Surfing through life with music in his soul: Paddy League at home with Echolocator
Ethnomusicologist Panayotis "Paddy" League mixes culture and music into a new, intoxicating Tallahassee sound. Catch him at Wonderful Wednesday at Goodwood Museum & Gardens on Sept. 20.
A heritage of harmony
Music lives at the heart of Greek culture. The sounds made by the traditional Greek goatskin tsambouna bagpipe combined with the chords plucked on the long-necked bouzouk serve as a form of social anthropology and musicology that investigates the role of music within the human experience. Although one’s relationship with music can be personal and inexplicably moving, it is a connection meant to be shared.
For centuries, Greek tradition has intertwined storytelling with music and poetry to connect and uplift the community socially, spiritually, and artistically. For musician, educator, and ethnographer League, music and his Greek heritage have always been central to his life.
His mother and maternal grandfather were professional musicians and music educators in Tarpon Springs, home to the largest Greek-American community in the nation. League’s family cultivated his love of music as a child by immersing him in traditional Greek and Irish music and the tantalizing beats of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s rhythm & blues, funk, rock, and jazz.
After his first drum lesson, given to him by his mother, League began a lifelong journey as a versatile instrumentalist. What started as a relationship with the drums led to a romance with guitars, violins, and Greek lutes. His 20s introduced him to the bagpipe sounds of a tsambouna, and graduate school brought him hand-to-hand with the button accordion.
As he tells his story, League leans in with an aside, “WARNING: If you're reading this and thinking about going to grad school in the humanities, learning the accordion is not an uncommon side effect.”
Though the thought of playing the bagpipe may seem incongruent with learning the accordion, League insists they are all related in his approach to music for two main reasons: His foundation as a percussionist and the ability to use multiple instruments across various musical genres.
“For example, I play Greek music on bouzouki, guitar, percussion, mandolin, violin, and a bunch of other things. But I play them all in an analogous way, in terms of what really matters about music: tone, affect, and time,” says League. “That's much more manageable than ‘only’ playing guitar and trying to be familiar with ten different styles of music.”
Additionally, League credits his lifetime of experiences across genres and instruments to his success as a composer and performer of his original music.
Excavating Ethnographic Elements
In his early 20s, League played acoustic and traditional music in various touring bands while teaching music throughout festivals and summer camps. During this time, League’s personal and artistic connection to Greek music and oral poetry flourished.
Combined with what League calls “severe road burnout from traveling almost non-stop," he gave away most of his belongings and moved to Greece. His immersion in Greek, and later Brazilian, musical culture influenced his artistry and would eventually become his academic and professional focus.
After touring for the better part of a decade, League longed for a more intellectually fulfilling and politically stimulating purpose to his music. His curiosity about the world and “desire to make a positive, dynamic, and lasting contribution to peace, love, joy, and all the other good things about human social life” led him back to graduate school.
Though he initially obtained a Master's degree in Classics and Modern Greek Studies, the universe introduced him to the world of musicology, combining League’s community value and intellectual vigor. Eventually, League completed a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology and landed a professorship at his grandmother’s alma mater, Florida State University.
The work of ethnography allows a researcher to explore art and the people who create it in a personal, experiential way. League expands upon his research, “My ethnographic work — which, for me, basically means spending lots of time with particular musicians, dancers, and poets, asking them about their lives, and taking their ideas and actions very seriously — directly informs my creative artistic work because I only research musical worlds that I’m a part of, a participant in.”
League expands this thinking to the classroom, where his goal is to give students the analytical, methodological, and theoretical tools to explore their own relationship with the world through music.
Surfin’ scales
Like his students, League continues to explore music in unexpected ways. The sounds of “surf rock” transport us to a beach blanket in Southern California surrounded by hundreds of sunkissed teens bopping with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalons. Rightfully so, as the form of music featured catchy melodies, electric guitars, and strong backbeats made famous in the 1960s by artists like Dick Dale and The Beach Boys.
This music genre has evolved but remains rooted in how it plays with melodic and harmonic patterns. It was this music that entranced League during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and inspired him to take up the electric guitar. League composed several demos and began his search for bandmates.
He was drawn to the sounds of a local band, The Intoxicators!, so he reached out to the lead guitarist, Gary Evans, and drummer Brian Crum to play together. They found their fourth in bassist Jose Reyes and eventually began their journey as Echolocator.
“At this point, we’ve been rehearsing pretty regularly for a year and a half or so,” says League. “Gary and I have written about two dozen songs. Our music is pretty diverse in terms of its influences and references, but it's all high-energy and built for dancing.”
League concludes that all his life experiences and musical encounters have merged and composed a complete version of himself that values music, intellect, and community.
“They’re inseparable. I’m a musician — for me, that means that I play music, I compose music, I’m a music archivist,” says League. “All of those aspects of my life as a musician, of my relationship with music, inform each other.”
He has found a home in his band and the ability to play fun and high-energy music. Echolocator will grace the stage at Goodwood Museum & Garden’s Wonderful Wednesday, where the evening will be filled with soaring melodies, dueling guitars, a bass drum sure to shake your seat, and lots of dancing!
If you go
What: Wonderful Wednesday: Echolocator
When: 6-8 p.m. Sept. 20
Where: Goodwood Museum & Gardens, 1600 Miccosukee Road
Cost: $5 general admission
Contact: goodwoodmuseum.org
Tickets: eventbrite.com
Dr. Christy Rodriguez de Conte is the feature writer for the Council on Culture & Arts. COCA is the capital area’s umbrella agency for arts and culture (tallahasseearts.org).
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee's Paddy League rides surf rock wave with Echolocator
