contemporary modal music
Cretan lyra with sympathetic strings
The term contemporary modal music was coined by Ross Daly to describe the body of new compositions made today by musicians working within the modal traditions found mainly, though not only, between North-West Africa and Western China. In his words, it is “the continuation of the procedure of modal composing through a very free perspective,” and not at all about “preserving traditions.”
A mode (a makam, raag, dastgâh or ēchos) is not just a scale. It is a family of melodic phrases with its own character, recognizable at once to anyone who knows the tradition, and it has to be absorbed rather than memorized. As Daly puts it, you don't get to know people by studying the structure of their bones, and you don't get to know the modes by studying scales and intervals.
The lyra with sympathetic strings was developed by Ross Daly in the 1980s with the luthier Nikolaos Bras. It returns the Cretan lyra to an older shape and way of holding it, and adds sympathetic strings drawn from Indian and Afghan instruments and the Bulgarian gadulka. They ring along with whatever is played on the three bowed strings. [placeholder: anything about your own instrument and its maker]
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