Playing so much music over the summer has fired us up to keep it going now we’re back home. I’ve picked up the lavta again, I’ve restrung my huge Irish bouzouki (Marama the massive mando), and I’m learning new mandola repertoire as well. Olga is amassing great lists of tunes and songs she’d like to learn, and we’re starting to work our way through them.

The new strings on Marama are an experiment. I ordered a whole bunch of guitar strings of various weights, and I’m trying out combinations. First attempt has the two low courses in octaves, pairing a wound acoustic guitar string with a plain steel string, and the high courses on unison steel strings. I’ve got it tuned (low to high) DAEA, and the string guages are .045" and .040" wound, and .018" and .016" for the plain. (She has a 26 1/2" scale length, she’s truly enormous). I like the shivery, silvery effect of the light strings and the octave courses: it’s encouraging me to play laouto style for Greek stuff, and also pulls towards Scandinavian nyckelharpa tunes.

Here are some of the new ones we’re keen on. (No recordings of us playing: I don’t know if that sentence should end with “yet” or with “ever”.)

Triandafilaki m’ kokkino (My little red rose)

This one I might even someday dare to try to learn to sing.

Me gelasan ta poulia (The birds tricked me)

This one I play on lavta. It has truly spectacular lyrics. Loosely translated:

The swallows tricked me, they told me I would live forever.
So I built my house taller than the others, with eight floors and forty windows.
I stand at the window and admire the view over the fields,
And I see Death approaching on his horse.

Ενα βράδυ βγήκε ο Χάρος (One night Death came out)

This has a great refrain: “eat, drink, be merry: whoever goes to the underworld will never return”.

Krivo Polska

This one is by Hazelius Hedin, from their album “Sunnan”. They play it better.

Da Lounge Bar

I know this also from Hazelius Hedin (the same, glorious, album) but apparently it’s written by Annlaug Børsheim. This one I’m trying out on the big mando.