Christopher C. King is a Grammy-winning producer and musicologist living in Virginia, who explores the unique music of Greece’s Epirus region in his first book “The Lament From Epirus”. A few days before the presentation of his book at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., King discusses with ‘Greece in America’ his inspiration and his experiences traveling in Greece, while conducting research for his work.  

You have described Epirus as a "musical biosphere" and have previously praised the clarinet players of the region. Could you describe the moment that Epirus came to justify this term for you? 
 
The moment that this happened was indeed an epiphany. I was attending my first panigyri (local festival) in the village of Vitsa, drinking Zagorian tsipouro with my Sarakatsanos friend George Charisis, and dancing. George began to explain the ancient pagan roots of the music and dance in Epirus. And that is when I realized that the "musical biosphere" of Epirus was largely intact and sustaining the life force of music here. I mean, I had heard this "musical biosphere" in the old 78 rpm discs but I had no idea that it still thrived in certain parts of Greece, especially in Epirus. But then it came to me...just like that. At that moment I perceived music as an organic entity within its unique environment.
 

In your book, you set out to discover why we make music and end up discovering how music is a tool meant to help us with therapy and survival. What was a significant time when music played a therapeutic role during your journey?   
 
Once again, this happened during my first visit to Epirus, in Vitsa. During the panigyri, I was encouraged to dance the piece "Samantakas" and at the very end of the dance the clarinet player, Thomas Haliyiannis played his clarinet "into me." That is to say, he left the group of musicians and played the clarinet directly into my ear. I entered into some ineffable emotional and psychological state, probably best understood as "musical healing" or therapy because when I left the dance, I felt as if everything within me had been rearranged in the right way. Every time I return to Epirus, I always ask the musicians to "play into me."
 
The "Lament from Epirus" constitutes your literary debut. However, you are also a Grammy-winning producer and musicologist. What were you able to draw from your previous experiences in music production while writing the book? 
 
My background in music theory and musicology provided me with tools to help process what I was hearing and how the music relates to the complex history and culture of the Epirotes. However, the book is by no means "technical." It is much more of a narrative travelogue and memoir, where I reflect on how folk music functioned within smaller isolated communities and how I discovered this still viable function in the music of northwestern Greece. That it still lives there.  
  

What does the future hold for you and the "Lament from Epirus"? Perhaps a collaboration with Greek research institutions and another visit to the region?

I have very precise long-term plans regarding the future, this book, and my work. First, I intend to move both myself and my archive of Greek 78 rpm discs and physical collections to Epirus. I have wanted to live there ever since I started researching and writing this book and I travel to Epirus several times a year. Second, I am working on collaborating with the University of Ioaninna through the musicologist George Kokkonis and the ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑ ΗΠΕΙΡΩΤΙΚΩΝ ΜΕΛΕΤΩΝ to find a suitable building to house the archive and develop a robust Archive of Epirotic Music, which can actively collect recordings and artifacts of this largely intangible cultural heritage. I plan to make this my life's work and I want to give back to Epirus as much as what it has given me. Third, I'm writing a new non-fiction book about murder ballads both in Greece and in the southern United States. I've only scratched the surface of this music with this first book.

CHRISTOPHER C. KING, a Grammy-winning producer, musicologist, and prominent 78 rpm record collector, has been profiled in the New York Times Magazine and the Washington Post, and has written for the Paris Review and the Oxford American. He lives in Virginia.