Përmet(i)
"City of Roses"

 

Laver Bariu's Globestyle CD Songs from the City of Roses:

Përmeti is a rather nondescript town, but in many ways the spiritual heart of Albanian communism. It was very deeply involved in the anti- Fascist struggle and as a result was completly burnt down by the Germans in 1943-1944. So all the buildings are modern. Much of the population of the surrounding mountains is of Vlach descent.

A British Special Operations Executive liason officer, T.W. Tilman, passing through Përmet in August 1943, noted the damage the area had suffered in the Balkan Wars of 1911-1912, and other recent conflict:

''There was no sign of the war until we reached the town of Përmet: but of past wars there were many, for in this troubled country there are few places free from scars. The village of Frasher, for example which we passed had been ravaged by the Greeks in 1914 in company with 150 other Albanian villages; and on the highest mountains one would find stone sangards and heaps of spent cartridges fired by the Greeks in their campaign against the Italians. Përmeti itself had suffered in that campaign, and had recently been burnt again by the Italians as a reprisal for some partisan action."

The town is first mentioned in 15th century chronicles, although there must almost certainly have been an ancient settlement on the site. It grew as a small Ottoman administrative and trade centre, and was an early centre of the Albanian nationalist movement in the 19th century. It was also a centre of resistance to Greek irredentism at the end of that century.

The nationalist association, Bashkimi (Unity) was formed in Përmet in 1909. The 6th Partisan Brigade was found here by Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu in 1943. On the 24th of May 1944 the anti-Fascist Congress of Liberation was held, always known in Albania as the Congress of Përmet, which laid the political foundation for the communist take-over in the autumn of that year.

The town is the birthplace of some of the most important patriots of Albania. The Frashëri brothers played a key role in the renaissance period with their publications and national awakening campaign.

One interesting site is the "Rock of the City" which stands between the river and the main city loop highway. If you like hiking and hunting, Dhëmbeli mountain above Përmet, at a height of 2050 metres, is the perfect place to go. Don't forget to take a dive in the chilly waters of the Vjosa. The river is very beautiful, particularly after heavy rain: a torrent rushing over large boulders.

Whereas in other parts of Southern Albania, especially Gjirokastër, grapes are used to make the ubiquitous and often-superb Raki (Grappa), Përmet is famous for its raki made from plums, like the Slivovitsa of Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia etc.

And whereas in the last days of Gjirokastriote Enver Hoxha the formerly-closed fortress of Gjirokastër hosted a genuine international Folk Festival, it is now Përmet which is a centre of musical excellence.

 

 

From Kim Burton's notes to the Globestyle recording of Laver Bariu"Songs of the City of Roses" :

"When one man travels, he's simply alone; when two travel, they quarrel; if three travel, they will sing."

"So they say in Përmet, where in the summer the roses bloom, the blistering white peak of Dhembel climbs high above and the lazily muscled river Vjosa pushes its green way through the gorge below. And music is everywhere in the town. It spills from the doorways, floats through the mountain night. A young composer carefully picks out the ragged path of his inspiration on a recalcitrant and untuned piano; a group of tipsy doctors, birthday celebrants, suddenly hush, sway their heads together and embark on a rich and complex polyphonic song of astonishing delicacy; small children cluster about an old man strumming a battered mandolin, who gravely directs the patterns of their dance; behind the faded shutters of a house in a side street the sounds of clarinet and accordion sway above the beat of a huge tambourine. Two voices enter, entwine. A third takes up a low drone beneath. Time seems to slow, a deep and ancient stillness commands the narrow lanes. A sudden shout breaks the spell. The musicians stop. The clarinet plays a phrase, repeats it. The music resumes.

"The Master is rehearsing his group. Usta (The Master - compare the Hindu title Ustad) Laver Bariu still lives in Përmet, where he was born into a family of musicians in 1929. His father, Bari Nurka, was a singer who accompanied himself on the llaute, and the young Laver grew up hearing its rhythms as he lay in bed in the evenings. His musical ambitions started early. At first he wanted to play the gajde, the local form of the bagpipe, but his family was too poor to be able to afford to buy one. The boy decided to make his own.

"'First of all I went from my home to the butcher's shop, and there I took a piece of offal that was being thrown away. I washed it and dried it in the sun, and blew it up just like a gajde, and made some little reedpipes, and stuck them in. Well, this was my gajde, It smelt very bad but I didn't care. I kept it hidden at home, in secret. My mother said 'what is that dreadful smell?' but she couldn't find it. Then one day my father came home and found me playing, shouted at me...and that was the end of my gajde. But my father could see that I was going to be a musician, so he started to teach me the llaute."'

"Although he was learning to play, he still didn't have an instrument of his own, so he continued to experiment. His next home-made instrument was a drum-kit, or xhez (from the English "jazz") as it called in Albania.

"'I got some wood and bits of metal and made a bass drum and played that with my foot while I banged on the table at the same time, to make sound like a xhez. Then I made a def for myself, which was better, and I used to play all the time at home.'

