San ta marmara tis polis - “Like the marbles of The City” - is a beautiful old Greek song from Istanbul probably composed some time in the late Ottoman period. It is from the urban folk tradition, and therefore anonymous, and exists in numerous versions. The earliest commercial recording I am aware of was made in 1925 by Marika Papagkika, who had emigrated to the United States and ran a Greek-Turkish “café-aman” near 8th Ave in New York.
The song breathes and throbs in every note and pulse the Ottoman ‘common life’ of Istanbul: a city where religious festivals, like Bayram or Easter, were often shared among citizens of different faiths and where the “millet” system (from the Arabic for “nation” - millah), meant that people were in principle free to follow the laws of their communities – Muslim Sharia law, Christian Canon law or Jewish Halakha.
The music of the song tells the same story of integration and respect for identity. It is in a slow karsilamas rhythm (9 slow beats: 2+2+2+3), exactly the same as the Turkish karşılama. The melody is a cross between the fourth of the eight Byzantine Octoechoi (Ὀκτώηχοi) scales, and the Turkish Uşşâk Makam. Music does not lie. The truth it tells here is of an intimate, interwoven common life.
