DESCRIPTION:
Michalis Tzouganakis performing a series of "syrtos" tunes while singing "mantinades". Video from the show "Stin Ygeia Mas", which was aired on 19th of November 2005 on NET channel (Greece)..
Official website:
http://www.tzouganakis.eu/
Facebook:
http://tzouganakis.hyves.nl/

Michalis Tzouganakis has been born on July 31, 1969, in Beringen, Belgium. His parents came from Crete, region Sfakia, and together with his brothers and sisters they returned to Crete when Michalis was about nine years old. He started to play the lute when he was about two and a half years old.
When he is thirteen he meets the famous lute master Leonidas Klados, who is from that time on his Lute teacher.

Copy from:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TrustMeIAmADoctor

Cretan music:
The earliest documented music on Crete comes from Ancient Greece. Cretan music like most traditional Greek began as product of ancient, Byzantine, western and eastern inspirations. The main instrument lyra, is closely related to the bowed Byzantine lyra. The Persian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh (d. 911) of the 9th Century, in his lexicographical discussion of instruments, cited the Byzantine lyra (Greek: λύρα - lūrā), as similar to the Arabic rebab and a typical Byzantine instrument along with the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre) and the salandj. Bowed instruments descendants of the Byzantine bowed lyra (lūrā) have continued to be played in post-Byzantine regions until the present day with few changes, for example the Calabrian Lira in Italy, the Cretan Lyra, the Gadulka in Bulgaria, and the Armudî kemençe (or πολίτικη λύρα) in Istanbul, Turkey.
(My dance channel Gadoelka is from "Gadulka", and I am proud that it is related to Cretan music, though I did not know this when I started the channel and chose the name..
http://www.youtube.com/Gadoelka )
More about Cretan music:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Crete

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