Four years ago, when I went, unsuspecting, to my first Balkan Music Workshop with the East European Folklife Center in Mendocino, California, I was blindsided by the power of an art form that had previously eluded me. One pre-dawn morning, around 4am, I was sitting in the kafana (a communal cabin in the middle of the redwoods camp, decorated with string lights and Balkan tapestries) in an ouzo-laced, sleep-deprived fog. One of the Greek clarinet teachers started playing a μοιρολόγι (miroloi) from Epirus, an unmetered melody in a pentatonic scale I’d never heard, with pain-laden vocals and subtle accompaniment on accordion. I forgot to breathe. …