Greek folk music is a beautiful blend of influences from East and West

Music in Greece presents a vast diversity due the creative assimilation by the Greeks of different influences from the Eastern and Western cultures of Asia and Europe. Music is an important aspect of Greek daily life and has a long history going back to antiquity, when poetry, dancing and music were inseparable and held an important place in the everyday life of the ancient Greeks.

It is worth mentioning that the Greek tragedy used music as one of its component elements. In the 400 years of Ottoman occupation, Greek music was influenced by the sounds of the East. Greek music per se got reborn only in the 19th century with the opera compositions of Nikolaos Mantzaros (1795-1872) and Spiros Samaras (1861-1917). This kind of popular songs was actually born in the Greek islands.

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