear the reaction. The bride stands up. She looks like a piece of a white dream, exceedingly white. She stands to show that her feelings and soul are unsoiled and unstained by sins. During the performance preparing for the chorus, the square fills up completely. These songs have a dual role, both of song and of dance. I had not yet gathered myself from the temptation it created in me when another postcard came to me from the orchestra and its music, which was now scattering into the ether with the wind of friendship and the caressing evening breeze.

Open the road, open the path,

What is that coming and shining (gleaming),

A good girl from a good family,

Kalimera (good morning) she doesn’t know how to say.

During the chorus, astonishment appears in the eyes of the onlookers. This seems more like a provocation to them. As if this were not enough, the song continues:

Sing Arvanite songs,

So you do not forget the language.

For a moment I was bewildered, I looked around; it seemed to me that even the walls of the fortress moved from their place. The Arvanites who had built them awoke among the ruins, the eaves. They came out into the street to meet the present. They had been silent for years, covered in the dust of oblivion, dazed by the lethargic sleep of time. How beautiful: A good girl from a good family, but kalimera in Greek, she doesn’t know how to say. It was about an Arvanite girl who was going to marry a Greek.

I waited no longer; I leapt onto the stage of joy. I did not know if I was moving to the rhythm of the dance; I had never danced such a dance before. On one side I had a tall Arvanite, and in my right hand I squeezed the hand of a rosy girl, in whose eyes, amidst a great sea of joy, happiness itself was flying. It seemed to me that I had created a bridge, yes, yes, a bridge of union between the past and the present. The present and the future, which in this dance I saw as a whole, inseparable from yesterday. And at that moment my soul told me: “Wall yourself in here like Rozafa, so that the walls of the fortress of resistance and of the future may never die again. Over this bridge of union let the future and the past come and go, let them become one as they truly are in language, in blood, and in spirit.” My head spun, I don’t know, I had drunk nothing but joy. The Arvanite held me up; his daughter, the future of the tradition, threw me a bucket of smiles that brought me to my senses. Where was I? On their chest: On the chest of brothers lost for so many years, but not forgotten. We step aside, they ask me:

“Where are you from?”

“Albanian!”

The conversation rocks on the waves of feelings, smiles, and grows in years and centuries. The music accompanies it; it is a meze that satisfies us and warms the conversation. After this meeting, the impressions of which you will read another time, begins the legendary song of the ancient Arvanites. It comes from the centuries riding on the horses of the wind, salted with the must of the deep sea of the people who created it.

I will cut off your kocidhe (braid)

And throw it where it cannot be found.

I will cut off your kocidhe (yours)

But I am ashamed before your father.

Oh, kocidhe dhragonjë (serpent)

If only I had you angalje (on my chest).

This for me was not simply an Arvanite wedding. It was the wellspring of their tradition, culture, and history. I remained with the pencil of memory in my mind. I tried not to let even a single word hide from me and escape without meeting it, without speaking to it. Without harvesting its thought, purpose, values, and the beauties of the verse, of the sound.

I have spent years digging for them, but this time they were the ones that surprised me. They all came to me at once, with their colors, sweetness, and antiquity; they drowned me in a great folkloric and linguistic, historical and colorful sea of ethnographic hues. These impressions were so beautiful, so numerous, that it will take me time to gather myself. And then to write about their face, beauty, and sweetness. About the spiritual pentagram of the Arvanites who created it, inherited it, preserved it, and brought it to us to place in the rare pantheon of national tradition and culture. In the file that had remained empty, but which from now on will be open to all visitors of the museum of feelings, which the nation preserves as rare pearls of culture.

I am finishing a book with the lyrics of their songs. I have spent years following and harvesting the fruits of song from the ancient tree of Arvanite culture. But every time I get ready to send it to press, other fruits pour into my hands, increasing my desire to harvest them all, so that I may gift you the basket of their culture as complete, as abundant, as beautiful and diverse as possible.

The wedding guests mounted their horses and rode across the cobblestones of the fortress. The bride and groom, these pearls of my writing, walked holding onto each other’s arms.

At the gate, the carriage awaited them, adorned with the joy of their happiness. They climbed in, waved goodbye, and departed into the evening, leaving behind the memory of an unforgettable wedding.

I felt like a participant in a legend that I do not know if it would ever be repeated in my life. Like a participant in a dream that would make me happy for a long time with its manner and sensation.

I have heard songs about exile, about brave men, about nature, and I say to myself: “Who can reveal the face, the diversity, the breath, the history of a nation more beautifully than a song?”

From what you read, saw, tasted, and heard, am I not right?

By PILO ZYBA