We spent this past week in Spilaio Grevenon, a small Greek mountain village, at the Portitsa Festival. The first week of the festival offered workshops, while the weekend was for concerts (although we only stayed for the first, before fleeing the incoming crowds). My wife followed a workshop in polyphonic singing from the fabulous group Stringless; I took lessons in Greek folk guitar from Giannis Papageorgiou. Our eldest son spent the mornings making art with Giorgos Gerontides and in the afternoons joined us for guitar. (The younger spent his week with grandma.)

It’s our first time at such an event since our children were born, and it was a lovely gentle reintroduction. The festival is not very well-known yet, so only a few workshops were offered and the groups were small (unlike e.g. the Music Village in Aghios Lavrentios, which offers almost 20 workshops and attracts great swarming crowds not just for the concerts but for the entire two-week period it runs). This made for an intense learning environment, and a lovely relaxed social atmosphere. We got to know the organisers, a few of the village inhabitants, and our fellow musicians: in the workshops, down at the river, and in evening music sessions after the organised program was over.

The village is very small, but it supports two tavernas (both good, although we did develop a preference) and a coffee place. For groceries you place an order with the baker or the greengrocer who comes by daily. We slept in tents in a small wood just outside the village (mown especially for the festival), and made our daily pilgrimage to the spectacular gorge to swim in the river.

The very first night we were there I was visited by female rhinoceros and stag beetles; my wife had a truly gigantic longhorn beetle crawl onto her yoga mat; and I later spotted a nice large scorpion and got to carry around a male stag beetle for a bit. All this without spending any time actually searching for invert life, and also (isn’t it always the way?) without my camera or macro kit. I’ll be back for a good fossick in the forests!

But mostly we were there for the music, and it was glorious. We both learned huge amounts from our workshops, and also came away inspired and enthused. We made new friends (most of whom we’ll play music with, sooner or later) and caught up with some old friends too. For myself, I’m ready to restart my rebetika career by (ahem) actually practising, a bit, instead of just playing songs with friends when the opportunity arises. And I got reminded of all the nuance and complexity and strangeness this musical tradition contains, if I pay close attention to what the original recordings are actually doing instead of letting my (modern, Westernised, harmony-addicted) ear make assumptions.

It was a strong reminder for me of why we struggle on in this country, with its heatwaves and its politics and its poor working conditions and all the reasons we might be more comfortable elsewhere: the heights of intense experience we can get here, once in a while, are simply incomparable to anything we’ve experienced elsewhere.