These are music courses designed for digital nomads and other people who will be staying in Chania for longer term, and they want to spend their free time acquiring new knowledge.

Music is a unique way to communicate and learn the deep roots of a people's culture. The rhythm and percussion of a country's tradition reflect its history and the temperament of its people. Greece has the privilege of a multi-rhythmic tradition dating back to antiquity, through thousands of years of cultural influences from the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans. Each region of our country has completely different music from the others and a huge variety of rhythms, from the simplest to the most complex. Join me on a journey into the history of Greek music and its dances, learning the most important rhythms from each region.

During the courses, participants will learn the basic techniques of traditional Greek percussion and will be taught the most common rhythms in each region of Greece. They will be able to record the rhythms so that they can study them later. 
The courses are devided in 3 sections:
1) Introduction to greek musical instruments and music
2) Τechnic of greek percussion instruments
3) Theory, rhythms and rhythmology

We will conduct our courses in our frontyard at The Garden of Zephyrus Holiday Rentals, as long as the weather is warm. When it gets colder courses will be done inside!

The percussions we will deal with, are Toumbeleki, Daouli, Frame drums and a variety of idiophones like small cymbals, krotala, shakers, e.t.c.

 

Instructor Info

 

Giorgos Gypakis is your host in The Garden of Zephyrus and your instructor during the workshop. He's a multi-instrumentalist musician (percussions, guitar, reeds), poet, songwriter and singer. He studied percussion with Vangelis Karypis, one of the most important percussionists in Greece. As a professional percussionist for the last 30 years, he used to play with folk and rebetiko groups, for traditional cretan dancers as well as for modern, expressional, african and butoh dancers. He wrote and played music for theatrical plays, conjectural performances and dance shows with great greek and international butoh dancers. In the last 3-4 years, having developed his own method of music teaching, he started teaching rythmic improvisation to primary and preschoolers.