Musical Workshop Labyrinth

Labyrinth was founded in 1982 by Ross Daly with the goal of initiating young people, primarily, into a creative approach to traditional musical idioms from various parts of the world. Today Labyrinth has concentrated all of its activities in a
tastefully restored old manor in the village of Houdetsi (20 km due south of Iraklion), where one can visit a permanent exhibition of rare musical instruments from many parts of the world.

Parallel to the exhibition of instruments, special musical seminars and “master-classes” are organized at regular intervals featuring some of the foremost master-musicians of the traditional music from various parts of the globe.

On the beautiful surrounding grounds of the Lavyrinthos, during the summer months, concerts are frequently presented featuring some of the foremost exponents of traditional musical idioms from all over the world.

Musical Workshop Labyrinth

Labyrinth is perhaps more a musical way of life than it is merely a group of musicians. It started on Crete in 1982 simply as a group of friends dedicated to the exploration of the various modal musical traditions from around the world and the possibilities for creative interaction within and between them. Labyrinth has included at various times musicians from a very wide range of different ethnic backgrounds, each of whom brings to it the world from which he has come, through the medium of his own personal creativity. The members of Labyrinth do not necessarily share a common ideology or philosophy, rather they are united in a common spirit and, of course, love for music.

Modal Music

The term "modal music" usually refers to a specific genre of music which is quite clearly defined by equally specific technical characteristics, and which is frequently identified geographically with the Middle East and the Orient.
True though this may be, for us it is something much more. Inherent in all of the great modal traditions of the world (both of the East and the West) is a primordial, transcendental spirituality which is totally independent of religious dogmas or any other specific patterns of thought and feeling of a descriptive or presciptive nature. It is this aspect of modal music which draws us irresistably towards it, and which enables us to surrender ourselves to the transpersonal and transtemporal world which it opens for each and every one of us according to his or her individual nature.

World Music

When we started this work more than 20 years ago, there was no specific category into which our music neatly fell, and often the task of describing it to others was extremely difficult. What we do is not "traditional music" per se, but it does draw, almost exclusively, on elements of specific and, usually, closely related musical traditions which are continuously developing, each in its own way. The newly coined terms "ethnic" or "world music", if they do indeed have any real meaning at all, both refer to interests which are, in fact, the direct opposite of what concerns us.

The "ethnic" dimension of any given musical tradition is of little if any relevance to the inherent ability of certain elements within it to transport us from personal to transpersonal levels, a characteristic of prime importance to us. That which is "ethnic" certainly reflects a collectivity which simultaneously contains and supercedes individuality, but it does continue to produce dualities such as "us" and "them", whereas the transpersonal refers us to another realm of existence where there simply are no such divisions and the emphasis is on the revelation of inherent unity.
"World music", whatever that term might eventually come to mean in future generations, remains an extremely primitive organism, lacking both a backbone as well as a central nervous system, and would seem ill-equipped to pass the harsh tests of survival and evolution. The biggest weakness of both categories, probably, is in the fact that they are both the creations not of musicians themselves, but of the music industry in search of new forms of commerciality.