Digenis and Death - Epic Byzantine Music

Music & vocals by Farya Faraji, poem by Kostis Palamas, artwork by Dimitris Skourtelis, tsambouna by Dimitris Athanasopoulos, lyra by Illias de Sutter Ntavlidis. Please note that this isn’t reconstructed music from the medieval era, only modern music. Whilst many of my previous songs used elements of Cretan music into a broader, pan-Greek kind of sound, I really wanted to write a piece of music entirely Cretan in style, and pay homage to the genre of Akritic songs, one of the oldest forms of Greek traditional music dating back to the Middle-Ages, popular in Crete, where songs would be written about the Akrites, frontiersmen who guarded the outer limits of the Byzantine Empire. Most Akritic songs tend to deal with the figure of Digenis Akritas, the Hercules of Medieval Greek literature, who in the legends, is a half Cappadocian Greek, half Arab Akrites who performs legendary deeds in battle. This poem was written by Kostis Palamas, a prominent Greek poet of the 20th century, and it is hi