ZEIBEKIKO
Zeibekiko is a traditional Greek dance with a rhythmic pattern of 9/8 (or 9/4). It is danced by one person, who improvises the movements to express their emotions. It is mostly danced by men and gets to be quite acrobatic at times.
As a dance and a rhytm Zeibekiko always fascinated me. It was part of my favorite Rebetiko subculture in Greece (the Greek blues). I decided to write my own version of Zeibekiko. Its specific rhythmic pattern of both 9/4 and 9/8 was a base. For the melody lines I used the Greek scale Hijaz, which is a very popular mode in Greek music and especially in the underground Rebetiko music. I wrote two melodies, each one has a different character. The melodies have Greek and Arabic flavor but I mixed in a lot of syncopation (more typical in jazz and Latin music).The third element is a base for improvised solos and here I used a „mathematical groove“ so popular in today’s contemporary jazz. It expresses how the numbers of repetitions make us want to stop or continue ( Henry Threadgill’s theory).The piece turned out to have a very mesmorizing quality.
elektrakurtis 