Savina Yannatou, Primavera en Salonico

Songs of an Other is the third ECM album by the Greek singer Savina Yannatou with Primavera en Salonico, the Thessaloniki group she has worked with since 1993. It follows the live Terra Nostra and the studio album Sumiglia (2005). The programme gathers traditional songs from Armenia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Albania, Southern Italy and Greece, with a 16th-century hymn from the Yiddish tradition. The arrangements look for the points where these traditions meet.

The album was recorded in October 2007 at Sierra Studios in Athens, with Yannis Baxevanis as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. The arranger Kostas Vomvolos plays qanun and accordion. Around him are Yannis Alexandris on oud and guitar, Kyriakos Gouventas on violin and viola, and the ney player Harris Lambrakis. Michalis Siganidis and Kostas Theodorou share double bass and percussion. Yannatou, trained at the National Conservatory in Athens and at the Guildhall School in London, moves between plain folk phrasing and an extended vocal technique of cries, gasps and ululation.

The disc alternates carefully arranged songs, sung more or less as they have come down, with collective improvisations that start from a folk melody. Sareri hovin mernem, an Armenian song of mourning for a lost love, opens on a bell, with oud, ney and drums gathering around the voice. O Yannis kai o drakos (Yannis and the dragon) is credited to Yannatou and three of the players on a traditional basis. It turns into near free jazz, with plucked bass, accordion, shrieks and gulps. Perperouna, a traditional song reworked by Yannatou, Vomvolos and Lambrakis, sets free-blown ney against bass and a winding melody, and ends in open improvisation.

In The Wire, John Gill heard echoes of Oregon and early Weather Report. His conclusion was that "this is the sound of cultures talking to each other, which nowadays we need more than ever". Geoff Andrew of Jazzwise found the voice "as fresh and versatile as ever" and wrote that the band's expertise and "crystal-clear production ensure they all go gloriously together". Writing in PopMatters in 2008, Jennifer Kelly found the Italian Addio amore dull but singled out Perperouna as the best cut on the disc.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2057, first released on 29 August 2008.