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What is a mantinada?
Two lines, fifteen syllables, one rhyme — and a whole island's memory.
The mantinada is a rhyming couplet in the Cretan fifteen-syllable verse (dekapentasyllabos).
It is improvised at weddings and feasts, traded like a duel between singers, and carried on the bow of the lyra. A good mantinada says in two lines what a letter would need a page for.
The tradition is strongest in the mountain villages of central and western Crete, where it is still common to answer a mantinada with another.