This panhellenic meeting gave us the opportunity to see, gathered together in Athens, many “companias” - folk music ensembles - which rarely appear in the capital. Without a doubt, the mainstay of the festival was this “old guard”, the last great generation of Greek folk musicians, who are, unfortunately, dying out without leaving equally worthy successors, except in rare but happy cases, such as in Crete, Carpathos and a few other regions.

The presence in Athens of so many - more than 110 - outstanding folk musicians, afforded the Lyceum Club of Greek Women the opportunity to record the performances of a very small number of them and to introduce them to the wider public by including them in the Lyceum’s series of records, edited under the general title “FOLK MUSIC * DANCES - SONGS”.

The present two records of the series introduce eight different “companias” in songs and dances of their respective regions. The first record presents songs and dances from the village of Petroussa, performed by the musicians who accompanied the Lyceum Club of Greek Women of Drama, as well as dances of the village in Alona, played by the musicians accompanying the Lyceum Club of Florina, Macedonia. The second record includes songs and dances from the islands of Carpathos and Kasos and from Sitia and Rethymnon, in Crete, as well as dances from the regions of Serres and Xanthi, each performed by local musicians accompanying the dance groups who represented the Lyceum Clubs of Greek Women of the regions mentioned.

The central Lyceum Club of Greek Women expresses its warmest thanks to the regional Annexes for their help in making these recordings possible and is especially grateful to the musicians themselves for their contribution to the Lyceum’s effort to preserve and make more widely known our traditional Greek folk songs and dances.