"On Good Friday of 1939 Italy invaded Albania. German troops followed, and the war brought privation and destruction to Permet - the town was burnt four times, once by the Italians, and three times by the Germans - as well as the honour of hosting the first Anti-fascist National Liberation Congress in 1944.

 

"To Laver Bariu, by the one of the ironies that war breeds, it brought the start of a musical career.

"'When the war between Italy and Greece began a Greek clarinetist came to town, and he became our neighbor. He couldn't work because he didn't have any other musicians with him except his brother who was a llautar, but when he heard me practicing in the house he took me to play the jazz and def, and my father to play the llaute, and made a little band. We used to play at weddings and there was a club in town where we used to play every night. I listened to him playing the clarinet every night and I got a little crazy. I told my father 'Buy me a clarinet or I'll drown myself in the river!' He could see I was serious, and so I started to play clarinet a bit.'

"By the age of 16 Laver Bariu had become known as a llautar, and it was in this role that he travelled to Korce, the largest town of Toskeria and an important gathering place for itinerant musicians. Here he played with, among others, the influential clarinetist Vangjel Leskoviku, practicing the clarinet when he was able.
"I was young, my mind was fresh, I listened to all the pieces I could, learned them by heart and when I returned to Permet I started a proper group with my friends. And I've led a group for 45 years." In those years Laver Bariu has become one of the best known and most respected musicians in the country. To watch him rehearsing his musicians is to watch a musical intelligence of a very high order at work. There is no doubt who is in charge as he takes up the llaute to illustrate a point of harmony or rhythm, or explains the subtle difference between one type of glissando and another. A mistake is greeted with impatient banging on the table and a repeated explanation, only when he is satisfied does the musician merit an approving cry of "Bravo!", or the highest accolade of all, "Brenda!" (Inside!). Let the last word be his:
"I've played all over Albania, I've been given prizes and diplomas, they made me an Artist Of Merit, all these things. But I never went to school: I still can't read a note of music. I may not be so young, my children are grown up and I don't need to work. But music is music and I would be ashamed to not play."

"The music of Permet stems from the confluence of several different musical currents, for it is the meeting place of Laberia and Toskeria. The Labs and Tosks, inheritors of ancient tribal names, are the two main ethnic sub-groups of southern Albania, and although the music of the Labs is tough and rhythmically powerful, while the Tosks sing more freely and fluidly, both groups share one striking characteristic. Unlike most European folk music their songs are truly polyphonic, with more than one voice sounding simultaneously, each moving independently above a vocal drone called the iso. The style, which is very ancient, is found beyond the borders of Albania in areas where there is, or was once, an Albanian population. It can be heard in northwestern Greece and southwestern Macedonia, where it is sung by the local Greek and Vlach population as well as Albanians, and even further afield, in southern Italy, where the Arbëreshi live, descendants of Albanians that emigrated after the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans in the late fifteenth century.

Towards the end of the 19th century small instrumental groups called saze appeared in the towns of Epirus - what is now southern Albania and northwestern Greece. Sometimes accompanying singers and sometimes playing purely instrumental music for dancing or for listening, they had, and have, no rigidly fixed instrumentation, but are typically led by a clarinet. A violin often takes the role of second voice or provides a gently rocking ostinato. Harmonic and rhythmic elements are provided by a llaute, a deep-bellied fretted lute. Variations of this basic pattern range from a rough and ready village band of clarinet, accordion and snare drum to a group like the one on this recording, which has a second clarinettist instead of a violin, and adds an accordion (which is played by Laver Bariu's brother, Lefter Nurka) and a def, a large tambourine.

Although the def is widely used throughout the south of the country and further abroad, the people of Përmet credit Laver Bariu with introducing it to instrumental groups in the town, where it used to be played exclusively by women. The richness and complexity of the vocal music is echoed by two of the instrumental pieces on this recording. They are kaba, rhapsody, part composed and part improvised musical meditations that draw upon a set of phrases and figures that are combined and recombined to produce a music that at the same time sounds both ancient and freshly minted. Laver Bariu is celebrated as a player of kaba, and so many of the younger generation have followed his lead that it's possible to talk of a "Laver style" which has spread far beyond Përmet and its immediate area. The melodies are ornamented with swoops, glides and growls of an almost vocal quality, in a manner that suggests a debt to the very widespread custom of singing funeral laments at the deathbed or the graveside. The musicians often refer to kaba as "music with tears" (Pjesa Vajtimi) and tell a story of its origins: 'Once a clarinetist was married to a wife that he loved very much, but the day came when she had to die. As she lay dying she called her husband to her and spoke to him. 'When I am dead,' she told to him, 'do not weep for me, but let your clarinet weep for me instead.' And so when she was, he played a lament for her.' This was the first kaba. ""

 

with acknowledgement to the Laver Bariu website
http://www.albania-info.com/laveri.html (now no longer exist)

 

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