Sun-Singed Wings: Mild Mannered Rebel Rises From Aegean Roots to Psychedelic, Modal Rock on Ear to the Sky A little over a decade ago, American oud player and singer Mavrothi Kontanis had a breakthrough. Though Kontanis was steeped in the Byzantine and Ottoman sounds of his Northeastern Greek heritage, songs just kept coming to him in English. The lyrics-personal, defiant, intense-ran against the more roots-oriented grain of Kontanis' usual work. But as indie rock-style statements, they made perfect sense. Like Icarus, the mythological wing-building young man who dared to graze the sun, Kontanis dares, in a soft-spoken, deeply reflective way, to soar and struggle, with his part-acoustic, part-electric band Mild Mannered Rebel. Summoning eerie images of constantly peering icons and moonlit longing, of hope-filled nights and a spiteful sun, Kontanis and his group's debut album Ear to the Sky seamlessly blend the modes, rhythms, and instruments of the Aegean with the drive, grit, and tumultuous inner world of rock. In these songs I'm telling my own little stories in the most honest way I can, using the mix of instruments and sounds that feel most real to me, even if at first glance they don't seem to go together, reflects Kontanis. Sometimes home is an oud solo sliding out of a scratchy old 78 recording. Other times it's driving with the windows down and the college radio station playing just a little too loud. I'm both of those guys, so my songs are too. The musical world that shapes Kontanis' stories varies widely from the typical indie rocker's-and from the background of the average American connoisseur of Balkan or Near Eastern music as well. Growing up in Pennsylvania in a Greek immigrant family, Kontanis' listening spanned rock, Western Classical, and occasional bursts of Greek music. It wasn't until the young musician met a Greek oud player at a local event, however, that he found his musical calling. It looked like the moon, Kontanis recalls, remembering his first glimpse of the nuanced, round lute played across a broad swath of Eurasia. Soon, Kontanis was studying oud with Greek, Turkish, Armenian and Arabic masters. Thanks to my exposure to the oud, I was flipped around from being this ethnocentric, isolated Greek-American, Kontanis notes. I had my eyes opened, and now find myself on the other side of that spectrum. The oud has been good for my soul. The oud is not usually associated with Greek music- that is, it's the lesser-known music of Northeastern Greece (bordering Turkey). Both of Kontanis' parents hailed from the region, and the centuries of cultural interchange among the many different ethnic and religious groups there meant musical ideas and approaches mixed and merged (a powerful sound that resonates in the album's more traditional moments, like the opening instrumental Flight of Ikaros). One aspect of this cultural merger has profoundly affected the way Kontanis writes songs and plays music: Makam. More than simply a system of scales, melodies, and ornaments, Kontanis argues, Makam is a way of speaking with melodic movement. When you can learn to guide that movement, you can convince the listener of what you are sharing with them, even if you don't always understand exactly what it is you're trying to say. These rising and falling melodies began making their way from traditional tunes into Kontanis' own songs (particularly the dark waltz You Smiled So Sweetly, written in memory of his father). After an apprenticeship of sorts in Greek underground clubs, where Kontanis witnessed both stellar music and creepy revelry, he began drifting away from his father's wishes, who insisted Kontanis avoid the tough life of a professional musician and become a doctor instead. Kontanis just couldn't do it; he pursued music, despite his father's warnings. He related to Icarus, the son who did not heed his father and flew too close to the sun. The mythical figure, with his bold attempt and subsequent fall, frames the album. Kontanis soon found himself working second shift at a cable factory after deferri
