Ancient Greeks believed music to be the work of the gods. Not only did Greeks acknowledge Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto, to be the god of music (in addition to being god of light and sun, truth, prophecy, healing, plague and poetry--busy guy), but there were also goddesses known as the Muses (the mousai), who inspired the creativity of all human music-makers; the word "music" even comes from them…. (More.)

In the 1920s and 1930s a new form of music became popular among the Greek "underclass." This music, known as rebetiko (also written as "rembetiko"), marked an essential step in the newly "exchanged" Greek population's assertion of its national identity. (More.)

This week in our online class we travel to Greece, which, historically, being home to the powerful yet philosophical Ancient Greeks -- the Spartans, the Athenians, the Macedonians and more -- who paved the way for the Roman Empire, is very much at the heart of what makes Western Europe "Western Europe….” (more.)