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117of fact, together with Romania, Greece could be considered to be one of the mostmonophonic countries in the Balkans. At the same time, unlike Romania, where themajor part of polyphonic tradition seems to be mostly brought there by Macedonianmigrants from other parts of the Balkans, Greek polyphonic traditions seem to be anautochthonous survival of the musical culture of the Balkans.According to the common view of ethnomusicologists, most Greek traditionalmusic is monophonic, both solo and unison. Only in two regions, geographically situatedon opposite sides of the country, are vocal forms of traditional polyphony found. Thesetwo regions are Epirus (Epir), the Northwestern corner of the country, and theDodecanese islands (island Rhodes) – the isolated Southeastern island part of the country.Most interestingly, these polyphonic traditions, isolated from each other, retained someimportant common features.Mountainous Epirus has traditionally been considered to be the region with themost archaic element of culture and ethnography in Greece, and one of the richest regionsin musical traditions. A good description of the three-part polyphonic tradition of Epirusis given in an article by Cowan: “This musical style, with a pentatonic structure, involvesat least three vocal parts: a melodic line, a fixed drone (ison) sustaining the tonic, and aklostis ‘embroiderer”, who alternately leads the song and embroiders the melody with ayodeling voice” (Cowan, 2000:1010). We could add here the predominance of thevertical coordination of the parts on seconds and fourths.Ex. 62 Greece. Two-part polyphony (Schneider, 1969:#274)Ex. 63. Greece. Three-part polyphony with “klostis” [yodel] (Baud-Bovy,1983:#57)