The folk music of Southern Albania has its origin in ancient times. The distinct characteristic that sets it apart is known as iso-polyphony: soloists singing two or more vocal parts above a supporting drone (iso) by a group of singers. For centuries, village music was provided either by a cappella singing or by folk instruments.

Towards the end of the 19^th century, increasing numbers of people moved from rural areas to the developing urban centers of Southern Albania – Berat, Vlorë, Përmet, Korçë and Leskovik. In these growing towns and cities, a contemporary music culture that would satisfy the tastes of modern urban life, while also integrating the centuries-old folk tradition, was yet to be established. Into this fertile ground, tempered instruments such as clarinets and violins arrived from abroad, and a new kind of instrumental group was born – the saze! Urban folk musicians had found the perfect tools for expressing the changed emotional reality. The new arrivals gradually replaced traditional instruments although the musicians and their folk techniques remained the same.

With the technical possibilities offered by these instruments, sazes gave a completely new perspective and breadth to the traditional iso-polyphonic repertoire, expanding its horizons while maintaining essential links to the village a cappella music. They not only borrowed from the traditional repertoire, but also implemented the musical structures and ‘hierarchies’ of vocal iso-polyphony. The clarinet became the lead voice (marrës, the one that “takes”, “starts” or “pitches”), the violin the second voice (prerës, the one that “cuts”, “returns it” or “picks it up”), while the llautë (lute), with its many strings, replaced the collective iso (taking the role of those who “fill it in” or “hold the voice”), and the def (frame drum) upholds the rhythms. Singing was provided by the musicians themselves.

Rapidly, sazes became the most prominent music formations of Southern Albania, and, to this day, they play a pivotal role in the preservation, popularization and development of this folk music tradition. According to accounts by old sazexhinj, people of the Southern regions took an immediate liking to the sazes, which may be explained by the similarities of the sounds of their new instruments and the human voice. The sazes were invited to take part in weddings, funerals, religious festivals and trade fairs, occasions during which hundreds of people would come together. This collective approval showed that sazes had passed their initial test.

Weddings were the main occasions where the sazes established their particular value, and this has an explanation. In the South, it is said that “death opens the wounds” (vdekja hap plagët) and “a wedding opens the songs” (dasma hap këngët). As the sazexhinj themselves put it, “at the weddings there is much discussion and pouring of money”, since the spending for these occasions increased with every passing year, particularly in the richer parts of the towns and cities. Though wedding rituals are a product of many centuries and generations, at this time, people came to define the saze-wedding symbiosis in a single equation, as if wanting to say that without one party, the other has no value: “I did not know I was coming to a wedding, otherwise I would have brought a saze” and further, that “there was no wedding with just a flute”.

Following the tradition, the first sazes were formed from within family structures, such as those of Asllan Leskovikut, Demkë Hajros, Medi Përmetit and Bilbil Vlora, to mention only a few famous names. Since at the beginning of the 20^th century they were few in number, sazes functioned as travelling groups, covering wide territories around their hometowns. Leskovik’s would travel to Konicë, Kostur, Janinë, Mallakastër and Tepelenë, Korçë and Përmet, Vlorë and Sarandë, while Berat sazes would cross the ethno-cultural boundary by venturing as far as Elbasan, Fier, Durrës and Tiranë. There were occasions of sazexhinj from Përmet, Leskovik or Berat migrating and forming sazes in other parts of the South, which so far did not have their own. By the late 1920s, sazes not only had been able to complete the process of their establishment and consolidation, but, in the first decades of the 1900s, distinct regional styles had been formed: Përmet’s clarinets were considered ‘sweet’, Myzeqesë’s dajres (frame drums) ‘strong’ and Labëri’s sazes ‘lamenting’. This soon attracted leading European and American record companies – Columbia, Odeon, Victor, Pathé and His Master’s Voice – establishing Saze among the first folk music styles from the Balkans to be recorded.

UNESCO has proclaimed the musical phenomenon of Albanian folk iso-polyphony, including Saze as its instrumental embodiment, a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity”(2004) and part of Representative list (2008). The originality and popularity of this music has made the iso-polyphony of the South accessible to the rest of Albania and provides a symbol of unity and identity. To this day, Saze remains the musical language of the cities of Southern Albania, where East and West embraced, when European instruments collided with the magic of a cappella iso-polyphony, and where life and death still coexist in a sound that is truly unique.