Music of Cyprus

The music of Cyprus includes a variety of classical, folk and popular genres. Recent trends have seen the rise of Ayia Napa, a resort, as a home for club music, similar in its evolution to that of the island Ibiza.

Cyprus changed hands numerous times prior to the Medieval era, and was an important outpost of Christianity and European civilization during the Crusades. The tumultuous history introduced a variety of styles, including music from Armenia, France, Turkey, and Greece. The island's peak as a cultural capital of Europe occurred from 1359 to 1432.

During that peak, Pierre I de Lusignan made a three year tour of Europe, bringing with him an entourage of musicians that so impressed Charles V in Rheims that he donated 80 francs in gold to them. On his return to Cyprus, Pierre I brought with him the French Ars Nova and, later, the Ars Subtilior. French musicians became well established in Cyprus, and the city of Nicosia became a capital of the Ars Subtilior style.

Janus I de Lusignan saw Cypriot music evolve into its own variety of music. His daughter, Anna, brought a manuscript after her marriage to Louis, Count of Geneva, which contained 159 folios with over two hundred polyphonic compositions, both sacred and secular. The manuscript is now contained within the National Library of Turin.

Classical music

Notable composers include:

• Yannis Kyriakides 1969 Cyprus-The Netherlands
• Solon Michaelides, 1905 - 1979 Cyprus-Greece
• Michalis Chrysanthou
• Nicolas Economou

and women, some of them at tempo different from 9/8. Traditional music is modal based on the makams.

Both Turkish and Greek Cypriots use the violin as the main solo instrument, accompanied by laouto (form of lute) for Greek Cypriots and ud for Turkish Cypriots. Accordion, percussion and penny whistle(pithkiavli) are also used.

Rock / Metal

Popular throughout Cyprus with groups like Armaggedon (Greek Cypriot) and SOS (Turkish Cypriot).

Recent rise in Metal activities, with a host of events and metal festivals taken place in the summer of 2006. Bands like Armageddon, Winters Verge, Blynd, Triple Jam, Amnesia, Dementor, Crest Fallen, Arkhon, Inferno, Amaranth, Dystopia, Skotoma, and a host of many other bands make up the Cyprus metal scene, playing a range of mainly Metal, Thrash Metal, Power Metal and Death Metal, which with the help of club RED, Rockarolla Bar and the Metal community in general is continually expanding its horizons and gaining popularity amongst Cyprus's youth (and not only).

Metal Festival Flyer: *[1]

A host of live bands also play at many of Cyprus's clubs, playing mainly greek rock covers. A near complete list of Nicosias live clubs can be found here: *[2]

Reggae

Haji Mike is the leading reggae artists in Cyprus. Beginning his recording career in london in 1990 he was featured on Andy Kershaw and John Peel and appeared at WOMAD and WOMEX. in 1992-3 his music took off in Cyprus and he repatriated and worked on Radio and TV doing music shows. He has released three solo LP's and formed Olive Tree Music in 2004 with Turkish Cypriot poet Zeki Ali. The pair teamed up with several local musicians and worked with US producer Stand Out Selector forming a group together called Poetz4Peace. Poetz played the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival in USA and various events in Cyprus. Haji Mike also worked with Hmiskoubria, Izit, Simon Booth, Sugar and Harri Kakouli.

More recently the first reggae sound system was set up by Roots Crew, who worked closely with Haji Mike to launch the sound.

Hardcore/Emo

Recently in Cyprus there has been an outbreak of emo and hardcore music, this scene grows bigger with new bands formed and a huge scene of emokids in larnaca and nicosia. The most successful emocore band is cyprus at the moment is ScarletSnowPrelude, which mix hardcore, emo and ambient into their songs.

Hip-Hop

The first attempt at rap music was by a group in Cyprus called Vaomeni Esso (Βαομένοι Έσσο which translates as Locked Indoors) who were formed circa 1993.They MCed mainly in Cypriot Greek and performed in public, but they never circulated recordings of their songs. Around the same time, 1993, Haji Mike a reggae MC blended dancehall with traditional Cypriot melodies. While most of his music is reggae - with some left field hip hop thrown in the mix - as an MC he became very popular and was the first person from Cyprus to release songs independently on his own label with such success.

