The recent loss of Marcos F. Dragoumis has brought sadness to those who knew him. The great musicologist passed away a few days ago at the age of eighty-nine. Scion of a historical family from Vogatsikos, from Soi Dragoumis, whose roots go back many generations, “he was who he was not because of origin or coincidence, but because of himself.” He left a valuable work in the field of musicology, devoted his life to traditional chants, especially those of Asia Minor. This posthumous retrograde journey through his marvelous orbit is meant to honor his contributions to modern Greek culture. He himself compiled the history of his life in 2010 in a “small volume”, which he handed out from hand to hand. Thus, from this material I draw some elements-stations of life, captured by the autobiographer in his own way.

“I was born in late 1934 across from Zappeio and grew up in a house with high ceilings. The night before I went out, I think I took her to the opera. Maybe that’s why I loved music so much from a very young age. […] My father made me use the word “curtain” instead of “curtain”, “bath” instead of “bath”, and “tie” instead of “tie”. But Marcos did not follow the instructions. “The spirit of contradiction”, he rebels from a tender childhood in a normative family environment.

In 1946, he successfully passed his college exams and, thanks to his excellent teachers such as Minos Dunias, he developed many new interests. After graduating from school, he opens himself to the world. He discovers the classics by collecting 78 rpm records: Mahler, Bruckner and also Berlioz. The words of Manos Hadjidakis are a milestone in his young career: “You will never achieve anything if you do not follow your true calling.” Twenty-year-old Marcos does not know exactly what he will do in the art of sounds. As a second-year student at the Faculty of Law, he drops everything and, realizing his artistic nature, leaves for France in 1956. There he attends summer music seminars.

A period of great discoveries is coming. Walking around Monastiraki, he comes across a leaflet about haman. Later he turns to folk song and rebetiko. Impressed by Egon Welles’ study “Byzantine Music and Hymnography”. However, his most important, albeit surreal, meeting takes place in 1957. Visiting Melpo Merlier, where he plays jazz piano and boogie-woogie, she suggests something quite different: to take up Pontic chants, recordings of the 1930s. that he is ready to “get to work” right now. However, the Greek musicologist has something else in mind. Since the recording of folk music requires, in addition to a “good ear”, solid knowledge in the field of church music, he introduces Simon Karas to the neophyte Markos, who has been working on the Byzantine organ for two years now. He studied at the Piraeus and Athens conservatories. In 1960 he joined the staff of the Melpos and Octavius ​​Merlier Foundation. He participates in field research (Samothraki, Constantinople, Evia, Aegina) and later publishes the first musicological essay.

Oxford, Lincoln College, where he would study on a British Council Scholarship (1962-1964), would be the culmination of his academic career. The teacher of Egon Welles instills in him a passion for the music of the Middle East (Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian) and brings the student closer to European, inseparable from Eastern music. Exploring archives and libraries, as well as listening to live music, he begins to build his musical education. He returns in 1964 and heads the Musical Folklore Archive (MLA), leading an “introverted” collection of Asia Minor material into a new era. Since the 1980s, the process of publishing and publishing the archival treasury has been fruitful. In collaboration with Thanasis Moraitis, ten musicological books and twenty digital discs have been put on sale.

Marcos Dragoumis was genuine. He didn’t pretend to be anyone else. Neither an aristocrat, nor a commoner, nor a proud man, nor a hypocrite. He wasn’t serious – he was serious. He was fully aware of his historical origin. This delicate balance with the past has become a genealogical burden, heavy but also privileged; privileged, but also tragic. “He who lifts large stones drowns.”

However, he did not drown. Genuinely melancholy, overwhelmed with vain emotions, looking for a lonely way to face the hardships of birth, he resisted the flow of life – affirmation, creativity. Use humor. Not as an external appendage, but as a deeply subversive approach to the world. Explosive, amorous, dreamy, he flirted with life itself all the time. He loved. This did not prevent him from being present in reality, “in the agony of this place for life.” His breadth of views determined his scientific behavior. Behind the playful façade, he had a solid scientific background that kept him from swerving into a one-dimensional, self-referential reading of the phenomena of tradition or fixating on a closed system to please.

And something personal. On May 19, 2022, we visited him with Leonidas Empirikos in Kifisia. He greeted us directly and directly, in full readiness, watching us tenderly with deep eyes. The meeting will last twenty minutes, he said. And so it happened. He himself notified us when the time was right: his internal clock set the duration of the conversation. He remained the master to the end.

On January 23, 2023, after the funeral ceremony, images of our forty years of coexistence at the Center for the Study of Asia Minor came to my mind unbidden. Leaving the cemetery, I assumed that some would whisper “With your photograph”, a heartbreaking Asia Minor obituary, others would sing excerpts from Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony, and I turned to remember the notes and words. Bob Dylan from Forever Young…

* Mrs. Ioanna Petropulu is a historian.