The Pangyri--Neo Koroni

The weather began to change in the past few days. As the locals say, the air was coming from North Africa, which is not too far distant, and that it was full of skoni (dust) from the desert. Today’s afternoon downpour, though short-lived, created a pleasant siesta time, and cleared out the “old air.” Even an hour of napping offsets the woefully inadequate night-time slumber. Going to bed at 3 a.m. and waking at 7 a.m., night after night, doesn’t fit the bill for restful sleep.

After siesta, Jonathan ran up the mountain to the little house, where he met Yiota and her brother Taki. Taki has ushered us along in our quest to make this old spitaki a reality. His father, Yioryio, on the other hand, has been the driving force behind this project: the architect, the engineer, the chief mastoras, and for this will be always indebted to him. For his own children, he has restored (in the case of his son) and built anew (in the case of his daughter) remarkable works of architecture—traditional stone houses with terraces, walkways, and commanding, uninterrupted views of the ocean. Jonathan’s respect for this man and his breadth of knowledge increases every day. He is a master organic gardener, pastoralist, builder, and font of local lore and legend.

Yioryio stopped by the house at 8 p.m., just as a crescent moon was falling behind the sunset on a bizarrely flat, pink ocean—a singular vision—and he invited Jonathan to join him and his wife at a panayri. In the broadest terms, a panayiri is a “celebration,” one that is connected to an Orthodox saint revered by the particular village in which it occurs. The village in question was Neo Koroni, over the mountain in the direction of Kalamata.

Here is Messinia, there is a panagyri somewhere nearly every week, and it draws people from the surrounding villages. Life truly is a celebration.

We arrived at 9:30 to a village overpopulated with merry-makers. Rows of stalls were set up on the maze of village roads surrounding the central square, or plateia, manned by Greeks, gypsies (Roma), Senegalese and Nigerians, and a smattering of Chinese. For Jonathan, who has spent a lifetime learning to speak the Greek of his grandparents, it is a bit unnerving and disorienting to communicate with so many others for whom Greek has become a lingua franca.

The goods were mostly cheap, plasticy knock-offs—clothing, gadgets, tools, and toys for children—but the energy, the dickering over prices, had a positively Eastern quality. The bazaar is alive and well in souther Messinia.

The three of us wandered about through the thick warren of stalls, dickering mostly for items that we never purchased in the end, and then found ourselves in the thick rush of the plateia, where a musical group from Kalamata played traditional Messinian music, including the typical Kalamatiano, which brought hundreds off their feet and into the dance circle. The ensemble was painfully amplified—a bouzouki, a guitar, an electric violin, accordion, drums, and piano. The scene was vibrant, and by 1 a.m. the dancing was progressing with unabated energy.

It is a remarkable sight, so utterly unfamiliar to Westerners, to have multiple generations mingling: boys, girls, men, and women, old and young, thoroughly intoxicated with the pleasure of each other’s presence, full of joy and laughter--a common cultural heritage that includes music, religion, dance, foodways, and mythology. As Jonathan’s uncle Yianni told him recently on Spetses island: All that a Greek needs is a glass of ouzo, a friend or two (παρέα, or "company") and a little music, and life’s cares melt away. And so it was in Neo Koroni.

It would be an understatement to say that life is "difficult" in Greece--punishing austerity at the hands of the European Central Bank and the so-called "troika" is positively damning--but people still manage to find that a singular joy of life that eludes so many in the West. It drives the Germans, especially, a little crazy. They are largely footing the bill for Greece's week-by-week survival, and some disbelief reigns among them: how can these people be so happy and carefree while their economy collapses around them? With unemployment now at 26 percent, the highest in the EU, and decades of economy misery ahead of them, the Greeks still find a way to celebrate. Every day, and every night.

Each player was highly talented, but the bouzouki player and the violinist stand out. Jonathan’s bandmates should pay attention to one of the videos—the melody sounds alarmingly like our own “Scully’s Reel.”

What follows is a sampling of video taken at the panayiri in Neo Koroni.