One of the members of 'Locked Indoors', Yiannis Wu, released two solo albums as Mastermind (Τελευταίες Μέρες (Last Days) in 1997 and Απαγορευμένες Γνώσεις (Forbidden Knowledge) in 1999). Both of them were released by All Records. He also released an independent LP, Αόρατος Πόλεμος (Invisible War) in 2004. On these albums, Wu raps in Standard Greek not in the Cypriot dialect. Invisible War marked a big change in Wu's work content wise - with heavy apocalyptic messages about religion, the world and doomsday.

HCH (Hardcore Heads) were a crew of breakers, writers and MCs. Some of the members formed a hip-hop group, also called HCH, in 2001, and they circulated their first EP totalyy DiY in 2003. The lyrics alternate between Standard Greek and Cypriot dialect, and are critical of capitalism, the military and the music industry - and hence their name HardCoreHeads. The MCs are Charos, ON, k Gamma, Pico, Zak and Magos. Magos is also the DJ/producer. It's a shame the HCH did not continue as they were respected far and wide as the first underground hip-hop group to do things for themselves and by themselves.

Ponokefalos (Headache), another member of Vaomeni Esso, took up the mic again in 2002. He also produces beats, and DJs in Nicosia and Limassol. Recently he has released songs on the internet with Kinisiotherapeftis (Kinesiotherapist) in the Cypriot dialect. He also made a mix-CD as a DJ which was sold at events where he played.

Among the oldest crews in Nicosia are IUT (Invisible Underground Threat), FTW (Fore Telling Wisdom or Fuck the World) and CyMafia who have existed since 2000. They have released many songs on the internet, also circulated hand-to-hand by CD. All these three bands/crews together with Lyrical Eye performed live for their first time at Exis Club in Larnaca in 2001-which was the first well-organised live event which had occurred in Cyprus (by that time) by Cypriot MCs.

MB59 - Musdy and Bulmy are two Turkish Cypriot youths who wrote the first song in the Turksih Cypriot Dialect, Genclik Ateshi (Youth Fire) which was released by Olive Tree Music on 'The Cyprus Thing Vol 1' compilation. MB59, Sofoz & Haji Mike also made the first song in Greek - Turkish and English, called 'WorldWIde Ting'.

SOFOZ MC is a new breed of MC in Cyprus with heavy philosophies and at times a fast lyrical flow. From Larnaca Sofoz has not released solo work but has been featured on numerous projects via Olive Tree Music, a non-profit music label formed by Haji Mike and Zeki Ali. He represented Cyprus hip hop in Europe and he had various collaborations with other European and not only rappers. His first album is expected the coming year (2007) and he is open for new collaborations and invitations for concerts. You can contact him an [email protected] . You can find his songs at [3].

POTS (Part of the Soul), made up of Fuck-it (aka Funkit) and Archangelos are a new underground hip hop groups that have released songs on the internet and organised their own gigs. POTS are ruff in style in their own unique way and take their hiphop seriously. Funkit also has one of the gruffest voices to ever grace the mic from Cyprus!

MC X-Force - a young Turkish Cypriot MC who began more as a junglist and drum & bass MC . Featured alongside Sofoz, Funkit, Bulmy, St3phanie, Maximoom, Haji Mike and Zeki Ali on the SOS produced tune 'Music Is Joy'. X-Force has now turned more to hip hop beats.

DNA (Δημιουργοί Νέας Αντίληψης - Creators of New Perception) is a group that released a CD in 2006 through their own discography label, AK SOUNDplan, although they have had songs on the internet for a few years. Two of the MCs of the group, Megahz and Decayer, are in charge of hiphop.com.cy. They have played live in many shows and also at Hip Hop Kemp (Czech Republic) in both 2005 and 2006 (together with Cypriot MC Lyrical Eye, who raps in English).

Sniper - Last but by no means least. The most successful artist in the hip-hop genre to date started out at a very young age as a Dj in Ayia Napa. Sniper soon found himself in the chart topping SoSolidCrew. As an MC and Producer Sniper has achieved more than most musicians from Cyprus over the last 20 years. Currently based Greece, running a studio and label with links to Jay-Z in the USA. Sniper is building a legacy in Cyprus and putting the island on the map of music world wide.

External links

• Ethnomusicology at the University of Cyprus
• Hiphop.com.cy, includes downloads for most of the artists mentioned
• [4]
• [5]
• [6]
• [7]