The caravans were always the way to immigration in Epirotes’ memory. Travels lasting for many weeks, having kirantzides as drivers, every day in a different region, bridging Epirus with distant places, such as Istanbul, Plovdiv, Vlachia and Vienne. Epirotes have an important longtime experience in immigration and the caravans have a special place in their history.
It is somehow in this way that the Polyphonic Caravan also travels, every day at another place, the more and more far away, bridging not only regions but also countries. The big journey of the voices! A journey which started from the village of its pioneers, the borderline village Polydroso of Thesprotia, and gradually expanded all over borderline Epirus, Macedonia, Thessaly, Corfu, while it crossed the borders with Albania, Italy, Bulgaria.
A journey which, on the one hand, bridged all the regions of Epirus polyphony with one another, later bridged Epirus polyphony with all the other Greek and Greek-speaking genres of polyphony, crossing the more and more often the bridges with the other Balkan and Mediterranean polyphonies. A journey which started as a two-day long event, continued as a three-day long cycle of events, evolved into fifteen-days long travels every summer and, since years now, travels three and four times every year.
A multipurpose journey which contains events, meetings, celebrations, collective field-based recordings, presentations, seminars, projections, touring. A journey which, beyond the collective tracking at the natural and social places of folk polyphony, brings the polyphonic song in the cities as well, transmitting the genre to more and more young people, initiating the future “relay runners” of this oldest tradition, having already founded a promising future for a genre that was likely to get lost.
A journey which exapands with a great number of actions, with the Polyphony Workshops in different cities of Greece and abroad, with the Polyphonic Song Archive which is constantly enriched, with the publications, the productions, the online presentation, that promote and disseminate the polyphonic song widely, recognizing Polyphonic Caravan’s practice at an international level too.
The big journey of the voices, the Polyphonic Caravan, travels according to the way “Apiros”, its driver, does. The organizer non-governmental organization “Apiros” took its name by the Doric name of Epirus, literally meaning “without end, infinite”. It is somehow in this way that the Polyphonic Caravan also realizes its journey. A journey which contantly expands, in new horizons, with new co-travelers. A journey which constantly re-starts. Without limits, without conditions...