In Epirus of northwest Greece,folk songs are mostly pentatonic and polyphonic,sung by both male and female singers.Distinctive songs include mirolóyia (mournful tunes) vocals with skáros accompaniment and tis távlas (drinking songs).The clarinet is the most prominent folk instrument in Epirus, used to accompany dances, mostly slow and heavy, like the menousis, fisouni, podhia, sta dio, sta tria, zagorisios, kentimeni, koftos, yiatros and tsamikos. Epirus (Greek Ήπειρος, Ípiros) is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in south-eastern Europe. ... Two soprano clarinets: a Bâ™­ clarinet (left) and an A clarinet (right, with no mouthpiece). ... Koftos is a dance that is danced in the following regions: Thessaly, Epirus and Central Greece. ...

The polyphonic song of Epirus constitutes one of the most interesting musical forms, not only for the east Mediterranean and the Balkans, but also for the worldwide repertoire of the folk polyphony. The Mediterranean Sea is an intercontinental sea positioned between Europe to the north, Africa to the south and Asia to the east, covering an approximate area of 2. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Folk can refer to a number of different things: It can be short for folk music, or, for folksong, or, for folklore; it may be a word for a specific people, tribe, or nation, especially one of the Germanic peoples; it might even be a calque on the related German... Polyphony is a musical texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony). ...

The origin of this polyphonic form, in spite of the fact that the research hasn’t reached certain conclusions yet, is considered to be very old (possibly, even pre-Hellenic). The melodies of polyphonic songs, including some more songs of Epirus and Thessaly, are the only ones in Greece that have preserved the pentatonic scale without semitones (a scale consisted of five tones without semitones). According to some musicologists, this scale is identified with the Doric way of ancient Greeks, the par excellence Hellenic harmony. Except from its scale, what pleads for the very old origin of the kind is its vocal, collective, rhetorical and modal character. Map showing Thessaly periphery in Greece Thessaly (Θεσσαλια; modern Greek Thessalía; see also List of traditional Greek place names) is one of the 13 peripheries of Greece, and is further sub-divided into 4 prefectures. ... In music, a pentatonic scale is a scale with five notes per octave. ... Doric, a synonym of Dorian, may refer to any of the following: The Dorians, one of the ancient Hellenic races, Doric Greek, the dialect of the former, the Doric order and its distinctive Doric column, in ancient Greek architecture, the Dorian mode in music, also called the Doric mode, or...

See also

• Polyphonic song of Epirus
• Music of Greece